The first part of Chapter 2.21 of the Arthaśāstra deals with the activities of the Customs Superintendent, containing recommendations regarding the collection of customs duty. Scholars have encountered several difficulties in understanding the meaning and purposes of the activities described. An auction-like procedure described in the text has been analyzed by some as the normal operation of a market, with the payments to the treasury mentioned there taken as a hitherto-unknown market tax—the price of trading in the market. Other paragraphs (...) in the text describe seemingly self-contradictory trader actions. Interpretations of these actions have involved the imbuing of traders with complex psychological beliefs regarding the actions of other traders. This article proposes an economic model of the underlying market structure, which leads to a different and integrated reading of the text. In this reading, the author of the text, recognizing the incentive for importers to undervalue their goods, suggests the auction procedure and accom- panying penalty payments to elicit truthful revelation of importers’ valuations and to maximize customs levy collections. By comparing the procedure in the Arthaśāstra to modern-day regulations intended to combat tax evasion, the article provides early evidence of the use of sophisticated mechanisms to elicit truthful value revelation. (shrink)

Presents an original theoretical system to explain and contrast modernism and postmodernism.

Issledovanie ėtapov zhizni, nauchnykh stateĭ professora Kievskoĭ Dukhovnoĭ Akademii I.P. Chetverikova -- Obzor genezisa termina "lichnostʹ" v ego rossiĭskom filosofsko-literaturnom kontekste do nachala XX veka.

The gives the detailed analysis of the ratio of freedom and imagination in an unpublished manuscript written by F.V.Y. Schelling, which contains the materials for the lecture course read at Erlangen University in 1820-1821. The author focuses on the question of imagination as a condition for the possibility to unfold the modal differences that provide the hierarchy of predicative definitions. The article shows that both the draft philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation are a direct continuation of the (...) transcendentalist program given by Kant.Those projects bases on the thesis that the consciousness of freedom and consciousness of the law, justified in the “Critique of Practical Reason”, are related one another. Schelling following Kant’s theory, points to the law and to the unconditional imperative of freedom as the main principle which is not only theoretical or practical, but determines the separation of ontological and deontological modalities. At the same time, the formal structure of an imperative as a command has the specific character of “hiden opening”: what is themed in an imperative is not opened as a meaningful opportunity, it is only opened as theopportunity in its difference from necessity. I show in this article that interpreting the Schelling possibility relies on the teachings of I. Kant in his transcendental idealconception, connected with Kant's interpretation of the imagination’s productive ability. In the middle of Schelling’s theological interpretation of Kant's consciousness of lawdoctrine as the “fact of mind” lies the analogy between peacemaking and the ancestral sin of the first people. This concept is the main source of the theory of potency as ontological modalities, developed by Schelling in the 1830s - 1840s in lectures on the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation. (shrink)

By the "logic of scientific knowledge," or simply "the logic of science" we mean the discipline in philosophy concerned with the application of the techniques and methods of logic to scientific knowledge. In studying certain aspects of the logic of scientific knowledge it is possible to employ successfully not only the methods of dialectical logic but those of formal logic. It is the latter that will be the special concern of the present article.

In speaking of the reasons for the appearance of semantics, certain writers note the following three problems the solution of which demanded semantic analysis: 1) the problem of antinomies; 2) the problem of refining and explaining the basic concepts of formalized logic and mathematics; and 3) the problem of the complete formalization of logic.

The problem of the relationship between formal logic and philosophy, which arose when formal logic arose, continues to concern both Soviet and foreign philosophers and logicians. Interest in this problem is traceable to a number of factors, among which, it should be noted at the outset, is the appearance of dialectical, logic. With the emergence of dialectical logic, the question of the relationship of formal logic to philosophy is posed anew. No matter how we approach the question of the subject (...) matter of dialectical logic, there is no doubt of the fact that, being logic, it is concerned with the investigation of philosophical problems. It follows that logic is at the same time philosophy or, at least, a portion of philosophy. (shrink)