P. Ia. Chaadaev continues to attract the attention of researchers of Russian thought. Some recent publications in our press justify the assertion that scholars are interested not only in this or that side of the views of "the philosopher of Basmannaia Street" but also in the very character of his mentality and its place in the history of Russian philosophical thought. Thus, Viacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov writes in his article "Chaadaev-Our Contemporary" [Chaadaev-nash sovremennik] : "There are several reasons why (...) Chaadaev is not at home in Russia and in the history of Russian thought. One of them is his extreme rationalism and logical orientation. He is the follower of Western European rationalism, mainly, I think, of the French rationalist tradition. For him the chief achievement of civilization is the syllogism, the deduction of logical conclusions from some kind of premises and he takes history to be a unified whole." The same problem of Chaadaevan mentality is raised by P.V. Kuznetsov in his article "The Metaphysical Narcissus: P. Ia. Chaadaev and the Fate of Philosophy in Russia" [Metafizicheskii nartsiss. P. Ia. Chaadaev i sud'ba filosofii v Rossii] , which contrasts Chaadaev's thought with the Eastern "apophatic consciousness.". (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov's concept of person underwent significant development in the course of his career. In his earliest works the person is a transient form that is to be superseded by union with the supra-personal, transcendent self. In works of his middle period Ivanov posits the person as an image of the transcendent self. Lastly, in the 1910s Ivanov integrated these two concepts into a hermeneutic view of the person as an agent of transcendence.

Viacheslav Ivanov sought a religious account of art and being that would avoid the dangers of pantheism and agnostic immanentism. Ivanov's efforts to meet this challenge can be viewed as an "overcoming of Romanticism" insofar as his initial position resembles that of the German and English Romantics. Our analyses of Ivanov's artistic and theoretical texts elucidate his Romantic dilemma and its resolution. ;Between 1903 and 1919 Ivanov's thought presents three phases. First, Ivanov promoted an ecstatic creativity rooted in the (...) "non-acceptance" of the world of forms. This "theomachy" was followed by a "theurgical" aesthetics that, while affirming a transcendent world of forms, either negated the immanent world or else conflated the two in pantheism. Finally, by placing man as a palpable and autotelic reality at the center of his worldview, Ivanov achieved a positive vision of finitude without encroaching on the integrity of the infinite. ;In Ivanov's poetry this final stage is represented by the image of the "tender mystery." This image is also key to understanding Ivanov's longer artistic works. Prometheus expresses the tension between ecstatic creativity and the need for continuity in spiritual labors. Infancy relates Ivanov's sense of ancestral culpability. The Tale of Svetomir-Tsarevich reinterprets and redirects Russian culture by reprising the past and elucidating its moral imperative. The Roman Diary surveys all of the major themes of Ivanov's oeuvre in a many-layered historical chronology. In his longer works Ivanov reads his own life in the universal spiritual-historical continuum, turning autobiography into an epic narrative. ;Ivanov's anthropological vision is personalist, existentialist, and hermeneutic. Reconceiving Ivanov's aesthetics as a hermeneutic illuminates Ivanov's "overcoming" of Romanticism and also Ivanov's relevance. First, Ivanov's hermeneutic, distinguished by a religious-tragic understanding of all cultural events, points to particular similarities and differences between modern intellectual trends in Russia and the West. Second, Ivanov creates a new field---Russian cultural hermeneutics, which articulates the moral imperative of living tradition, understood as a mediated representation of transcendent reality. Third, his hermeneutic theory provides a creative solution for the problems engendered by theomachic and theurgical aesthetics in Orthodox theology. (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov, the central intellectual force in Russian modernism, achieved through his work an original synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His powerful intellect exerted an immeasurable influence in modernist Russia and the early Soviet Union, and after emigrating to Italy in 1924 he played an important role in intellectual debates in Western Europe between the wars. In recent years, Ivanov's manifold contributions have been recognized in all major aspects of Russian culture, including poetry, literary (...) theory, philosophy, and theology. In _The Russian Prospero_, Robert Bird uncovers the foundations of Ivanov's poetic and theoretical universe, traces its evolution, and explores its connections to cultural and intellectual currents in international modernism. Blending a close reading of Ivanov's work with a thoughtful analysis of his place within twentieth-century thought, Bird finds that Ivanov's ecstatic creative psychology leads directly to a consideration of history as a continuum of human interpretive activity, and to a conception of art as a historical force. He emphasizes and dramatizes Ivanov's quest to harness the power of art and apply it to concrete life-situations. It is the dilemma of Prospero, who must liberate his attendant spirit Ariel in order to restore full sovereignty over his own creative self and to regain ethical agency. The productive tension that resulted from Ivanov's struggle was a remarkable force in Russian modernism and remains a powerful spur for our own reflections on modernity. Outstanding Academic Title, _Choice_ Magazine “[Bird’s] clear explanations of Ivanov’s ideas and his informed, insightful, astute readings of the poetic works make this book required reading for anyone interested in modern poetry, intellectual history, cultural studies, and philosophy of early 20th century Russian and European thought.... Essential.”—_Choice_ “[Bird] makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of Russian modernism in its broader European context.... In this undertaking he has not only succeeded admirably, but will undoubtedly inspire others to follow him.”—Pamela Davidson, _The Russian Review_ “The most comprehensive overall treatment of Ivanov’s work to date.”—David N. Wells, _The Slavic and East European Journal_. (shrink)

The interview with one of the founders of the Tartu–Moscow school, semiotician Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (b. 1929) from August 2010, describes V. V. Ivanov’s opinions of several scholars and their work (including Evgenij Polivanov, Mikhail Bakhtin, Andrej Kolmogorov, Nikolaj Marr etc.), his relationships with his father Vsevolod Ivanov, as well as V. V. Ivanov’s views on the past and future of semiotics, with some emphasis on neurosemiotics, zoosemiotics, semiotics of culture, cybernetics, history of linguistics, study and protection of small (...) languages. The interview also deals with V. V. Ivanov’s book Even and Odd. (shrink)

In this paper Russian Symbolist philosophy is represented primarily by Viacheslav Ivanov (1866--1949), but its conclusions are intended to be valid for other philosophers we classify as Symbolist, including Nikolai Berdiaev and S. L. Frank. It is posited that, by comparing Ivanov''s cosmology, aesthetics, and anthropology to those of Martin Heidegger, one can reconceive of Symbolist philosophy as an existential hermeneutic. This, it is claimed, can help to identify a common basis among the Symbolist philosophers, and also to place (...) Russian thought in the context of modern European philosophy and vice versa. (shrink)

This article focuses on the “remarkable parallels” between the mystical anarchism formulated by Viacheslav Ivanov and Georgii Chulkov during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the ideas championed by Norman O. Brown, an American professor who became a guru of the 1960s. The article describes these parallels and accounts for their existence in societies that were polar opposites in other respects. Emphasis is placed on the loss of faith in an ideal and on the importance, to all three writers, (...) of Nietzsche and Christianity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian ModernismJohn GoodliffeCreating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, edited by Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney Grossman; x & 288 pp. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, $39.95.In describing the history of a country’s literature, one may well be tempted to divide it into separate compartments and so lose sight of the continuity which is, in the final analysis, more worthy of (...) attention. Historians of Russian literature have often succumbed to this temptation and it became almost commonplace to read that in Russia the Realism of the nineteenth century gave way to the Symbolism which began in the twentieth; that Symbolism gave way to Futurism; and that in due course all the earlier “-isms” were swept aside by the Socialist Realism of the Soviet period. For Marxist-oriented Soviet [End Page 371] historians such preoccupation with compartmentalization was obsessive. This makes more than welcome a series of essays which is at pains to emphasize the essential connections and kinship between these various “-isms.”Four of the seven essays are intended to demonstrate how the Symbolists, while ostensibly breaking with the earlier tradition of positivism (the idea that art’s essential purpose is to help build a better world), were, in a number of important respects, continuing and even reinforcing what they claimed to despise. Thus, regarding art and life as indissolubly linked, they attempted to turn life into art and art into life. Their endeavors frequently led them into behavior that now appears “eccentric, at times even ridiculous” (p. 166). Olga Matich describes how Blok, Bely, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Zinaida Gippius attempted to model their sexual relationships on the pattern of the “erotic utopia” described by Vladimir Solov’ev in his seminal The Meaning of Love (1892–94). Joan Delaney Grossman discusses Nina Petrovskaia’s relationships with Bely and Valery Briusov. Michael Wachtel shows how Viacheslav Ivanov attempted to overcome his grief at the death of his first wife by using his creative powers to make contact with her “beyond the grave.”Irene Masing-Delic traces the Pygmalion myth through Pushkin, Baratynsky, Turgenev, and Chernyshevsky to the Symbolists who were especially attracted by a myth which showed how an artist could create life and even conquer death. In “Andrei Bely and the Argonauts’ mythmaking,” Alexander Lavrov considers the role of the “Argonaut” circle in establishing a Russian Symbolist culture in the first years of the twentieth century. The Argonauts’ credo was “life-creation” rather than “art-creation,” and they claimed to make no distinction between “talent for living” and “talent for writing.” Lavrov argues that the failure of the relationship between Bely and Nina Petrovskaia marked the disintegration of “Argonautism” and the culture they sought to create. It is left to Irina Gutkin in the concluding essay to guide us through the grotesqueries of Futurism into the apparently diametrically opposed, sanitized world of Socialist Realism, by way of Constructivism, Marxism, and Meyerholdian bio-mechanics, leaving us in little doubt that, appearances to the contrary, each of these movements was concerned with turning art into life and using it to create a better world. So ultimately, as she neatly sums up the thesis of the whole collection, “The aesthetic utopian ideal of art creating life, which took shape at the beginning of the twentieth century, was fused with the utilitarian tradition of the 1860s” (p. 181).I have deliberately reserved for the end comment on Irina Paperno’s introduction and opening article (“The Meaning of Art: Symbolist Theories”) in order to emphasize the manifest contribution she and her co-editor, Joan Delaney Grossman, have made to ensuring the coherence of this admirable collection. Professor Paperno’s clear and concise coverage of her topics makes it evident that she was determined that the book should not turn into the kind of bits-and-pieces patchwork that too many publications of this sort tend to [End Page 372] become without a firm editorial hand at the helm. Her earlier book on Chernyshevsky (Chernyshevsky and the Age of Realism, 1988) and Irene Masing-Delic’s Abolishing Death; a Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature (1992), form the first two parts of... (shrink)

Відношення М. Гайдеґґера до екзистенціальної філософії є одним із питань, що глибоко контаміновані амбівалентними тлумаченнями самого філософа, які викривляють траєкторію об'єктивного історико-філософського дослідження дійсних зв'язків між Гайдеґґеровим дискурсом і спадщиною мислителів-екзистенціалістів. Аналіз рефлексивної літератури з проблеми ідентифікації характеру інтерференцій між філософськими дискурсами М. Гайдеґґера і С. К'єркегора дозволив виявити критичні лінії доксографії та історіографії. Установлено, що саме історіографічний підхід забезпечує об'єктивне дослідження генетичного зв'язку категорій Гайдеґґерової парадигми з омонімічним поняттям С. К'єркегора.

Publication date: 30 March 2017 Source: Author: Viacheslav Oleksenko In a highly technological post-industrial society the quality of education is an important factor in providing such a level of life and professional competency of a person that would satisfy both the demands of an individual and the state. The quality of the whole higher education is influenced by the quality of students' knowledge which is acquired at educational classes. Development of studactive classes has brought forward the problem of research (...) of their efficiency, in particular in the aspect of potential quality of knowledge. The results of the experiment are outlined, the main aim of which was to identify the effect of studactive classes on knowledge quality of university students. Monitoring of quality of students' knowledge at studactive classes is realized. It is revealed that students who were taught in a studactive way have better features of knowledge quality comparing with those who were taught in a traditional way. It is proved that knowledge quality of university students can be improved through implementing studactive classes into the pedagogical process. The study was conducted in Ukraine. (shrink)

Is property-awareness constituted by representation or not? If it were, merely being aware of the qualities of physical objects would involve being in a representational state. This would have considerable implications for a prominent view of the nature of successful perceptual experiences. According to naïve realism, any such experience—or more specifically its character—is fundamentally a relation of awareness to concrete items in the environment. Naïve realists take their view to be a genuine alternative to representationalism, the view on which the (...) character of such experiences is constituted by representation. But naïve realists must admit qualities or property instances as items of awareness if they are to remain wedded to common sense, and the nature of property-awareness may smuggle constitutive representation into the naïve realist account of character. I argue that whether property-awareness involves representation, and consequently whether naïve realism is distinct from representationalism or not, depends on what qualities are fundamentally. On universalist and nominalist accounts, property-awareness turns out to involve representation. Not so under tropism. (shrink)

This paper makes explicit the basic problem perfect hallucinations pose for perceptual naive realists, more fundamental than the well‐trodden Screening‐off Problem. The deeper problem offers the basis for an overarching classification of the available naive‐ realist‐friendly approaches to perfect hallucinations. In the course of laying out the challenges to the different types of response, the paper makes a case for the superiority of a particular approach to perfect hallucinations, on which they would be understood as a special kind of perceptual (...) anomaly—arising from a secondary mode of perceptual processing. (shrink)

In this article on archival sources, deals with the activity of individual members of the public industrial areas of Ukraine in 1917-1920. to ensure that vital material goods. The factors impeding such activity, formulated two main types of behavior in extreme circumstances, attempt to analyze the social composition of the population depending on the model behavior.

Своєрідна полеміка із поглядами М.Вебера відносно взаємодії релігії та культури розпочинає дослідження цих важливих чинників людського буття. Творчі прояви культурної діяльності ставляться у залежність від релігійних світоглядних основ особистості та суспільного конгломерату. Наслідки прийняття народами світових релігій протягом історичного процесу людства, формування під впливом цих релігій специфічних цивілізаційних культур – це також предмети поточного дослідження. Також розглядається регрес у взаємовідношенні релігії та культури: коли сильна розвинута культура асимілює менш розвинуту і, згодом, частково чи цілковито змінює віросповідання, яке формувало пригнічувану культуру. (...) Ці процеси аналізуються на прикладі державотворення давньої Київської Русі та сучасної України. (shrink)

The main focus of acquaintance theorists has been the nature and mechanism of perceptual acquaintance with particulars. Generally, one’s view of perceptual acquaintance with general features has taken its bearings from one’s view of perceptual acquaintance with particulars. This has led to the glossing over of significant differences in the mechanisms of perceptual acquaintance with particulars and with general features. The difference in mechanisms suggests a difference in the sort of epistemic state at play in the two kinds of cases. (...) While the existence of such a difference might initially seem to spell trouble for acquaintance theorists, it can be made palatable by being traced back to the distinct basic functions concepts of particulars and of general features serve in thought. (shrink)

The article is sacred to consideration of pressing question of providing of corporate transformation in form operations of mergers and acquisitions. The main stages of preparation and realization of such transformation, informative base of agreement, dependence between the life cycle of international company and choice of effective form of corporate transformation, are certain in the article.

The age of a structure M is the set of all isomorphism types of finite substructures of M. We study ages of generic expansions of ω-stable ω-categorical structures.

Дослідження присвячено розгляду творчості з урахуванням головних філософських досліджень цього поняття. Діяльність творчого процесу практично доводить присутність свободи в людському бутті. Погляди на творчість віддзеркалюють ставлення конкретного мислителя до питання протистояння свободи та напередвизначеності загалом. Розглянуто полемічні моменти щодо творчості та запропоновано шляхи їх вирішення. Зокрема досліджено два протилежні погляди на творчість – Платона та Аристотеля, де талановитість людини передбачає божественне натхнення (Платон) або, відповідно, лише особистісні зусилля. Полеміку Аристотеля і Платона намагався розв’язати Микола Бердяєв через поєднання їхніх поглядів. Він (...) наділяв людину божественними властивостями і цим вказував на джерело творчості всередині самої людини. Філіп Гефнер надавав особистості статус «співтворця» і висунув теорію про те, що людина покликана удосконалити та завершити Боже творіння. Увагу в дослідженні також приділено змісту та меті творчості. Творчість заради самої творчості, про яку писав Альбер Камю, критикував М. Бердяєв, і пропонував своє бачення цього питання: творчість заради універсальної мети. Погляди Камю загалом поділяв також А. Берґсон. З огляду на згадану полеміку запропоновано актуалізацію вчення Григорія Сковороди про «споріднену працю» та аргументовано доцільність цієї актуалізації. Вітчизняний філософ оригінально врівноважував песимізм творчості Камю та заповзятий підхід Бердяєва. Свої умовиводи Сковорода підкріплював влучними практичними прикладами. (shrink)

Against the background of quite frequent historical periods of physical imprisonment of the Jewish people, this people became the bearer of the Revelation of Truth, which led to the conscious use of freedom of choice in favor of preserving divine gnosis with further ethical direction of freedom. At this stage of the design of the Torah as a collection of sacred books, and the subsequent management of its commandments, the freedom of the individual was sacrificed to the general religious goals (...) of the community. The sacred fear of the greatness of God led to the realization of almost total predestination. The Talmudic and rabbinical currents, which initially continued to cultivate the content of freedom that began in the Torah period, later adopted the anthropocentric ideas of medieval Europe and gradually transformed their religious and cultic positions under the influence of civil liberties. so-called "modern Judaism". The common general orientation of the freedom of the Jewish people has been divided into the political and social freedoms of each individual Jew, where each is responsible for the ethical consequences of his own existence. (shrink)

In the existing philosophical interpretations of mystical experience (constructivism, essentialism, etc.), its essence is usually seen in the features of "mystical knowledge". At the same time, the value-semantic foundations of mystical experience and its existential aspect remain in the shadows. In this article, the mystical experience is analyzed from the standpoint of the theories of the subject's objective activity - the theory of activity (developed in Russian psychology), enactivism, and the concept of the "life world". It is shown that the (...) essence of mystical experience is manifested not in cognitive, but in value-semantic, existential attitude to the world, which is represented by two groups of value-semantic viewpoints. In the first, the dependence of the subject on the sacred object of mystical experience is expressed, in the second - the volitional focus of the subject on overcoming such dependence, "mastering", "acquiring" the sacred object. These attitudes reflect the duality of the need-motivational sphere of consciousness, which gives the activity of the subject, on the one hand, activity, energy, and on the other, meaning. In mystical experience, the subject of active "development", "acquisition" (which can be both real and virtual) is an imaginative "otherworldly reality". The analysis allows us to conclude that mystical experience is one of the forms of motivational states of consciousness. Its peculiarity is that it is aimed at realizing the need for the harmonization of the subject's relations with the natural and social environment, the subject's finding the meaning of the "existence of his self" in an always open to the future, incomplete life world. It is the motivational basis that gives the mystical experience an improvisational character, as well as a creative, renewing potential (within the boundaries of the sensory-emotional experience of the world by the subject). The article also analyzes the concept of semantic reality. It is shown that the semantic foundations of mystical experience reflect the individually unique aspects of human life, are the result of the interactions of many factors of socio-cultural, individual-personal nature (psychological, medical, pharmacological, gender, psychiatric, etc.). (shrink)

The conceptual basis of Hellenic theology was theoretical reflection on the essence of myth, the philosophy of mythology. Several stages can be distinguished in the history of Hellenic theology. The subject of this article is the Hellenic theology of the epoch of the high classics (Vt. half of the V century BC). The cultural roots of the High Classics go back to the ancient Enlightenment, which formed the rational attitude of the ancient consciousness to the world. The main event of (...) the era of High Classics is the Peloponnesian War, which accelerated the crisis of the polis system, its way of life, and cultural ideals. The war led to the rupture of social ties, accelerated the individualization of the consciousness of the individual, forced to seek new social and spiritual supports. Serious shifts have taken place in the existential foundations of Hellenic religion, the understanding of man's dependence on the will of the Olympian gods and the measure of human influence on them has changed. If at the beginning of the epoch of the High Classics there was a semantic harmony of the relations between the human and the divine, then by the end of the epoch it was replaced by the confrontation and alienation of the sacred and profane. Ideas about the dependence of man on the world of the gods and the possible influence on the sacred have "blurred", have become extremely uncertain. This tendency manifested itself in various forms - in the strengthening of the influence of sophistry with its skepticism, the opposition of Chthonic and Olympic mythologies, the actualization of the motive of the birth of new gods (while the old ones do not die at all), stories about the deification of bright personalities, etc. Including in the theology of the Hellenic religion, concentrated expressed by the plots and images of the ancient drama (Sophocles, Euripides). The juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane made Hellenic religion meaningless, led it to self-denial. Under these conditions, Hellenic theology was faced with the need to transform the image of the sacred world. Firstly, by giving the otherworldly reality an abstract-conceptual transcendence. Secondly, through the ultimate generalization of mythological images of the gods, up to monotheism. These tasks were solved by the next epoch - the late classics. (shrink)

In modern European culture the explication and the understanding of nature is determined by the specific traits of systemic objects investigated by science. The paper singles out three types of systemic objects, i.e. simple (mechanical) objects, complex self-regulating, and complex self-developing systems. Categorical structures accounting for each of these types are analyzed.The paper shows that the investigation of every new type of systems changes the type of scientific rationality (classical, nonclassical, post-nonclassical).

Як і будь-яке інше відчуття, біль не містить критеріїв перевірки його правдивості. Спроба вписати його у мову фізики матиме суттєві проблеми. Такий опис страждатиме на редуктивність і нівелюватиме спектр переживань, які не мають предметного відповідника. Крім того, самозвіти про больові відчуття мають не суперечити поняттям, за посередництва яких біль стає доступним для розуміння тими, хто його не відчував. Значні прогалини квантифікація болю, структурована за фізикалістськими параметрами, демонструє і в полі медичної діагностики. Аналіз травматичного психологічного болю показує, що принципів семантики недостатньо (...) для визначення пролонгованого в часі больового досвіду. З’ясування природи болю проливає світло на проблему боротьби репрезентаціонізму й редукціонізму. Особливу цінність для її уточнення й подальшого розв’язання має розрізнення неперехідних відчуттів за допомогою перехідних психологічних дієслів. Основою такого підходу, щоправда, теж обмеженого у застосуванні серією емпіричних винятків, є спроба поєднати лінгвістичну прагматику (Людвіґ Вітґенштайн) із різновидом матеріалізму (Джон Смарт) і критикою фізикалізму з функціоналістських позицій (Гіларі Патнем). Розгляд Декартового аргументу сновидіння показує, що біль не вичерпується усвідомленням болю і не позначає собою лише стан активності ума. У статті розглянуто амбівалентний характер болю, який унеможливлює його розуміння лише як найпростішого відчуття. Реконструкція згаданих підходів до тлумачення болю дала би можливість побачити його з перспективи, з якої біль може бути визначено як комплексне поняття для цілого спектра переживань. Отже, висловлювання про біль доводять неусувність відношення між концептуальним і не-концептуальним елементами в судженні. (shrink)

The article reveals ideological-theoretical, methodological, and politico-ideological basic principles for an adequate analysis of the specifics of modern Chinese (Sinicized) Marxism. The attributive features of modern Chinese Marxism (Marxism with Chinese specifics (the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese Context, Sinicized Marxism), as the most effective version in world history for correcting and modernizing the axiomatics of the Marxist-Leninist theoretical model of social development, as well as improving the ideology of the ruling Communist Party in order to increase the effectiveness (...) of its domestic and foreign state policies, have been characterized by means of concrete-historical and systematic comparative analysis of the ideational grounds and basic socio-philosophical postulates, political and ideological prescriptions of the program documents of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of China. Within the framework of this study, special attention has been paid to highlighting the essence and features of the Soviet and Chinese strategy of socialist construction, created to implement Marxist socialist and communist projects, as well as revealing the scientific evaluation of the differences between the political doctrines of the CPSU and the CPC in the interpretation of objective logic (the duration of stages, goals, and objectives of fundamental economic, social, political, and cultural transformations) of the process of constructing high-level development socialism ("developed socialism") and the further progressive movement of such a society to the phase of communism. (shrink)

Various forms of mathematical induction are applicable to domains with some kinds of order. This naturally leads to the questions about the possibility of unification of different inductions and their generalization to wider classes of ordered domains. In the paper we propose a common framework for formulating induction proof principles in various structures and apply it to partially ordered sets. In this framework we propose a fixed induction principle which is indirectly applicable to the class of all posets. In a (...) certain sense, this result provides a solution to the problem of formulating a common generalization of a number of well-known induction principles for discrete and continuous ordered structures. (shrink)

In this article we examine the main fragments of Thomas Aquinas regarding beauty. Our approach allows us to acquire the repertoire of definitions of beauty that are found in his commentaries and thought. Thus our scope is reconstruct at the theory of beauty that is implicit in Thomas Aquinas.

I propose that the fundamental challenge Berkeley left realists is to account for experiences’ ability to present items as mind-independent, consistent with the claim that experiences always present themselves among the items of awareness. By exploring two ways of responding to this challenge, and ruling out the second, I hope to show that realists aiming to secure a role for experiences in grounding our grasp of mind-independence need to adopt a specific view of perceptual experience. They must take experiences to (...) have translucent aspects, and accord such aspects an essential role in presenting us with a mind-independent world. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical challenges involved in the ways public representation structures our experiences of atrocities and facilitates an adequate awareness of and response towards the suffering of others. It points out that such an analysis should not exhaust itself in answering what makes public representations of human suffering ethically suspicious and intolerable, but should rather extend this task by clarifying how the public forms sentiments about their social and political reality by elucidating under which conditions public representation promotes (...) broader political agendas. One of the central tenets of human rights advocacy is the widespread conviction that exposure to images and stories of human rights abuse has a mobilizing effect on western audience whose exposure to such knowledge can motivate them to intervene and prevent future atrocities. In order to assess the basic implications of such a conviction we must answer at least three principal clusters of questions. First, how do public representations of atrocities affect individuals and their capacities to conceive and respond to social injustices and the suffering of others? Under what circumstances may agents respond effectively to shocking content? Second, how do social powers operate within the field of perception in order to control how the viewing public is affected? And how do these effects inform and galvanize political support or opposition regarding concrete historical events? Finally, what can be said about the responsibilities of visual representation? Whose agency is it that images inform, and what reforms are necessary to make representations of suffering ethically effective means to encourage better acknowledgment of individual and collective responsibilities that would motivate the public to meet its moral and political obligations? This paper ultimately suggests that in order for politically implicated images to have an immediate critical effect on individuals and their agency, they need to cultivate alternative modes of perception.Article first published online: 21 DEC 2015. (shrink)

The thesis is intended to contribute to the growing understanding of the indispensable role played by phenomenal consciousness in human cognition, and specifically in making our concepts of the external world available. The focus falls on so called observational concepts, a type of rudimentary, perceptually-based objective concepts in our repertoire — picking out manifest properties such as colors and shapes. A theory of such concepts gets provided, and, consequently, the exact role that perceptual consciousness plays in making concepts of this (...) sort available gets settled. In the first half of the thesis, observational concepts get construed as a special type of recognitional concepts. On an analogy with perceptual demonstratives, having such concepts would involve having non-trivial knowledge of their reference. The experiential basis of such concepts would, among other things, provide for such constitutive knowledge. The theoretical background relevant to the hypothesis gets provided in the first chapter. A defence of the hypothesis follows in the second. In the second half of the thesis, care is taken to distinguish among two ways in which the constitutive knowledge of the reference of an observational concept could be fleshed out. In the third chapter, perceptual experience is shown to provide the basis both for knowledge of observational properties by acquaintance, and for knowledge of the essence of such properties — provided that knowledge of essence gets construed in the right, modest way. It might be natural to take knowledge by acquaintance to be the sort relevant to observational concept possession, especially given that in the case of perceptual demonstratives this is the role likely played by experience. However, this initial impression proves to be mistaken. The constitutive knowledge of the referent of an observational concept turns out to consist in the capacity to determine a priori the essence of the respective property. To show this, an argument gets provided in the penultimate fourth chapter, based on the key role played by experiences of instances of observational properties in optimal viewing conditions in enabling the possession of the respective observational concept. (shrink)

This article analyzes the extended mind hypothesis that has been discussed during the past two decades following the article “The Extended Mind” by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. It examines the position of active externalism and notes the shortcomings of the arguments supporting this position as proposed by Clark and Chalmers. It is demonstrated that the cultural-historical psychology developed by Vygotsky represents an alternative means of substantiating the extended mind hypothesis. Interpreting Vygotsky’s position as “active social externalism,” the author contrasts (...) Vygotsky’s theory with the active externalism of Clark and Chalmers, as well as with the classical externalism advocated by Putnam and Burge, showing the advantage of Vygotsky’s approach. This advantage has been seen in the ability of Vygotsky’s active social externalism to avoid the problems faced by other externalist approaches to explaining the mind. (shrink)