Betrifft die Handschrift Cod. 555 der Burgerbibliothek Bern.

Edited with a facing-page English translation from the Latin text by: Chibnall, Marjorie.

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis has been called `the greatest of all medieval chronicles'. Written in Normandy between 1114 and 1141, it is a detailed history of the Norman people and their conquests, full of vivid, often penetrating portraits of the lives and characters of kings and queens, lords and bishops, simple knights, and humble villagers. The chronicle gives a unique, authentic picture of feudal society during a period of rapid change in church and state which saw the emergence (...) of the Anglo-Norman realm, the spread of new forms of monasticism, and the launching of the Crusades. Published in 1968, volume II of Marjorie Chibnall's six-volume edition of the Ecclesiastical History is now available for the first time in paperback. `a superbly edited Latin text and a unique English translation of the work of a major historian' American Historical Review `Mrs Chibnall is giving us... her edition of a classical medieval text which will itself become a classic of medieval scholarship.' Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

The paper aims to disclosure of key points in the development of the German tradition of historiography of philosophy after the 90s of the 18th century. The starting point was the so-called «dispute about the method» of historiography, which erupted in the last decade of the 18th century not without the influence of Kant’s «critical philosophy». Its participants (Reinhold, Fülleborn, Goess, Grohmann, Tennemann, and others) put forward different theses, but they agreed that it is Kant’s philosophy that makes it possible (...) to create a «philosophical history of philosophy». A type of historiography was formed, which was based on the criterion of «progress of philosophy» and Kant’s position was considered as a standard for any historiography. Subsequently, other types of historiography were formed, which followed either the opposite criterion of «regress» or «decadence», or tried to combine both of these criteria (Hegel). In the second half of the 19th century «history of problems» becomes widespread as a principle of research and presentation of the history of philosophy, its main representatives were W. Windelband, N. Hartmann, H. Heimsoeth. Instead, in the second half of the 20th century the dominant type of historiography is the «history of concepts», which finds linguistic and philosophical justification in Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. In recent decades, the German tradition of historiography has been enriched by K. Flasсh’s project «historical philosophy» and by D. Henrich program «constellation research». In both of these projects, there is a noticeable attraction to microhistory, going beyond the «classic» texts, discovering hitherto unknown figures and sources that significantly expand the established practice of the historiography of philosophy. (shrink)

The article provides a brief overview of the philosophical and methodological problems of modern collaborative research. Collaborations – distributed organizations with variable membership, consisting of a large number (sometimes several thousand) of participants – are common in experimental high-energy physics studying microcosm objects, elementary particles arising in collisions of beams of accelerated particles and nuclei at collider accelerators, as well as in biomedicine and climatology. The central issues are authorship, epistemic ownership and dependence in collaborations, the division of epistemic labor (...) in interdisciplinary research, as well as related issues of scientific organization – peer review and distribution of credit in a team. Formally, the author, conceived as a list of persons appearing as authors of a collaborative scientific work, seems to be defined by the specific participants of the collaboration core, i.e., is a construct. However, the question can also be understood as “What does it mean to be the author of a scientific work?”, and then the answer becomes much less certain. Authorship of thousand-people articles is justified psychologically as the desire for regular performance of a ritual, which allows demonstrating joint belonging to a certain tradition, such as a long experiment, affiliation with the “workshop” of scientists studying phenomena of the microworld, which allows scientists, despite of their daily preoccupation with technical routines, to distinguish themselves from non-epistemic communities (engineers, technicians). However, specific rules that determine exactly who and why are worthy of being included as co-authors have been undergoing changes in recent years. In addition to theoretical significance, many of the problems discussed are related to actual practical issues of scientometry and the organization of scientific research, and therefore approaches to their solution can be directly embodied in scientific policy. (shrink)

This paper seeks to examine the roles and identities of engineers constituting one of the fundamental, but a completely indescribable community in modern big science with particle accelerators. Large communities of accelerator and detector specialists, which replaced experimenters and instrumentalists of the middle of the last century, themselves exhibit a complex structure and are divided. However, this division is in turn grounded on the division of those whose activities focus on the phenomena of nature considered independent of human beings and (...) those who design processes and phenomena of an artificial, technical nature. Nevertheless, in terms of their modus operandi and identity, the kinship between engineers and experimental scientists is considerable. I argue that such exclusion of the engineering community from epistemic practices can serve as an example of participatory injustice. As one of the ways to transcend participatory injustice, I suggest that the communities should be encouraged to work together in epistemically tantamount roles while structural hindrances to the mobility between communities need to be alleviated. (shrink)

Blood coagulation is regulated through a complex network of biochemical reactions of blood factors. The main acting enzyme is thrombin whose propagation in blood plasma leads to fibrin clot formation. Spontaneous clot formation is normally controlled through the action of different plasma inhibitors, in particular, through the thrombin binding by antithrombin. In the current study we develop a mathematical model of clot formation both in quiescent plasma and in blood flow and determine the analytical conditions on the antithrombin concentration corresponding (...) to different regimes of blood coagulation. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the review of current literature on formal philosophy. Special attention is paid to the review of the book «Introduction to Formal Philosophy» [Hansson, Hendricks, 2018]. The book is a consistent introduction to the problems of formal philosophy, a research tradition that relies on the precise mathematical tools in order to study traditional philosophical problems. The methods of formal philosophy are successfully applied not only to the problems of ontology, epistemology and philosophy of language but also relevant (...) for the problems of ethics, axiology and social philosophy. The book demonstrates that it is not correct to identify formal philosophy with another area of study – philosophical logic, since formal philosophy uses not only logical methods of analysis, but also uses the tools of game theory, decision theory, probability theory, Bayesian statistics, and other theories. Although the book has a propaedeutic character, it also contains some open problems. These problems include the aggregation of the opinions of the group under the condition of a conflicting base of premises in the theory of public choice, there are still open problems in the interpretation of Arrow’s impossibility theorem and others. Certainly, formalization in itself is not a general solution to the particular philosophical problem, but only a tool that allows to formulate a problem in a more rigorous and precise way, which sometimes allows to reveal some unexpected consequences, some implicit contradictions and new solutions. Despite the importance of the concept of coherence in ethics, decision theory, philosophy of law, Bayesian epistemology, philosophy of science, the existing formalizations of the concept of coherence are highly specialized for epistemology, researchers recognize the lack of the relevant explanatory models. Overall, the book is an excellent introduction in to the field of formal philosophy, which provides a general overview of different aspects of formal philosophy and the opportunity to study particular research topics by means of an extensive bibliography accompanying each of the chapters. (shrink)

The article analyzes the concept of «reception», which has recently gained popularity, but remains not sufficiently clarified in studies of the history of philosophy. It is assumed that the concept has become the subject of explicit methodological reflection only in the reception aesthetics (Rezeptionsästhetik) of the Constance School of Literary Studies, where it not only opposes the concept of influence, but is interpreted in the context of a horizontal structure for text understanding. At the same time, it is important to (...) distinguish not only the «historical horizon» and the «horizon of modernity» (Gadamer), but also the «horizon of expectations» in its duality: both coded in the text itself and the life practice of the reader, «inter literary» and «external literary» horizons of expectation. The empirical trend of the reception study, developed later, makes it possible to formulate a number of specific proposals for the methodology of historical and philosophical research, which focuses on the principle of «history of receptions». It is clear that only «reproductive» and «productive» reception categories are relevant to this type of research. In particular, it is an analysis of the institutional prerequisites for the reception, the classification of the source base of that received, the channels (re)broadcast of that received, the specification of the types of scientific communication, the tradition determined positive or negative factors of reception, the status of philosophy in particular historical periods. (shrink)

This article examines the internationalization of scientific and scholarly communication in the period before World War I, taking philosophy as an example. In the first part of the article, several general trends in internationalization during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are examined. This includes the importance of international experience for Russia’s policies today towards science and education. The main part of this article is devoted to the concept of the “international argument” and provides an analysis of three types of appeal (...) to the international community: the pragmatic, the reputational, and the communicative. The increasing importance of international communication during this period is shown on the basis of examples drawn from German philosophical discussions that took place between the first third and the end of the nineteenth century. The last part of the article examines the impact on German science and philosophy of the cessation of international communication during World War I. (shrink)

The review introduces the main topics of the reports of the seminar participants of the Kant Society in Ukraine, held at the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” in December 2019. The speakers focused on the interpretation of I. Kant’s note on the “great light” in various historical and systematic contexts: from the evolution of the doctrine of space through the problem of metaphysical cognition and the new theory of judgment down to the concepts of normativity and conceptuality of human cognition.

Kant first publicized the concept of “metaphysics of morals” in the Critique of Pure Reason and further justified it in other works. However, we can state some distinctive features and perspectives of this project. There are reasons to single out three meanings of this concept: the entire project of pure moral philosophy (MM1), the late work with the same name Metaphysics of Morals (1797) (MM2), the chapter in Groundwork (1785) on “Transition from popular moral philosophy to the metaphysics of morals” (...) (MM3). It is obvious that MM2 and MM3 belong to MM1 as a whole systematic project of the metaphysics of morals. Among Kant scholars was established the view that Kant’s project of “metaphysics of morals” was “completely new”, and the concept itself is Kant’s “creature” (G. Tonelli, R. Brandt). Instead, recent research shows that this project belongs to the modern tradition of universal ethics (Pufendorf, Wolff and his school). (shrink)

Since the seminal paper of Nash (Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 36:48–49, 1950) game theoretic literature has focused mostly on equilibrium and not on maximin (minimax) strategies. In a recent paper of Pruzhansky (Int J Game Theory 40:351–365, 2011) it was shown that under fairy general conditions maximin strategies in completely mixed games can guarantee the same expected payoff as completely mixed Nash equilibrium strategies. Based on this finding, the current paper argues that maximin strategies have important properties. For instance, (...) maximin strategies may refine Nash equilibria in subjective mixed strategies. Further, Bayesian rationality of the players may favor maximin strategies more often than Nash equilibrium strategies. The paper concludes with several suggestions for further experimental research that may shed more light on whether maximin behavior can explain reality better than Nash equilibrium. (shrink)

In the 17th-19th centuries human society formed the understanding of scientific and technological progress as continuous improvement of society and nature on the basis of the growing capacity of scientific knowledge of the world. This belief in continuous scientific and technological progress, absolutisation of a value-free scientific research, illusion of actual «creatability» of the world on the basis of the obtained knowledge resulted in emergence of a scientific religion, based mostly on the belief in the power of scientific knowledge and (...) the progressive character of technological activity, grounded on this knowledge. There appeared an illusion that if technology has made the Man of an animal, then, combined with science, it could make God of the Man, the Creator of not only artefacts but of the matter, nature and life as well. There is no insuperable barrier, neither in experimental physical science nor in engineering, between the Natural and the Artificial (the "second nature" created by human activity). From the Natural point of view, any natural or technical system is regarded as a self-contained object, an organismdeveloping in accordance with its own internal laws, whereas the Artificial point of view considers it a mechanism designed as a result of human activity. The task of philosophy is to open new possible worlds, new understanding of the world, to make them the people’s outlook and then embody them in reality. This fact inevitably influences philosophy of technology that is due to become not only a philosophic study of scientific and technological progress but also a new philosophy of technological sustainable development in the global world. (shrink)

The present article provides an overview of the key subjects of scholarly research in the areas of epistemology and the philosophy of science and technology conducted in Russia between the 1980s and the present. These disciplines are shown to be deeply rooted in Soviet philosophy and still developed by contemporary Russian philosophers, with both the historical experience of the Russian philosophical thought and foreign conceptions and schools, classical as well as modern, drawn upon. The corollary is that epistemology and the (...) philosophy of science have been the most widely studied philosophical disciplines in Russia over the last couple of decades and retain this status to date. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the comparison of two types of proofs in mathematical practice, the methodological differences of which go back to the difference in the understanding of the nature of mathematics by Descartes and Leibniz. In modern philosophy of mathematics, we talk about conceptual and formal proofs in connection with the so-called Hilbert Thesis, according to which every proof can be transformed into a logical conclusion in a suitable formal system. The analysis of the arguments of the proponents (...) and opponents of the Thesis, “conceptualists” and “formalists”, is presented respectively by the two main antagonists – Y. Rav and J. Azzouni. The focus is on the possibility of reproducing the proof of “interesting” mathematical theorems in the form of a strict logical conclusion, in principle feasible by a mechanical procedure. The argument of conceptualists is based on pointing out the importance of other aspects of the proof besides the logical conclusion, namely, in introducing new concepts, methods, and establishing connections between different sections of meaningful mathematics, which is often illustrated by the case of proving Fermat’s Last Theorem (Y. Rav). Formalists say that a conceptual proof “points” to the formal logical structure of the proof (J. Azzouni). The article shows that the disagreement is based on the assumption of asymmetry of mutual translation of syntactic and semantic structures of the language, as a result of which the formal proof loses important semantic factors of proof. In favor of a formal proof, the program of univalent foundations of mathematics In. Vojevodski, according to which the future of mathematical proofs is associated with the availability of computer verification programs. In favor of conceptual proofs, it is stated (A. Pelc) that the number of steps in the supposed formal logical conclusion when proving an “interesting” theorem exceeds the cognitive abilities of a person. The latter circumstance leads the controversy beyond the actual topic of mathematical proof into the epistemological sphere of discussions of “mentalists” and “mechanists” on the question of the supposed superiority of human intelligence over the machine, initiated by R. Penrose in his interpretation of the Second Theorem of Goedel, among whose supporters, as it turned out, was Goedel himself. (shrink)

The article is concerned with the general characteristics of Aristotle’s theory of a genus-differentia definition. The authors examine the validity of the definitions in the framework of legal language and present some objections against the definitions of per genus proximum et differentia specificam as they are considered by Aristotle. At the same time, through the objections to the position of genus-differentia definition critics, it is proved that in a number of cases Aristotle’s theory is more preferable than the approach offered (...) by Herbert Hart, the proponent of analytical legal philosophy. The argument of Peter Hacker is used to reinstate Aristotle’s genus-differentia definitions. (shrink)

The article presents a detailed consideration of the arguments from the symposium “Verifiability”, which was held on July 14, 1945 in London, proposed by Scottish philosopher and theologian Donald MacKinnon, Austrian logician and mathematician Friedrich Waismann and English logician and philosopher of science William Kneale. MacKinnon’s approach to verifiability was based on the metaphysics of fact, while Waismann and Kneale’s approach was based on the semantic specificity of empirical concepts (“open texture” and context of use) and on the truth-values of (...) empirical propositions. The symposium in question is interesting primarily because it is the last meaningful discussion on the concept of verifiability in the form in which it was understood by the Vienna Circle. Despite the fact that, in the coming years, this concept received a completely different interpretation, which stands away from the original source, the 1945 symposium could be rightfully treated as a canonical discussion on verifiability in the sense that nothing like this has ever happened in the philosophy after. (shrink)

The article examines a number of issues related to the specifics of information dissemination under the conditions of communicative practice of both an individual level and the functioning of mass media. The main attention is paid to the issue of the deliberate spread of disinformation. In this context, the phenomenon of "hybrid war" and the place of the information component in it, the issue of using narratives as an effective means of mass information damage, and the specifics of the process (...) of "devaluation of the word". The need to develop mechanisms to counteract the phenomena of "abuse of freedom of speech" and "simulative democracy" to ensure the survival and sustainable development of democratic societies is substantiated. (shrink)

Natural science enables us, it is supposed, first to know what science properly is. Other sciences—which purport to exhibit a radically divergent type—are either of doubtful authenticity and highly disputable value, or else humbug, which has long since become transparent. If now the humanists are to be compelled to practise science, they will have perforce, nolentes volentes, to take the natural sciences for their model and adopt their methods. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Under no circumstances is recognition extended to a (...) distinctive humanistic type of science side by side with the type of natural science. The distinctions between scientific forms and methods of procedure, which are forthcoming, accordingly all turn out to constitute merely variations within natural science itself. (shrink)

В статье рассматривается теория фикционализма Бентама в том виде, в котором она представлена в его работах, прежде всего, в “A Fragment on Ontology” и “Essay on Logic”. Показано, что интерес к теории фикционализма Бентама связан не только и не столько с тем, что она выступает в качестве необходимой части его философской концепции, но с тем, что разработанный на ее основе метод определения вымышленных сущностей, во многом инспирированный логикой Аристотеля и его учением о категориях, видоизменил методологический аппарат современной философии языка. Метод (...) парафраза Бентама, как особый способ определения вымышленных сущностей, оказался применимым как в логико-семантических, так и философско-правовых концепциях XX века. (shrink)

The article deals with the nature of legal rules. The authors argue that if all legal rules have obligative character, it means that they have the imperative nature. The article shows that the main feature of legal language is that for an explication of imperative character of legal rules is enough the fact of existence of this rule in particular legal system. Besides, an application of several points of the theory of speech acts to legal language allows showing that the (...) question on what kind of linguistic form an imperative has, doesn’t matter, because this is always the legal rule. (shrink)

The article presents the philosophical and linguistic conception of Friedrich Waismann – the theory of many-level-structure of language. The key point of this theory is that each language stratum has its own logic: different concepts of truth, the methods of verifiability and the completeness of description are used in different strata. All this has an influence on the structure of logic itself. This approach suggests that all homogeneous statements (identical in a logical sense) are grouped in one stratum. The relations (...) between the different strata are of a most complicated, peculiar and elusive nature and that does not allow to reduce statement of one stratum to another. According to Waismann, these considerations lead to a new picture of the language, naturally divided into strata. (shrink)

During its hundred-year history, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has undergone a variety of interpretations and explanations. But the significance of this work cannot be limited to an assessment of whether it had an impact on the development of logical positivism or not. Similarly, the reading of Tractatus cannot be reduced to just an ethical or some other readings. This article proposes to study a possible reading of “Tractatus” in terms of legal philosophy, which is based on the relation between facts, (...) values and norms, as well as on how interesting it could be (or would be) for legal philosophy. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] This paper proposes a new pragmatic interpretation of the Frege–Geach problem and presents a possible solution using a model of ascriptive legal language. The first section includes the definition of the Frege–Geach problem. In the second section, I analyze the content of Geach’s critical argument against prescriptivism in ethics. I discuss what Geach means by ascriptivism, why he mixes it with prescriptivism, and why a particular article by Herbert Hart became the (...) subject of criticism by Geach. The third section proposes a possible solution to the Frege–Geach problem based on the explication of the assertoric force of ascriptive legal utterances and the performativity of legal language. (shrink)

We consider a stochastic process which is described by a continuous-time Markov chain on only short time-scales and constrained to conserve a number of hidden quantities on long time-scales. We assume that the transition matrix of the Markov chain is given and the conserved quantities are known to exist, but not explicitly given. To study the stochastic dynamics we propose to use the principle of stationary entropy production. Then the problem can be transformed into a variational problem for a suitably (...) defined “action” and with time-dependent Lagrange multipliers. We show that the stochastic dynamics can be described by a Schrödinger equation, with Lagrange multipliers playing the role of phases, whenever the transition matrix is symmetric or the detailed balance condition is satisfied, the system is not too far from the equilibrium and the number of the conserved quantities is large. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with different approaches to the elucidation of action. It explicates the influence of Aristotle’s theory of action on the development of the modern philosophy of action, provided, first of all, by Reductionist and Causalist’s points of view. The author argues that the denial of the physical and psychological components of the action allows to conclude, firstly, that action is a social concept, logically dependent on the accepted rules of conduct; secondly, that it is fundamentally not descriptive, (...) but ascriptive in its character; and thirdly, that it is a defeasible concept to be defined through exceptions and not by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions whether physical or psychological. (shrink)

This paper deals with the so-called “external history” of the origin of Critique of the power of judgment that is based primarily on the philosopher’s correspondence in the period between May 1787 and October 1789. Two letters from Kant to Reinhold (28.12.1787 and 12.05.1789) as well as modifications in the interpretation of the term “aesthetics” in the first Critique (KrVA 22, B 35-36) are crucial for the evolution of the project Critique of Taste in the book Critique of the Power (...) of Judgment. Special attention was paid to the debate between some modern scholars and editors about the importance of the reports on ‘Grundlegung’ / ‘Grundlage’ of Critique of Taste in the initial phase of work on the text. However, the available evidence does not allow us to reconstruct the “internal history” of the development of Kant’s thought during the period of writing the third Critique. Some modern scholars try to establish other objective criteria for this kind of reconstruction by identification in the text of Critique direct or hidden hints or citations to the literature of the 18th century. The author considers that the use of so-called “reflections” from the philosopher’s manuscript heritage, which can be seen as the formation and development of certain concepts of Kant’s theory, can be fruitful. The well-known problem of dating the reflections can be partially solved if terminus a quo will be not the published works, but Kant’s lectures on anthropology and logic taught at that time. (shrink)

The progress in computer programming leads to the shift in traditional correlation between intuitive and formal components of mathematical knowledge. From epistemological point of view the role of intuition decreases in compare with formal representation of mathematical structures. The relevant explanation is to be found in D. Hilbert’s formalism and corresponding Kantian’s motives in it. The notion of sign belongs to both areas under consideration: on the one hand it is object of intuition in Kantian de re sense, on the (...) other hand, it is part of formal structure. Intuitive mathematical knowledge is expressed by primitive recursive reasoning. The W. Tait’s thesis, namely, that finitism as methodology of mathematics is equivalent to primitive recursive reasoning is discussed in connection with some explications of Kantian notion of intuition. The requirements of finitism are compared with normative role of logic. (shrink)

The article presents a careful analysis of the idea of the “open texture” of empirical concepts and the problems of verification in the way that they were formulated by Friedrich Waismann. The idea of the “open texture” means for Waismann a certain type of a linguistic indeterminacy or a sort of lack of definition, which must be distinguished from, and linked to, another types like vagueness or ambiguity. It is shown that empirical statements are not conclusively verifiable for two different (...) reasons: the incompleteness of description of the material object and the open texture of the terms involved. We cannot conclusively verify statements in which the empirical concepts are used, because we cannot define these concepts in an exhaustive way because of their open texture. Thus, the definition of the concept will be incomplete. Waismann’s approach to definition plays here a key role, and it is directly related to the open texture of concepts. The author proposes interpreting the open texture as an immanent property of the concept, as something that is embedded in it a priori, and which can cause a vagueness. Nevertheless, an open texture must be distinguished form a vagueness. This leads to the conclusion that an open texture is a possibility of vagueness; vagueness can be remedied by giving more accurate rules, open texture cannot. In this sense, the “open texture” of a language allows for a more precise definition of concepts (by adjusting the definition) if appropriate circumstances arise. This justifies the thesis that the argument of the open texture is the ontological basis of the linguistic anti-reductionism of Friedrich Waismann. (shrink)