How is time transformed when signs appear? In the sign system of the conditioned reflex, the sign (conditioned stimulus) reverses, changes the direction of time, and overcomes its unidirectionality and irreversibility. In a sense, there is a “return” to the past in the form of the future when the sign is introduced. The sign serves as a “Time machine” of sorts. The mechanism of time transformation is possible because a mirror is embedded inside the sign, the surface of which represents (...) the psychological present time. When past experience meets that surface in the present, it may be reflected in the form of a future event. In the course of reflection, time changes its direction: if earlier time flowed from the event (the cause), it subsequently flows to other events (the purpose). Previously inaccessible past experience is now projected into the present, “comes to life” in it and is transformed into the future. In humans, unlike in animals, signs of the second order appear. Inside the signs of the second order, a mirror is built in, and the experience of the past as a subject is reflected in the future form as an object. An individual has the opportunity to consider oneself externally as an object. It goes beyond the subjective form. Thus, secondary signs once again change time direction. Due to this phenomenon, time becomes doubly reversible: first it turns around in a conditioned stimulus, and then in a secondary sign. (shrink)

This is an attempt to propose the shift of bioethics from traditional and global levels up to the ‘cosmist personal’ —universal—level of considering the problems of individual's health. This approach in bioethics is likewise characterised as a health-centric and cosmist functional one. Substantially, this original bioethical approach relies on its own cosmological and ontological bases. Furthermore, novel bioethics needs its own realm of application—within the sphere of cosmist anthropology, which treats man as the bio-social-cosmist creature, but not merely a bio-social (...) one. (shrink)

Author brings forward a BioCosmological (metaphysical) conception that primarily explores the reasons of present ongoing and increasing global crises. In the issue, author substantively arrives at the conclusion (‘diagnosis’) of the current ‘cosmological insufficiency’ of modern philosophical and cultural community,wherein the leading ‘clinical form’ turns out to be the modern mainstream ‘presentism’, while the ‘patient's treatment’ (perceiving that ‘the patient’ signifies the whole process of life on Earth) – proves to be the urgent rehabilitation of Aristotelism and Russian philosophy and (...) science (neo-Aristotelism). Precisely in this course, author’s BioCosmological conception carries out a realistic and rational proposal that strives to construct a substantive comprehensive theoretical framework – for the tackling of these actual issues. (shrink)

The author attempts to advance and substantiate a novel theoretical - cosmist1 - approach to reaching the end of integrative universal, truly humane, bio-science.2The work is performed on the original basis of philosophical cosmology, ontology of Absolute Cosmist Wholism, cosmist epistemology, anthropology, and the core principle of CosmoBiotypology. Cosmist theory leads to a person-driven science that is able to integrate subjective and objective knowledge: humankind's personal experience with psychological, biological, and sociological knowledge about the person. In this, the cosmist approach (...) rises to a novel - cosmist functional universal - level of bio-reductionism that relies ultimately on objective scientific knowledge but, at the same time, is primarily person-driven: based on the feelings and perceptions of a person. The core notion of the theory is a person's Basic (Cosmist) Functionality, the realization of which leads to man's3entire ontogenetic well-being.4. (shrink)

Konstantin Pollok offers the first book-length analysis of Kant's theory of normativity that covers foundational issues in theoretical and practical philosophy as well as aesthetics. Interpreting Kant's 'critical turn' as a normative turn, he argues that Kant's theory of normativity is both original and radical: it departs from the perfectionist ideal of early modern rationalism, and arrives at an unprecedented framework of synthetic a priori principles that determine the validity of our judgments. Pollok examines the hylomorphism in Kant's theory (...) of normativity and relates Kant's idea of our reason's self-legislation to the 'natural right' tradition, revealing Kant's debt to his predecessors as well as his relevance to contemporary debates on normativity. This book will appeal to academic researchers and advanced students of Kant, early modern philosophy and intellectual history. (shrink)

Konstantin Pollok - Kant's Critical Concepts of Motion - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 559-575 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Kant's Critical Concepts of Motion Konstantin Pollok There are two significant places in Kant's Critical corpus where he discusses the concept of motion. The first is in the Critique of Pure Reason, where in the "Deduction of the Categories" Kant writes: Motion, as an act of the subject , (...) and therefore the synthesis of the manifold in space, first produces the concept of succession—if we abstract from this manifold and attend solely to the act through which we determine the inner sense according to its form. In this passage Kant simply refers to the concept of motion, and the immediate context in which this reference occurs reveals little about what he means by it. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, however, motion plays a more significant role, and, concomitantly, it is in his writings on natural science that Kant most fully expresses his thoughts on the subject. For present purposes, the most relevant passage is paragraph 15 of the Preface of the Metaphysical Foundations, where Kant says that the concept of matter had … to be carried through all four of the indicated functions of the concepts of the understanding , where in each a new determination of this concept was added. The.. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 509-530.

Functional information means an encoded network of functions in living organisms from molecular signaling pathways to an organism’s behavior. It is represented by two components: code and an interpretation system, which together form a self-sustaining semantic closure. Semantic closure allows some freedom between components because small variations of the code are still interpretable. The interpretation system consists of inference rules that control the correspondence between the code and the function (phenotype) and determines the shape of the fitness landscape. The utility (...) factor operates at multiple time scales: short-term selection drives evolution towards higher survival and reproduction rate within a given fitness landscape, and long-term selection favors those fitness landscapes that support adaptability and lead to evolutionary expansion of certain lineages. Inference rules make short-term selection possible by shaping the fitness landscape and defining possible directions of evolution, but they are under control of the long-term selection of lineages. Communication normally occurs within a set of agents with compatible interpretation systems, which I call communication system. Functional information cannot be directly transferred between communication systems with incompatible inference rules. Each biological species is a genetic communication system that carries unique functional information together with inference rules that determine evolutionary directions and constraints. This view of the relation between utility and inference can resolve the conflict between realism/positivism and pragmatism. Realism overemphasizes the role of inference in evolution of human knowledge because it assumes that logic is embedded in reality. Pragmatism substitutes usefulness for truth and therefore ignores the advantage of inference. The proposed concept of evolutionary pragmatism rejects the idea that logic is embedded in reality; instead, inference rules are constructed within each communication system to represent reality, and they evolve towards higher adaptability on a long time scale. (shrink)

PA is Peano Arithmetic. Pr(x) is the usual Σ1-formula representing provability in PA. A strong provability predicate is a formula which has the same properties as Pr(·) but is not Σ1. An example: Q is ω-provable if PA + ¬ Q is ω-inconsistent (Boolos [4]). In [5] Dzhaparidze introduced a joint provability logic for iterated ω-provability and obtained its arithmetical completeness. In this paper we prove some further modal properties of Dzhaparidze's logic, e.g., the fixed point property and the Craig (...) interpolation lemma. We also consider other examples of the strong provability predicates and their applications. (shrink)

By taking into account some texts published between the first and the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that have been neglected by most of those who have dealt with the deduction of the categories, I argue that the core of the deduction is to be identified as the ‘almost single inference from the precisely determined definition of a judgment in general’, which Kant adumbrates in the Metaphysical Foundations in order to ‘make up for the deficiency’ of the (...) A-deduction. Whereas the first step of the B-deduction is an attempt to show that the manifold of an intuition belongs to the ‘necessary unity of self-consciousness’ by means of the synthesis of the understanding, the second step has the task of showing that the very same synthesis is responsible for the spatio-temporal unity of the manifold. Thus, Kant's ‘answer to Hume’ is that no spatio-temporal objects of experience at all are merely ‘given’, independently of the conceptual activities of the understanding. Against the established view I substantiate the claim that with this ‘almost single inference’ of the second proof step the distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience consequently vanished from Kant's thinking. (shrink)

I draw attention to a 12-page Vorarbeit to Kant’s Prolegomena from the so-called Scheffner-Nachlaß and argue that the parallel Kant draws there between the possibility of theoretical and practical synthetic a priori propositions provides important insight into the development of his account of practical autonomy in the Groundwork. Based on a brief sketch of the role synthetic a priori propositions play in the development of Kant’s critical philosophy, I conclude that for Kant the objective validity of any science depends on (...) the objective validity of a number of synthetic a priori propositions. (shrink)

This article focuses on Alexei Losev’s literary texts that embrace his mythology of music: “I was 19 years old,” “A meteor,” “A woman-thinker,” “The Tchaikovsky trio,” and “An encounter.” It is shown that Losev’s musical mythology developed from his early musical-critical works—through the artistic-mythological episodes of his philosophical works per se —to his fiction of the 1930s. Losev’s intentionally abstract philosophy of music required to be complemented by the artistic, emotional, socially and historically specific expression. The main idea of Losev’s (...) musical myth in its historical-cultural aspect is to reflect the relevant self-consciousness of an individual. The epoch of religious super-individualism and “prayerful delight” is replaced by the epoch of “musical delight” and professed idealization of an individual. This change was a reason of the extreme ambivalence of music, which, on the one hand, expresses the highest order and harmony and, on the other, is a continuous evolvement and chaos, a substantive uncertainty. The novelty of the article consists, firstly, in the analysis of correspondence between musical ambivalence and drama in the lives of the heroes, especially heroines symbolizing music itself; and secondly, in identifying the constant features of Losev’s musical myth, as well as its specific features that emerge at different stages. (shrink)

Against the standard interpretation of Kant's ‘Copernican revolution’ as the prioritization of epistemology over ontology, I argue in this paper that his critique of traditional metaphysics must be seen as a farewell to the perfectionism on which early modern rationalist ontology and epistemology are built. However, Kant does not simply replace ‘perfection’ with another fundamental concept of normativity. More radically, Kant realizes that it is not simply ideas but only the relation of ideas that can be subject to norms, and (...) thus he shifts the focus from the reality of ideas to the validity of judgments. Section 1 of this paper clarifies the pre-Kantian role of the concept of perfection and examines Kant's critical response to that concept. Section 2 identifies Kant's point of departure from the Cartesian ‘way of ideas.’ Section 3 explains the key problem of his novel account of epistemic normativity. I conclude that Kant's anti-perfectionism must be seen as the driving force behind his ‘Copernican revolution’ in order to fully appreciate his mature account of epistemic normativity. (shrink)

This book takes us on the journey of the history of philosophy from the Ancient & Medieval through Modern periods to twentieth-century thought.

The article considers A.F. Losev''s philosophy of music in the context ofhis entire religious worldview and as the part of hisChristian-Neoplatonic philosophy. Synthesizing Pythagorean-Platonic andRomantic musical doctrines, Losev concludes: music is the expression ofthe life of numbers, a meonic-hyletic element that rages inside numericconstructions. So it is necessary to analyse the concept of number inthe system of Neoplatonic thought. In the Neoplatonic hierarchy of theuniverse both numeric sphere and music are located at the source of allthe eidei, above them and (...) between the One (the first hypostasis) and theWorld Intelligence (the second hypostasis). Then music is considered inthe context of the relation between the uncreated Absolute (Tetrade A)and the created world (Tetrade B). Losev''s doctrine on the Tetrades Aand B (connected not by essence but by energies) is the importantmodification of Neoplatonism. Finally the article considers Losev''saccount of music in relation to the absolutized individual person. (shrink)

Synchronic norms of theory choice, a traditional concern in scientific methodology, restrict the theories one can choose in light of given information. Diachronic norms of theory change, as studied in belief revision, restrict how one should change one’s current beliefs in light of new information. Learning norms concern how best to arrive at true beliefs. In this paper, we undertake to forge some rigorous logical relations between the three topics. Concerning, we explicate inductive truth conduciveness in terms of optimally direct (...) convergence to the truth, where optimal directness is explicated in terms of reversals and cycles of opinion prior to convergence. Concerning, we explicate Ockham’s razor and related principles of choice in terms of the information topology of the empirical problem context and show that the principles are necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence to the truth. Concerning, we weaken the standard principles of agm belief revision theory in intuitive ways that are also necessary for reversal or cycle optimal convergence. Then we show that some of our weakened principles of change entail corresponding principles of choice, completing the triangle of relations between,, and. (shrink)

In November 1969, the USSR Academy of Sciences' Presidium held a discussion on the principal lines of work being engaged in by the Academy's Institute of Philosophy. A report on this matter was presented by the Institute's director, P. V. Kopnin, Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Participants in the discussion of the report were M. V. Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy, Academicians F. V. Konstantinov, M. B. Mitin, A. M. Rumiantsev and P. N. Fedoseev, and Corresponding Academician (...) Ts. A. Stepanian. (shrink)

The major merit of Rose's book is the elaboration of the idea of multilevel causation in different explanatory languages. Yet Rose's critique of “ultra-Darwinism” is not convincing. Rose argues that activity and self-replication are properties of organisms rather than genes, which contradicts his idea of multilevel causation. Also, Rose fails to develop the concept of multilevel selection.

Dieser Artikel stellt Cora Diamonds Begriff des Mitgeschöpfs dar und untersucht dessen Relevanz für tierethische und tierpolitische Diskurse. Die traditionelle Tierethik hat eine rationalistische, naturalistische und reduktionistische Tendenz. Diamonds Moralphilosophie stellt dem einen praxissensitiven Ansatz gegenüber, der Emotionen und die moralische Imagination umfasst, wobei Diamond die Bedeutung des Menschseins betont. Letztere entspringt zwar einem epistemischen Anthropozentrismus, jedoch folgt aus diesem keine Mensch-Tier-Hierarchie: Diamond plädiert dafür, andere Tiere als Mitgeschöpfe, als Gefährten auf sterblichen Pfaden, zu begreifen. Dabei zeigt Diamond an ihrer (...) Interpretation von J.M. Coetzees The Lives of Animals, wie Konzepte von anderen Tieren auf das eigene Selbstverständnis rückwirken. Abschließend erörtert der Artikel den Vorwurf des Quietismus und die Schwierigkeit der politischen Umsetzbarkeit in Diamonds Philosophie. -/- [This article outlines Cora Diamond’s concept of the fellow creature and examines its relevance for animal ethics and animal politics. Diamond’s moral philosophy contrasts the rationalistic, naturalistic, and reductionistic tendency of traditional animal ethics with a practice-oriented approach that encompasses emotions and the moral imagination. Diamond emphasizes the importance of being human, which emanates from an epistemic anthropocentrism, but from which no human-animal hierarchy follows: She pleads for recognizing other animals as fellow creatures, as companions on mortal paths. In her interpretation of J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, Diamond shows how conceptualizing other animals influences one’s own self-understanding. Finally, the article discusses the reproach of quietism and the difficulty of political feasibility in Diamond’s philosophy.]. (shrink)

Translation of Celan’s and Lévinas’ Meridian. On the Topology of Meeting-Through-a-Caesura by Konstantin Sigov.

Austin's notion of illocutionary force has helped us see that the understanding of utterances must go beyond considerations of meaning and of truth/falsity. The determination of the truth conditions is not always of central interest in determining what is being said. Searle has failed in his attempt to discover what is common to all illocutionary forces, Because in addition to facts we must consider also the "motivational" conditions of an utterance, Which may include purposes, Intentions, Values, And norms. Austin himself (...) restricted unduly the scope of illocutionary force by tying it closely to conventions. What the speaker is trying to say obviously involves conventions but is not always exhausted by them. We may conclude that language is based on the principle of sufficient understanding: no utterance needs to be misunderstood. (shrink)

When it comes to invasive manipulation of animals on the biological level, reactions of disgust are common and often influential on people’s moral judgments. As a case in point, the Belgian Blue, a breed of hyper-enhanced cattle which will serve as a case study for the present article, has historically been met with revulsion. Traditionally, in bio- and animal ethics, this ‘yuck factor,’ has been denied any productive role in proper moral justification, since rationalism is still a dominant paradigm in (...) those disciplines. This is not surprising since rationalism offers the fulfilment of certain expectations we have of morality, like universality, intersubjective communicability, and objectivity. Increasingly, however, the preconceptions of rationalism have been brought into question, both through empirical as well as philosophical insights. In this paper, we will explore a way in which researchers who are, accordingly, critical of rationalism, and who wish to take seriously the role disgust plays in the formation of moral judgments when it comes to biological manipulation of animals, can do so without abandoning those virtues of rationalism which make it such an appealing position. We will do so by offering what we call a ‘tempered’ kind of rationalism, that is, one which conceives of rationality in the terms of Mary Midgley, not as distinct from, but as a possible function of, well-ordered emotion. (shrink)

Two short typescripts by G. Lukács from the archive, dating from 1941/42, shed light on his appraisal of the cultural ‘inner reserves’ of Germany and the ‘moral reserves’ of the democracies involved in the Second World War, as well as on Lukács’s political philosophy at that time. The conception of an intrinsic interrelation of a humanist philosophical anthropology and rationalist epistemology elucidates his egalitarian and democratic account. Both texts are located within the intellectual development of the author in an introduction (...) by the editor, which sketches the historical background and indicates relevant contemporaneous theoretical and political debates, such as the controversies over realism and humanism and, also in dispute with K. Jaspers, on German collective guilt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Konstantin Kolenda IMMORTALITY REVISITED In his essay, "Poets and Thinkers: Their Kindred Roles in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger," J. Glenn Gray points out that Heidegger "does not treat imaginative literature and other works of art qua literature and art but as aspects of philosophy or meditative thought." To Heidegger's question, "How long are we going to prevent ourselves from experiencing the actual as actual?", Gray is inclined (...) to answer as follows: "Until we have become aware that the poetic eye is capable of seeing as deeply into nature and man as the scientific eye," and he adds that "there is hope that philosophers may once again take seriously the discoveries of creative writers who are not consciously seeking to 'do' philosophy."2 There is little evidence that Gray's hope has materialized to any great extent; few philosophers are paying much attention to discoveries of creative writers, thus bearing out Heidegger's contention that "at this moment in the world's history we have first to learn that the making of poetry, too, is a matter of thinking."3 But it should not surprise us that when philosophers turn to the thinking of poets they will not necessarily agree in their interpretations. Although it has been remarked that Rilke translated Nietzsche into poetry and then in turn Heidegger translated Rilke into prose, when we look at what Heidegger actually says about Rilke's ideas, we may find that these ideas allow alternative interpretations.4 Nevertheless, the fact that alternative interpretations are possible bears out the soundness of Heidegger's and Gray's claim that at least some poetic thought is worth taking seriously. In this article we shall examine Rilke's view of the relationship between life and death, as expressed in his Duino Elegies. Since this is a theme which figures prominently in Heidegger's philosophy, it is only proper to begin by pointing out certain basic correspondences between the views of the two thinkers on this topic. But as we pursue the matter further it soon becomes apparent that Rilke has set forth an intriguing and original, albeit unorthodox, notion of immortality, a notion that 167 1 68Philosophy and Literature does not need to be tied down to Heidegger's philosophy as a whole but can be defended in its own right. This article constitutes such a defense. In Being and Time, Heidegger suggests that death "belongs" to Dasein. "In Dasein there is undeniably a constant 'lack of totality' which finds an end with death. This 'not-yet' 'belongs' to Dasein as long as it is; this is how things stand phenomenally." Rilke's way of expressing a similar thought is to say, in the First Elegy, that "all of the living make the mistake of drawing too sharp distinctions." The contrast he speaks of is that between life and death. Like Heidegger, Rilke calls attention to phenomena that seem to go against the ingrained tendency to view life and death as belonging to two separate realms. Both manage to break the hold of pictures which for so long have led our thinking on this topic into dead ends. The radical temporality of human existence, its inevitable mortality, leads Heidegger to include the resolute acceptance of "being-toward-death" as a necessary condition of authentic existence. The "not-yet" of eventual death is always with us; since we cannot escape it, we must not keep denying our mortality by self-deception or by resigned waiting but should take it up into a resolute anticipation. The factor of death must be included in the consciousness of our vital decisions. In other words, death is to be taken up into human life and is to be viewed, paradoxically perhaps, as its essential component. Thus, the radical contrast between life and death is undermined. The taming of death is one of the central themes in Rilke's poem. Like Novalis before him, Rilke thought of death as the night-side of life. "Death is the side of life that is turned away from us and is unillumined for us."7 But he made use of still another notion to break down a distinction which, in his opinion, we the... (shrink)