This article examines two opposing media consumption trends—news avoidance and doomscrolling—through the lens of media environment and societal fragmentation. News avoidance refers to the conscious limitation of economic or socio-political content consumption to maintain emotional well-being, while doomscrolling is defined as compulsive and excessive attention to negative news. The study is based on 91 semi-structured interviews with individuals exhibiting these media consumption styles. News avoiders and doomscrollers demonstrate the ability to understand each other's logic through reflection on their own experiences (...) and interactions with their social environment. However, both groups criticize the opposing media consumption style. Doomscrollers view news avoiders as passive and under-informed, whereas news avoiders accuse doomscrollers of addictive behavior. The interviews frequently reveal normative judgments about the necessity of consuming or avoiding news. Additionally, both groups perceive each other as more vulnerable to misinformation: news avoiders are associated with ignorance, while doomscrollers are seen as prone to believing false or biased media reports. A commonality between the two groups is anxiety about the future. The differences in news consumption volumes are explained by varied approaches to managing anxiety and assessing the usefulness of information. Thus, doomscrolling and news avoidance can be considered two sides of the same coin. However, these opposing media consumption styles contribute to further societal fragmentation, widening the gap in awareness of current events. (shrink)

The use of AI-generated videos centered on the face raises various concerns among professionals and audiences due to the difficulty of providing coherent descriptive tools of their cultural significance. At the same time, the focus of artists and their audiences shifts from the art as a text to the collaboration process between artificial intelligence (AI) and the involved social actors. This raises significant concerns between policymakers and other social actors looking for guidelines for the appropriate use of AI as a (...) tool, collaborator or substitute for creative workers, which can have immediate and long-term impacts on society and culture. Semiotics of culture provides descriptive tools for understanding and evaluating artistic texts and their role in semiotic space, the semiosphere. This article addresses how Lotman’s theory can contribute to the methodology for analyzing AI-generated texts as dynamic models. The theoretical framework developed by Lotman in his research on artistic text, dynamic systems and culture can be applied to the studies of current shifts related to AI-generated arts. This paper looks at the reception of AI-generated videos focused on face representations. In doing so, it analyses the dynamic processes in the creation process of AI-generated videos through their reception in related texts. The findings of this article highlight how Lotman’s theoretical framework can contribute to the methodology to analyze the cultural dynamics evoked by AI-generated artistic texts. (shrink)

Aim: This article presents key ethical challenges that were encountered when conducting a participatory qualitative research project with a very specific, small group of nurses, in this case with practice development nurses in Malta. Background: With the small number of nurses employed in practice development roles in Malta, there are numerous difficulties of maintaining confidentiality. Poorly constructed interventions by the researcher could have resulted in detrimental effects to research participants and the overall trustworthiness of the research. Generally, ethical guidelines for (...) research exist to reinforce validity of research; however, there is not an established consensus on how these strategies can be utilised in some types of qualitative field work. Research design: The researcher used an exploratory case study methodology. The sample consisted of 10 participants who were interviewed twice using face-to-face interviews, over a period of 2 months. Ethical considerations: The study was ethically reviewed by the University Research Ethics Committee and the Faculty Research Ethics Committee, University of Malta. The participants referred to in this article have been given adequate information about the study and their consent has been obtained. Discussion: Numerous strategies for ensuring confidentiality during recruitment of the participants, during data collection, during transcription and data analysis and during dissemination of research results assisted the researcher in responding to potential and actual ethical issues. Conclusion: This article emphasises the main strategies that can be used to respond to ethical challenges when researching with a small easily identifiable group. The learning discussed here may be relevant to or even transferable to other similar research studies or research contexts. These methods fostered a greater credibility throughout the research process and predisposed the participants to greater trust, and thus, they disclosed their experiences and speak more freely, thus enhancing the quality of the study. (shrink)

The red tape and delays around research ethics and governance approvals frequently frustrate researchers yet, as the lesser of two evils, are largely accepted as unavoidable. Here we quantify aspects of the research ethics and governance approvals for one interview- and questionnaire-based study conducted in England which used the National Health Service procedures and the electronic Integrated Research Application System. We demonstrate the enormous impact of existing approvals processes on costs of studies, including opportunity costs to focus on the substantive (...) research, and suggest directions for radical system change. We have recorded 491 exchanges with 89 individuals involved in research ethics and governance approvals, generating 193 pages of email text excluding attachments. These are conservative estimates. The exchanges were conducted outside IRAS, expected to be the platform where all necessary documents are provided and questions addressed. Importantly, the figures exclude the actual work of preparing the ethics documentation. We propose six areas of work to enable system change: 1. Support the development of a broad range of customised research ethics and governance templates to complement generic, typically clinical trials orientated, ones; 2. Develop more sophisticated and flexible frameworks for study classification; 3. Link with associated processes for assessment, feedback, monitoring and reporting, such as ones involving funders and patient and public involvement groups; 4. Invest in a new generation IT infrastructure; 5. Enhance system capacity through increasing online reviewer participation and training; and 6. Encourage researchers to quantify the approvals processes for their studies. Ethics and governance approvals are burdensome for historical reasons and not because of the nature of the task. There are many opportunities to improve their efficiency and analytic depth in an age of innovation, increased connectivity and distributed working. If we continue to work under current systems, we are perpetuating, paradoxically, an unethical system of research approvals by virtue of its wastefulness and impoverished ethical debate. (shrink)

On the occasion of the Last Generation’s protest actions, the political categories of civil disobedience and civil resistance have been discussed increasingly within criminal law. These discussions are rarely linked to Émile Durkheims theorem of necessary deviation from social rules. Durkheim describes deviation as a phenomenon that is to a certain extent necessary in a functioning society because it enables the natural development of society and the collective change of ideas. Similarly, public sanctioning of norm-breaking is to some extent necessary (...) and serves to reinforce the collective self-definition and understanding. Looking at the actions of the Last Generation, this essay raises the question of whether and to what extent it is possible to identify useful or aesthetic norm violations and whether there are adequate means of social reaction below the threshold of criminal sanctions. It argues that bringing back to mind Durkheim’s premise of necessary breach of norms can help to set a new focus within criminal law discourse: to redirect the discussion away from the individual criminal liability of activists towards the aesthetics of their actions and the effectiveness of communicating their concerns. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo propõe o uso do conceito de cronotopo para analisar a obra literária de emigrantes russos da primeira onda na França. O artigo se concentra na representação artística de mundo da comunidade de emigrantes russos em Paris, ao explorar os poemas de Irina Knorring, uma representante da jovem geração da primeira onda de emigrantes russos. Nesses poemas, a figura do emigrante russo assume uma posição central. Ao examiná-los, esta pesquisa identifica os motivos e as imagens recorrentes, dotados de (...) sentidos espaciais e temporais, e discute aspectos específicos do cronotopo de Paris. Em seus poemas, Knorring explora não só o mundo interior e as particularidades dos indivíduos, mas também reflete sobre os acontecimentos da vida e sobre o destino comum dos refugiados russos no exílio. Nas obras da poeta, o cronotopo serve como um elemento indispensável, estabelecendo uma unidade espacial e temporal coesa, que permite aos leitores perceberem a imagem dos emigrantes russos na Europa (Paris) pelos olhos do andarilho russo. A análise cronotópica presente no artigo oferece uma representação espacial e temporal abrangente da trajetória de vida de emigrantes russos em Paris, abarcando tanto as experiências individuais, quanto o contexto mais amplo da emigração russa como um todo. (shrink)

Данная работа представляет собой первую часть исследования, посвященного становлению и трансформации канонического изложения истории философии Нового времени в русскоязычной философской литературе. Начиная с последних десятилетий XIX века в европейских и американских учебниках по истории философии окончательно фиксируется канон новоевропейской философии, который представлен нарративом о противостоянии двух главных эпистемологических традиций Нового времени: рационализма (в лице Декарта, Спинозы и Лейбница) и эмпиризма (в лице Локка, Беркли и Юма). Однако такое изложение истории новоевропейской философии возникает в противоборстве разных традиций (кантианской, гегельянской, позитивистской и (...) пр.), каждая из которых предлагала свои схемы классификации и упорядочивания философских систем Нового времени. Отражение этой борьбы можно найти в появляющейся в XIX веке русскоязычной учебной литературе по истории философии. Поэтому задача данного исследования — рассмотреть и проанализировать образы философии Раннего Нового времени в русскоязычной учебной литературе первой половины XIX века, чтобы выявить основные тенденции в формировании канона новоевропейской философии как с точки зрения его главных представителей, так и с точки зрения нарратива, который описывает динамику развития философской мысли XV–XVII веков. В центре рассмотрения данной статьи находится многотомная «История философии» (18–) архимандрита Гавриила (Воскресенского), которая оказывается проводником француз- ского влияния на российскую традицию историографии философии. В работе показано, что архимандрит Гавриил заимствует основную канву своего повествования из учебника по истории философии Селестина Иппо, который, в свою очередь, опирается на схематизацию историко-философского процесса, предложенную Виктором Кузеном. (shrink)

Thought experiments can be used in various ways. A part of them seems to have a special epistemic value: they can give us a new, unknown information about reality. One of the most famous thought experiments of that kind is the thought experiment of Galileo which demonstrates that two bodies of the same kind should fall with the same speed. However, an analysis of this argument shows that it is based on several ontological presuppositions. Therefore it's not the thought experiment (...) itself that has a significance, but its correspondence to real experience. (shrink)

The article is devoted to identifying the specifics of Russian philosophy through the analysis of F. M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Shestov’s texts. The stylistic features of the two philosophers have been considered, their ways of philosophizing and denying of the cult of reason have been examined. The analysis is carried out using additional literature of French existentialism. To date, there are many researches in which study features of Russian philosophy. It is noted, that one of them are imagery, inseparable connection (...) between philosophy and faith and criticism of rationalism. The excessive cult of reason leads to such problems in the history as the creation of the hydrogen bomb, the environmental crisis and so on. The revolt against reason and the state of groundlessness are a response to the processes of modern rationalization and technocratization, an attempt to go beyond the limits of the usual paradigm, to get out of the closed subjectivity. Thus, it’s necessary to define the limits of the reason and develop a new way of philosophizing, for this reason it is proposed to consider the concept of groundlessness in the philosophy of L.N. Shestov, which makes the attempt to construct a philosophy, avoiding strict logic and excessive rationality. (shrink)

У статті автор аналізує місце й роль учених вірменського походження в Арабському халіфаті в період мусульманського завоювання Вірменії з використанням відомостей арабо-мусульманських історико-біографічних словників. Автор показує, що вірменські лікарі поряд із грецькими й сирійськими лікарями відіграли значну роль у справі ознайомлення народів арабського халіфату з давньогрецькою медичною літературою.

The article aims to analyze the relationship between food and identity from an aesthetic and ethical perspective. New media and technology are seen as a tool for constructing and demonstrating identity. Eating practices and the understanding of food in the modern world are explored from the perspective of symbolic meanings. The analysis focuses on the concept of identity in social networks and popular culture. The methodology is textual and visual content analysis in new media. The text distinguishes between the traditional (...) approach to food with a central concept of 'taste' and the new media context where the approach focuses on 'image'. From an ethical point of view, the relationship between the (non) consumption of meat and animal products and the identity that is widely advocated in the modern lifestyle culture is analyzed. (shrink)

Man is a biosocial entity, so, in the study of his adaptive peculiarities two directions, that is, biologic and social, can be determined. Within the biological framework it is possible to combine evolutionary, genetic, medical-biological and ecological investigations. Recently, the problem of man’s adaptation to profound changes taking place in the environment, under the impact of man’s activity, becomes of growing importance. The second direction of the man adaptation research may be called social or socio-cultural. In the course of social (...) adaptation man acts as an adaptively-adapting entity, inasmuch as, unlike animals, he does not only adapt himself to the environment, but also transforms it in course of his activity, sometimes creating a new environment. The complex study of human being makes necessary a synthesis of natural-scientific and socialhumanitariansides of the man’s adaptation problem. The analysis of the above mentioned directions, of social and biological man’s adaptations research, enables us tocome to the conclusion that no one direction, taking separately, can resolve the problem of man’s adaptation, which has a complicated pattern with many aspects. The man’s adaptation problem emerged within the framework of biology, and during a long time it was of evolutionary-biological character. However, in the course of the development of science it has become an interdisciplinary issue. It may be conceived profoundly and with all aspects only by means of an interdisciplinary synthetic analysis. (shrink)

The paper aims to highlight some of the characteristics of political trolling and to follow how the phenomenon functions in the Bulgarian context. The analysis focuses on the specifics of troll language and the so-called troll dilemma, as well as on the interaction between the troll and his audience. The features of the transfer of trolling from an online to an offline environment and the characteristics of trolling in a political context are examined. It is suggested that trolling should not (...) be interpreted as antisocial, anarchic behaviour, but as communication that parasitises ideas of objectivity and truth. (shrink)

Social media (SM) influence young adults’ communication practices. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly used for making recommendations on SM. Yet, its effects on different generations of SM users are unknown. SM can use AI recommendations to sort texts and prioritize them, shaping users’ online and offline experiences. Current literature primarily addresses technological or human-user perspectives, overlooking cognitive perspectives. This research aims to propose methods for mapping users’ interactions with AI recommendations (AiRS) and analyzes how embodied interactions mediated by a digital (...) agent can lead to changes in social and cultural practices. For this, this work proposes a comparative analysis of central practices evoked by AI recommendations-mediated communication on SM among users in Italy, Estonia, and the Netherlands in the age category 18–26 years old. The data used in the comparative analysis was collected via semi-structured interviews and elaborated based on cognitive psychology and semiotics. This research highlights the contextual significance of AI recommendations as a mediator in creating new communication practices. Findings confirm that young adults often choose practices that would enhance their digital representations according to AiRS’ dominant patterns and categories. AiRS impacts individual interpretations and practices and can further affect social and cultural levels. (shrink)

The problem of wasteful clinical trials has been debated relentlessly in the medical community. To a significant extent, it is attributed to redundant trials – studies that are carried out to address questions, which can be answered satisfactorily on the basis of existing knowledge and accessible evidence from prior research. This article presents the first evaluation of the potential of the EU Clinical Trials Regulation 536/2014, which entered into force in 2014 but is expected to become applicable at the end (...) of 2021, to prevent such trials. Having reviewed provisions related to the trial authorisation, we propose how certain regulatory requirements for the assessment of trial applications can and should be interpreted and applied by national research ethics committees and other relevant authorities in order to avoid redundant trials and, most importantly, preclude the unnecessary recruitment of trial participants and their unjustified exposure to health risks. (shrink)

The article presents the advantages and limitations of adaptive clinical trials for assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions and specifies the conditions that contributed to their development and implementation in clinical practice. I advance two arguments by discussing different cases of adaptive trials. The normative argument is that responsible adaptation should be taken seriously as a new way of doing clinical research insofar as a valid justification, sufficient understanding, and adequate operational conditions are provided. The second argument is historical. The (...) development of adaptive trials can be related to lessons learned from research in cases of urgency and to the decades-long efforts to end the productivity crisis of pharmaceutical research, which led to the emergence of translational, personalized, and, recently, precision medicine movements. (shrink)

This article explores theoretical aspects of liminality, tracing the evolution of its concept, from its role in ancient ritual structures to its interpretation in conflict theory. In this context, liminality is understood as a transformative experience characterized by high intensity that significantly affects the subject experiencing it. This subject can be both individual and collective, reflecting the wide range of applications of liminality experiences in both personal and public spheres. The phenomenological tradition, especially in its recent developments, has positioned itself (...) as a philosophy of experience, providing a rich and fruitful methodology for studying the conditions that make experience possible. By exploring the basic premises of experience, or more precisely, of intense experience, the discussion inevitably leads to the concept of corporeality. The body, as a site of experience, becomes a key factor in understanding how intense experiences are mediated and processed. In addition, this article explores the relationship between different types of intense experiences and the ways in which individuals or communities support and channel them. These experiences are transformative in nature and can lead to significant changes in individuals or collectives, highlighting the importance of understanding the mechanisms behind this liminality state. The multifaceted nature of liminality, including both individual and social transformations, highlights its relevance not only in philosophical discourse but also in practical fields such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Drawing on this theoretical framework, this article seeks to deepen our understanding of liminality as a powerful force that shapes human experience, gaining insights into its transformative potential and the role of the body in mediating such experiences. This research highlights the importance of liminality as a dynamic process that shifts the boundaries of identity at both the individual and collective levels. By understanding the mechanisms of this transformative state, we can gain a deeper understanding of how people and societies adapt, grow, and reinvent themselves in moments of dramatic change. (shrink)

This paper studies systems of explicit mathematics as introduced by Feferman [9, 11]. In particular, we propose weak explicit type systems with a restricted form of elementary comprehension whose provably terminating operations coincide with the functions on binary words that are computable in polynomial time. The systems considered are natural extensions of the first-order applicative theories introduced in Strahm [19, 20].

Introduction. The article raises the problem of eugenics as a direction of scientific thought and practice of improving the human species. The modern advances in reproductive medicine, the development of biology, the emergence of methods for editing the human genome have updated the debate around eugenics. The aim of the work is a comprehensive study of the discourse and practice of eugenics in the period of the 19th — 21st centuries. This aim involves solving a number of tasks: 1) analysis (...) of the historical context and prerequisites for the eugenics emergence; 2) the study of the institutionalization and practical implementation of its ideas in Western countries in the period until the end of World War II; 3) research on the position of eugenics after the war and the transition of discussions to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics, transhumanism; 4) study of the modern discourse of eugenics, ethical issues and the degree of government intervention in population reproduction. Methods. The author uses the historical-retrospective method, which makes it possible to comprehensively consider the context of the emergence and development of eugenics, the comparative method (when comparing the characteristic features of the «old» (authoritarian, forced) and «new» (democratic, based on personal choice) eugenics), the institutional approach ( when identifying the main institutions involved in the development, dissemination, implementation of the ideas of eugenics) and a discursive approach (to study modern discussions about the «new» eugenics and related ethical problems). Scientific novelty of the research. A comprehensive study of eugenics has been carried out, a connection has been established between the «old» and «new» eugenics, and their similarities and differences have been investigated. Results. The need to distinguish eugenics as a theory of human selection and as a practice has been proven, and the latter, depending on the political, cultural and socio-economic situation in the country, can take a variety of forms: from counseling and preventive measures to racial cleansing. It was found that population growth, urbanization, mass migration, instability in society, combined with the ideas of modernism about social order by the forces of science and technology, contributed to the spread of eugenics ideas in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. After the Nuremberg trials, the concept under study temporarily dropped out of scientific discourse. The article examines in detail the socio-economic and other preconditions that contributed to the revival of interest in eugenics in the 60s of XX century and at the present stage. It is shown that today part of the discussion has shifted to the mainstream of genetics, bioethics and transhumanism. Conclusions. It has been established that discussions about eugenics run up against the problem of breeding control, which means that they raise the question of who should perform selection, how, what are its criteria. The ethical aspects of introducing control are complicated by the fact that perceptions of the «norm» and the degree of permitted interference depend on the particular society. (shrink)

The article concentrates on attempts of treating the maternal perspective as valuable in moral philosophy. The author traces the evolution of maternal behaviours in history and reconstructs the development of ethical theories determining women’s proper role in society. She raises the question why none of the philosophers gave any consideration to the maternal experience. Her conclusion is that traditional philosophical discourse assumes motherhood as just part of a wide group of issues determined as,,family”. Classical philosophers claim that maternal love is (...) natural and innate so it cannot be valuable. Their analyses fail to take account of maternal experience as a source of moral virtues like self-sacrifice, patience, responsibility, care or devalues this terms as not so important as male virtues like impartiality, non-interference, justice or individual’s autonomy. The author presents an alternative, new, female approach to morality. Simone de Beauvoir, Lucy Irigaray and Adrienne Rich criticize classical vision of motherhood in Western culture. They challenge traditional conviction of producing children as a natural destiny of all women determined by inborn maternal instinct. They treat maternal function in category of independent and deliberate choice. This new perspective replace traditional approach describing motherhood in terms of reproduction and,,natural obligation”. Motherhood in modern thinking is something more than biological production of children. The figure of mother could become an important symbol in ethics and various aspects of our culture. Acceptance of women’s culture would show that women have the same moral and social authority as man. In conclusion the author emphasize the need to present motherhood as a remarkable philosophical and moral value in modern ethics. (shrink)

Human consciousness is a finite entity; therefore, memory must be selective: remembering must also mean being able to forget. In 2006, James McGaugh documented the first known case of hyperthymesia—a syndrome that affects a very limited percentage of the world population. The main symptoms of this mental disorder involve the concept of memory stuck in the past, where the individual is imprisoned by his or her own memories, and any projection towards the future is precluded. The inevitable change produced by (...) the flowing of time naturally helps people to find reasons to live and to search for a sense of being in the world. The present study puts forward a phenomenological approach to hyperthymesia in the quest for a natural, healthy form of oblivion, or the ability to forget. Through existential analysis, it could be possible for the individual to recover the natural and necessary structure of Dasein. (shrink)

This paper delves into the nuances of ‘fashion’ in recommender systems and social media analytics, which shape and define an individual’s perception and self-relationality. Its aim is twofold: first, it supports a different perspective on privacy that focuses on the individual’s process of identity construction considering the social and personal aspects of ‘fashion’. Second, it underlines the limitations of computational models in capturing the diverse meaning of ‘fashion’, whereby the algorithmic prediction of user preferences is based on individual conscious and (...) unconscious associations with fashion identity. I test both of these claims in the context of current concerns over the impact of algorithmic personalisation systems on individual autonomy and privacy: creating ‘filter bubbles’, nudging the user beyond their conscious awareness, as well as the inherent bias in algorithmic decision-making. We need an understanding of privacy that sustains the inherent reduction of fashion identity to literal attributes and protects individual autonomy in shaping algorithmic approximations of the self. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the contextual features of the actualization of the ancient heritage, in particular, the figure of Aristotle in German thought in the first half of the twentieth century, in particular, in the work of Werner Jaeger. The article examines the relationship between classical philology and philosophy in the academic environment, as well as the influence on the philosophy from the poetic circle of Stefan George. The scientific novelty lies in the identification of non-philosophical (...) factors determining scientific research at the beginning of the twentieth century, which contributed to the appeal to the ancient heritage in Germany. As a result, authors identify the main stages that German humanitarian thought went through from classical philology to its own historical and philosophical studies of antiquity, in particular, the figure of Aristotle. (shrink)

Implementing the key functions, any company is faced with issues related to the formation and analysis of the range of goods, products, services. Regardless of the field of activity, enterprises need to analyze each product line separately in order to make timely adjustments to the product range policy, which directly affects the economic efficiency of the enterprise as a whole. The purpose of the study is to reveal the content of matrix methods of assortment analysis. The article deals with the (...) concepts of "assortment", "product assortment", their meaning and impact on the company's activities; matrix methods: BKG matrix; Dibb-Simkin matrix; Markon matrix. The scientific novelty lies in the author's interpretation of the comparative characteristics of these methods, summarized in a tabular form, allowing enterprises to choose the optimal method when analyzing assortment positions in real business conditions. (shrink)

Cet article cherche à situer le concept ontologique de travail que l’on trouve dans l’œuvre tardive de Lukács par rapport à d’autres interprétations de ce concept dans la tradition marxiste. En s’appuyant principalement sur l’ Ontologie de l’être social, l’article pose d’abord la question des difficultés épistémologiques de ce concept, avant d’en venir aux liens qu’il entretient avec l’idée de la centralité sociopolitique du travail. Peut-on tirer des conséquences directement politiques de l’ontologie du travail? Les différentes versions de celle-ci dans (...) le marxisme sont-elles orientées par le besoin de fonder ontologiquement un projet politique ancré dans le travail? (shrink)

This paper is a direct successor to 12. Its aim is to introduce a new realisability interpretation for weak systems of explicit mathematics and use it in order to analyze extensions of the theory PET in 12 by the so-called join axiom of explicit mathematics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Awe-Inspiring, in Truth, Are the Mysteries of the Church":Eucharistic Mystagogy and Moral Exhortation in the Preaching of St. John ChrysostomDaria SpezzanoWe entrust to You, loving Master, our whole life and hope, and we ask, pray, and entreat: make us worthy to partake of your heavenly and awesome Mysteries from this holy and spiritual Table with a clear conscience; for the remission of sins, forgiveness of transgressions, communion of the (...) Holy Spirit, inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, confidence before You, and not in judgment or condemnation.—Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom"Awe-inspiring, in truth, are the mysteries of the Church; awesome, in truth, her altar."1 St. John Chrysostom was a founding figure in the development of the Byzantine mystagogical tradition, not only because he is associated with the Divine Liturgy,2 but also because of his preaching on [End Page 413] the Eucharistic mysteries, woven throughout the scriptural exegesis of his liturgical homilies.3 The themes he sounded, in particular the continual exhortation to his hearers to be mindful and properly disposed for the terrible and awe-inspiring mysteries, would become part of the fabric of Byzantine liturgical spirituality. But Chrysostom's influence extends to the West as well, for instance to Thomas Aquinas, who, it is said, would rather have Chrysostom's homilies on Matthew than be lord of Paris,4 and who shares with Chrysostom the title of "Doctor of the Eucharist."5 While the promotion of reverence in liturgical celebration and the demands of social justice are sometimes perceived today as being in tension with each other, for Chrysostom they are inseparable. In accord with the Second Vatican Council's teaching in Sacrosanctum Concilium that the Eucharist is "the source and summit of Christian life," the Catechism of the Catholic Church chooses a quote from Chrysostom to instruct that "the Eucharist commits us to the poor."6 It does so with good reason. Chrysostom urgently and vividly preaches to his wealthy congregation that not only must they approach the altar with awe and holy fear, but they must care for the poor in order to receive the Eucharist worthily. Here his characteristic moral exhortations to almsgiving find their deepest source: without care for the poor, one eats and drinks the Eucharist, like Judas at the Last Supper, to one's own condemnation.Chrysostom's Eucharistic MystagogyChrysostom's preaching on the Eucharist is profoundly rooted in Scripture and shaped by his theological and pastoral concerns. Mystagogy, as Jean [End Page 414] Daniélou has pointed out, is an exegesis of the rites: "It consists of reading in the rites the mystery of Christ and contemplating under symbols the invisible reality."7 The mystagogy of the Greek Fathers is shaped by local traditions, as is their scriptural exegesis. While the distinction risks being overdrawn, Alexandrian mystagogy is characterized by anagogy, while Antiochene mystagogy—including Chrysostom's—by a focus on the relation of the liturgy to the historical events of Christ's earthly life.8 Unlike his contemporary Theodore of Mopsuestia, however, Chrysostom is not concerned to assign to each liturgical action a specific mimetic meaning. Chrysostom everywhere "reads in the rites the mystery of Christ," exemplifying Daniélou's observation that this mystery is the one object of the Christian faith, subsisting under different modes:It is prefigured in the Old Testament; it is accomplished historically in Christ's life on earth; it is contained in the mystery of the sacraments; it is lived mystically in souls; it is accomplished socially in the Church; it is fulfilled eschatologically in the heavenly kingdom.9For Chrysostom, the entire liturgy has a "mystery character," because it is "so much an anamnesis of the saving work of Christ and a revelation of heavenly reality that its earthly form is wholly irradiated by these aspects."10 Chrysostom uses the term "mystery" in relation not only to the sacraments, but more fundamentally to the entire economy of redemption, flowing from the Paschal mystery, in which they operate. The mystery is a secret except to faith; it expresses a relation between, on the one hand, a historic event of salvation history or a material element of the... (shrink)

As the ubiquity of technology-mediated communication grows, so does the number of questions about the costs and benefits of replacing in-person interactions with technology-mediated ones. In the present study, we used a daily diary design to examine how people’s emotional experiences vary across in-person, video-, phone-, and text-mediated interactions in day-to-day life. We hypothesised that individuals would report less positive affect and more negative affect after less life-like interactions (where in-person is defined as the most life-like and text-mediated as the (...) least life-like). In line with this hypothesis, the analysis of 527 unique interactions reported by 102 individuals (mean age = 19.3; 85.6% female) over the course of 7 days reveals that people feel lonelier, sadder, less affectionate, less supported, and less happy following less life-like interactions. Additional analyses show that the links between life-like communication and momentary experiences are independent of properties of individual interactions such as interaction length and participants’ overall evaluations of interaction quality. These findings provide initial evidence that there may be inherent properties of common technology-mediated communication tools that may lead to momentary changes in affective experiences and make social connection more challenging. (shrink)

The paper analyses empirical research results comparing the impact of the medium (traditional, paper-based vs. screen-based) on the reading process and text comprehension. It focuses on two analytical approaches—the first looks at the construction of cognitive maps of texts and the other the material aspects of the medium – which enable readers to orientate themselves and to explore and interpret the text more comprehensively. The paper discusses differences in how readers approach textual meaning according to experience of using digital technologies, (...) the text, and reader experience and abilities. It concludes by arguing that strengthening these individual experiences and abilities is key to effective inference of textual meaning. (shrink)

Es evidente que los movimientos sociales no son los mismos desde la aparición de las redes sociales. Estas han revolucionado definitivamente la forma en la que nos expresamos, comunicamos y organizamos. Sin embargo, son una herramienta de doble filo. En este ensayo analizo las principales características de los movimientos sociales en la era de las redes, principalmente, desde dos perspectivas: la de Manuel Castells y la de Byung-Chul Han, a fin de determinar si estos están experimentando un desarrollo favorable o (...) perjudicial para alcanzar sus objetivos y, sobre todo, para visibilizar los nuevos obstáculos que aparecen en la virtualidad y poder superarlos. (shrink)

The article presents various methodological approaches to the Cossacks Studies with a special focus on the past and present academic discourses and practices in Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan and Poland. Images of Cossack armies provide an interesting but hybrid research material, because these military groups represent both the identity of the border communities and the military democratic society. Hence the exceptionally varied ways of viewing their identity in which this group has been seen as a nation, (...) ethnic group, Asian Orda or Russian//Ukrainian military nobility. In contemporary Ukrainian science, the Cossacks have been perceived as a leading force behind the nation-building process, while for the Russian researchers, they have been depicted as local insurgents. In Polish science and discourse, the Cossacks are analyzed strictly from the Polish historical perspective. The article suggests that those diversified approaches to the Cossack identity and history may help formulating a comprehensive and universal discourse and methodology for the Cossacks Studies. (shrink)

The main characteristic of the modern environment is the negative change by its people – destruction and pollution. Man is part of the biosphere and the technogenic transformations of the biosphere inevitably affect him. Under the influence of technogenic civilization, all spheres of human activity undergo changes, and science above all. Ecology is especially keenly aware of the challenges of technogenic civilization. It focuses on anthropogenic factors, works with the human environment. At the same time, its problem field is expanding (...) due to interdisciplinary research and the allocation of knowledge of new environmental disciplines into an independent industry. The interdisciplinarity of modern ecology is most clearly visible on the example of such a direction as informational ecology. The presence of the digital environment in human life has grown so much that it requires the separation of the digital information environment into a separate subsystem. Information ecology studies the laws of the influence of information on the formation and functioning of man. In turn, interdisciplinarity, assuming the use of knowledge from various branches of science, brings us to the problems of the collective agent of cognition and distributed knowledge. In ecology, the problems of the collective agent of cognition are implemented through crowd-sourcing technology. Ecology is a science that requires massive collection of observation data (samples of water, air, soil pollution in various, sometimes hard-to-reach corners of the planet, observation of fluctuations in the number of species of animals and plants). The popularity of crowdsourcing projects in the field of ecology is explained by the fact that the challenges and threats of anthropogenic civilization have generated such a trend of our time as environmental orientation or environmentalism. Ecological crowdsourcing projects, inspired by the philosophy of environmentalism, can serve as an answer to the challenges of technogenic civilization. (shrink)

The article analyzes J. Gaarder’s s book «Sophie’s world» and defines its place in philosophy for children as a shpere of humanities. Philosophy for children in the «classical» model is presented as a method of P4C (author – M. Lipman). The author presents the audience the main thesises and methods of the P4C method and compares «Sophie’s world» with classic works of M. Lipman. The same moments of these works are: the target audience (partly), «socratic dialogue», the presence of creative (...) imagination. However, the book by Y. Gaarder differs in the literary form of presentation (unlike the methodical works of M. Lipman) and issues («Sophie’s world» analyzes the history of philosophical systems; M. Lipman analyzes philosophical problems without reference to names and periods). «Sophie’s world» has the following features of P4C: philosophical guidance, «socratic dialogue», critical thinking, the formation of responses to questions, interactive interaction, self-reflection. As a result, the author provides recommendations to teachers on the peculiarities of teaching the work «World of Sophia» at school and identifies the competencies that the book can develop in students. «Sophie’s world» can be introduced into the school programm. However, teachers need to follow special recommendations. Children must express their opinions themselves and be a «Сommunity of researchers». Everyone сan to tell their own opinion. To interest students, the teacher can offer: video scribing, team collage, artistic reproduction of the atmosphere (for e[ample decoration), role play. «Sophie’s world» is a relevant work for philosophy for children. Y. Gaarder's book can form the reflective thinking and non-standard view of the world. The novel also develops communication skills, the ability to work in a team and ability to work with a large amount of information. «Sophie’s world» is very important and actual book for modern philosophy for children. (shrink)

BackgroundHumanitarian crises and emergencies, events often marked by high mortality, have until recently excluded palliative care—a specialty focusing on supporting people with serious or terminal illness or those nearing death. In the COVID-19 pandemic, palliative care has received unprecedented levels of societal attention. Unfortunately, this has not been enough to prevent patients dying alone, relatives not being able to say goodbye and palliative care being used instead of intensive care due to resource limitations. Yet global guidance was available. In 2018, (...) the WHO released a guide on‘Integrating palliative care and symptom relief into the response to humanitarian emergencies and crises’—the first guidance on the topic by an international body.AimsThis paper argues that while a landmark document, the WHO guide took a narrowly clinical bioethics perspective and missed crucial moral dilemmas. We argue for adding a population-level bioethics lens, which draws forth complex moral dilemmas arising from the fact that groups having differential innate and acquired resources in the context of social and historical determinants of health. We discuss dilemmas concerning: limitations of material and human resources; patient prioritisation; euthanasia; and legacy inequalities, discrimination and power imbalances.ImplicationsIn parts of the world where opportunity for preparation still exists, and as countries emerge from COVID-19, planners must consider care for the dying. Immediate steps to support better resolutions to ethical dilemmas of the provision of palliative care in humanitarian and emergency contexts will require honest debate; concerted research effort; and international, national and local ethical guidance. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Ontologies play a major role in life sciences, enabling a number of applications, from new data integration to knowledge verification. SNOMED CT is a large medical ontology that is formally defined so that it ensures global consistency and support of complex reasoning tasks. Most biomedical ontologies and taxonomies on the other hand define concepts only textually, without the use of logic. Here, we investigate how to automatically generate formal concept definitions from textual ones. We develop a method that uses (...) machine learning in combination with several types of lexical and semantic features and outputs formal definitions that follow the structure of SNOMED CT concept definitions. RESULTS: We evaluate our method on three benchmarks and test both the underlying relation extraction component as well as the overall quality of output concept definitions. In addition, we provide an analysis on the following aspects: How do definitions mined from the Web and literature differ from the ones mined from manually created definitions, e.g., MeSH? How do different feature representations, e.g., the restrictions of relations' domain and range, impact on the generated definition quality?, How do different machine learning algorithms compare to each other for the task of formal definition generation?, and, What is the influence of the learning data size to the task? We discuss all of these settings in detail and show that the suggested approach can achieve success rates of over 90%. In addition, the results show that the choice of corpora, lexical features, learning algorithm and data size do not impact the performance as strongly as semantic types do. Semantic types limit the domain and range of a predicted relation, and as long as relations' domain and range pairs do not overlap, this information is most valuable in formalizing textual definitions. CONCLUSIONS: The analysis presented in this manuscript implies that automated methods can provide a valuable contribution to the formalization of biomedical knowledge, thus paving the way for future applications that go beyond retrieval and into complex reasoning. The method is implemented and accessible to the public from: https://github.com/alifahsyamsiyah/learningDL. (shrink)

This article explores the role of deliberative democracy in political modernization and the dynamic relationship between civil society and the state. It aims to elucidate the essence of deliberative democracy as a mechanism for civil society’s influence on the state, and systematically analyze the conceptual studies of deliberative democracy in the context of civil society’s power potential, both in Ukraine and globally. The study reflects on the evolution of civil society, highlighting its transformation from a state-dominated concept to one of (...) parity with government institutions. The research emphasizes the significance of public discourse in legitimizing government decisions and examines the roles of various scholars in developing the concept of deliberative democracy.Deliberative democracy, a post-classical theory, is contrasted with electoral democracy, focusing on public discourse as a key legitimacy source for legislative acts. The paper delves into the historical origins of deliberation and deliberative democracy, crediting political scientist J.Bessette with coining the term. It discusses the critical elements of deliberative democracy, including public dialogue, rational discourse, and institutionalized exchange of opinions for decision-making. The model incorporates elements of representative, direct, and participatory democracy, highlighting its basis in public consultation and discourse.The article also examines various forms of the deliberative process, including open public discussions and behind-closed-doors exchanges, underscoring the importance of information, argumentation, and persuasion. It critiques the liberal interpretation of democracy and stresses the need for citizen involvement in governance, spotlighting the role of political civil society organizations in fostering democratic deliberation. (shrink)