We consider an experiment that conducts observations on an uncertain parameter. Experiments observing a parameter with a stochastic uncertainty have been studied exhaustively and their characteristics have been described by many authors [see, e.g., De Groot, M. (1974), Optimal Statistical Decisions (Russian translation)]. In this article, we assume that uncertainty is generated by a mechanism which is “random in the broad sense” [a term introduced by Kolmogorov, A.N. (1986), in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics (in Russia), pp. 467–471]. Ivanenko, (...) V.I. and Labkovskii, V.A. [(1986), Dokladi Na Bolgarskata Akademiya Na Naukite SSSR 287(3), 564–567; (1990), Dokladi Na Bolgarskata Akademiya Na Naukite SSSR 310(5), 1059–1062] have proposed the apparatus of “statistical regularities” for the description of such randomness. Statistical regularity (SR) is a family of finitely additive probability distributions such that particular SRs correspond to total uncertainty, stochastic uncertainty, and other forms of uncertainty. The problem in which uncertainty is specified by SR is accordingly called General Decision Problem (GDP). We investigate informativeness and optimality of experiments in GDP. (shrink)

Издание содержит: хрестоматия; философы; психологи; литературоведы, искусствоведы; мастер изобразительного искусства и др.

Using payment to recruit research subjects is a common practice, but it raises ethical concerns that coercion or undue inducement could potentially compromise participants’ informed consent. This is the first national study to explore the attitudes of IRB members and other human subjects protection professionals concerning whether payment of research participants constitutes coercion or undue influence, and if so, why. The majority of respondents expressed concern that payment of any amount might influence a participant’s decisions or behaviors regarding research participation. (...) Respondents expressed greater acceptance of payment as reimbursement or compensation than as an incentive to participate in research, and most agreed that subjects are coerced if the offer of payment makes them participate when they otherwise would not or when the offer of payment causes them to feel that they have no reasonable alternative but to participate . Views about undue influence were similar. We conclude that human subjects protection professionals hold expansive and inconsistent views about coercion and undue influence that may interfere with the recruitment of research participants and impede valuable research. (shrink)

I would like to stress Vadim Mikhailovich's [Mezhuev's] position and clarify our conversation about culturology. It is constantly repeated that culturology is a science. It is my profound conviction that culturology is not a science. Culturology is a distinctive phenomenon of Russian culture and represents a certain intellectual movement. If one briefly surveys the history of its emergence, its philosophical origin becomes obvious. This intellectual movement consists of three levels, if one takes into account the "-logy" ending. First, the philosophical (...) level, from which in the 1970s culture began to be conceived as a special field of knowledge in our country. Then, humanistic knowledge: a great many representatives of the humanities in Russia-historians, art specialists, art critics, essayists-studied culture. Finally, there is the socioscientific tendency, which is just beginning to form in Russia and carries the internationally accepted name of social and cultural anthropology. All of us are synergistically attracted to these three tendencies, which comprise what is called culturology. The question of how these three tendencies of knowledge are correlated in the framework of the given intellectual movement is, in my view, extremely important. For quite some time now, there has been no reflection in Russia on the foundations of scientific and philosophical knowledge, but such reflection is necessary. To advance along the road of rational knowledge it is important to reflect in what cognitive space we find ourselves, what we are doing within its boundaries, and for what reason. From this point of view, neither philosophers nor representatives of the humanities or the social sciences will renounce their positions of observer. Moreover, I agree with Mezhuev that there is no single philosophy, humanistic conception, or theory of culture. Anyone who is engaged professionally in the study of cultural phenomena can choose his initial foundations. As Vadim Mezhuev correctly notes, the significance of philosophy for other types of knowledge lies in the fact that there are borderline areas of man's existence in the world. However, they are identified in different ways by different philosophies: positivism, phenomenology, classical Platonism, Aristotelianism, Kantianism, and so forth. Representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge are free to choose any metaphysics. Philosophers will continue to attend to their business in their subject area, and scientists in theirs. But it is important periodically to determine rationally when there must be close and complementary relations between the three components of this intellectual movement and when they must exist in parallel. Then questions such as who has priority and who is the guardian of truth will not arise. If the tendencies have diverged in parallel, then the representatives of each of them are occupied within their domains with questions which are irrelevant in other fields of knowledge or for other theoretical models. At the end of the twentieth century, to pose the question of scientism or antiscientism is senseless because today we know that there are different forms of rationality and that science is not the only, and is quite a narrow, form of rationality. Myth too is rational. It is expressed in categories and has a particular inner logic. We recognize myth as a rational cultural entity, because it is represented in symbolic form as an ordered sequence of judgments, as an artifact. But it differs from scientific theory. That is why it is fruitful to reflect on what forms of rationality are relevant to what levels of knowledge. I agree with Ogurtsov, who says that these forms penetrate in one way or another into every culturally institutionalized form of knowledge. Indeed, in philosophical knowledge there are elements of everyday, mythological, and scientific knowledge, but this does not negate the distinctive nature of the philosophical form of knowledge. In science there are elements of metaphysics, mythology, and everyday knowledge, but this does not cancel the particularities of the scientific form of knowledge. The same is true of the humanistic form, which is in principle irremovable from the framework of institutionalized knowledge, at least for now. I do not agree with Ogurtsov that I give the humanistic form of knowledge a negative evaluation. Humanistic knowledge begins to be significant in a period of a cognitive paradigm shift. This, we can say, is apparent today, at a time of transition from the grand style of modernism in its postmodern mode to the building of the foundations for a new whole. The point is that the humanistic form of knowledge enables us to isolate at the outset those areas of the unknown at which we arrive because of the limitations inherent in other forms of rationality. It is closest to everyday and empirical categories of knowledge and forms of ideas; hence, particularism, image syncretism, and mobility are its distinctive features. But without this humanistic level no further step is possible in either scientific or philosophical knowledge. The breakdown into these forms of knowledge- philosophical, humanistic, and scientific-may be primitive, but we have to start our reflection on the foundations of our cognitive relationship to our surroundings somewhere. The identification of the forms of knowledge makes it possible to draw the conclusion that, unlike philosophical and humanistic knowledge, socioscientific knowledge is modeled on the natural sciences. From this it becomes obvious that the distinctive features of the object of social sciences determine also the special nature of the categorial apparatus, operationalization, selection method, and information analysis. I do not insist that the model I suggest must be accepted. Other models can be constructed. But let us start with a simpler comparison of types of knowledge and later we shall differentiate them. I started from this level because in our culture such a division is apparent and generally accepted. There are the philosophical, humanistic, and scientific forms of knowledge. They are irreducible to one another, they perform entirely different functions in the knowledge of man's relationship to the environment, and express different views about how man lives in culture. I agree that philosophy is exactly existence in culture with a singling out of the limits of this existence. But representatives of humanistic and socioscientific knowledge also deal with existence in culture. What is important for the philosopher is the direction of knowledge from within to the outside; for the representative of humanistic knowledge it is the description of how he exists among a multitude of seemingly diverse and divergent artifacts and processes; and for the scientist it is the order of the philosophically and humanistically defined reality in order to control it the better. (shrink)

Книга адресована специалистам в области теории познания, обществоведам, преподавателям философских дисциплин, аспирантам и студентам философских факультетов вузов, всем тем, кто интересуется данной проблемой.

The article devoted to the study of elaborate correlation between language and ideology, language and culture. The author dwells on the shift in the key concept of social and humanitarian studies from a classical standard and language description to the flexibility in the language use and functioning. It is necessary to point out though that despite some similarities in correlation between language and culture on the one side and language and ideology on the other side, there are some differences in (...) the pragmatic perspectives between these categories. The discourse that has been formed under the ideological influence tends to be formal and ritualized to a greater extent than those language structures that have been developed due to culturally consistent processes i.e. connection and transmission between the generations. The author also makes an attempt to apply the paradox of globalization by A. Giddens to social linguistics. The runaway world theory introduced by a British sociologist A. Giddens singles out that the globalizing world does not become predictable as globalization predominates, but, on the contrary, social and linguistic processes become less and less manageable. The understanding of language and society becomes more complicated and demands new doctrines and innovative concepts, such as post-non-classical paradigm might conjure in. The author also takes into account the causes making standard language too flexible and changeable. The main cause of this process is an intent conditioned by certain communicative situation or by certain reasons to alter illocution of the utterances for representing identity, resulting in turn to more prestigious or more sophisticated language. (shrink)