I am not so insular and I hope not so presumptuous as to suppose that there is no contemporary philosophy apart from that empiricism which dominates very much of Great Britain, North America and Scandinavia. So let us notice that contemporary philosophy embraces broadly three points of view, though it will be part of my argument that they largely combine in the lessons they have to teach us, and in many of their implications for theology.

As the title suggests, in this part of the essay I am going to discuss in brief the religious spirit of Confucianism.

Sceptics have been accused of achieving their sceptical conclusions by an arbitrary (though usually implicit) redefinition of terms like “justified”, so that, while it may be true that no belief is justified in the sceptic’s new sense of the word, all the beliefs we have taken as justified remain so in the ordinary, standard meaning of the term. This paper defends scepticism against this charge. It is pointed out that there are several sorts of case where someone’s belief may be (...) properly termed justified in one “sense”, or from one “point of view”, but from another, equally properly termed unjustified. It is argued that the point of view of the sceptic, or the sense in which he uses the term, is one of the perfectly standard ones, and not some arbitrarily introduced new sense. In addition, an explanation that is not damaging to scepticism is provided of a sceptic’s own continued ascriptions of justifiedness in everyday contexts. (shrink)

We do not usually draw conclusions and summarize the results of our round table meetings. The speakers share their ideas, divergent viewpoints are discussed, and a certain level of approach to the problems under discussion is formulated. Therefore, today I will also not attempt to draw a conclusion.

We may have different ways of defining the nature of philosophy. One view would take philosophy to be a system of knowledge just like science; only it is a more comprehensive system that includes all science, or rather, it is a synthetic system of knowledge. Another view would take philosophy to be just a reflective and critical attitude. It purports to reflect on methods, postulates, axioms, and fundamental concepts that science relies on to build its knowledge in order to clarify (...) other scientific concepts and principles and to understand the limit of each science and of scientific knowledge itself so that they will not be wrongly applied to areas where they do not apply. Still another view would take philosophy to be that which helps us to understand the universe and human life, to have wisdom to penetrate into history, culture, and concrete affairs, and to give us direction for our actions. Of these three, the first view takes philosophy to be an activity for pursuing knowledge, the second view takes philosophy to be an activity for understanding our knowledge, and the third view takes philosophy to be an activity that starts with knowledge in order to achieve wisdom, which is above and beyond knowledge. All these views have their justifications. I would like to elaborate on them in the following. (shrink)

This paper argues for a completely universal scepticism, according to which no beliefs at all are justified to the least degree. The argument starts with a version of the Agrippan trilemma, according to which, if we accept that a belief is justified, we must choose between foundationalism, coherentism of a particular sort, and an infinite regress of justified beliefs. Each of these theories is given a careful specification in terms of the relationship of “justifiedness in p depending on justifiedness in (...) q”. It is then argued that no beliefs – not even beliefs about phenomenal experiences – are foundational in the required way. Both coherentism and infinitism are untenable, since, since they face various objections, most significantly the objection that acceptance of either would commit one to allowing that all beliefs were justified. Because the three possible accounts of justificational structure all fail radically, it is concluded that no beliefs are justified. (shrink)

Opening the round table, I. T. Frolov, editor-in-chief of Voprosy filosofii, stated that discussing problems of this type today, the task lies not so much in emphasizing their general and traditional aspects but in finding a scientific and practical solution to new problems of interaction of man and nature that can now be solved only on a global scale. Furthermore, he observed that discussion of these problems as questions of morality, in terms of pessimistic or optimistic evaluation, is very important (...) but certainly entirely inadequate. Not only social and philosophical but many political conclusions follow from a discussion of problems of interaction between man and nature. Investigation and solution of these problems, which require concrete scientific and practical approaches, may facilitate the development of such policies as peaceful coexistence, strengthening of neighborly treaty relations, and so forth. Solving these problems will help peoples come closer together and contribute to the firmer establishment of peace throughout the world. (shrink)

In our discussion on the development of political consciousness in the Chinese people in the past one hundred years, we will focus on the upward development made in the course of the reconstruction of the nation. If we simply study the historical facts, the past one hundred years are tragic. But if we study the spirit of the people during this period, we cannot but recognize that the Chinese people have never given up and that they have been constantly struggling (...) upward. In the history of their struggle the Chinese people have gone astray many times; otherwise, the country would not be what she is now. But from mistakes corrections are made, thus eliminating the possibility of repeating the same mistakes. This is what we call the instructional value of history. From this view, the Chinese people are presently undergoing a crisis in which they seem to have nothing to support and nothing to possess. But spiritually and ideologically, the Chinese people possess the most substantial "have," one that no other people or nation of the world has had. This most substantial "have" is the historical experience gained through the continuous upward struggle against failures in the reconstruction of their nation. This historical experience can be valuable only when it has become the self-consciousness of the people and their future generations. This self-consciousness is related mainly to the development of political consciousness in the Chinese people in the past hundred years. (shrink)

I discuss and criticise Douglas Gasking’s paper, “The Analytic-Synthetic Controversy” (in the current issue of this journal). Gasking proposes an explanation of our classifying together as “analytic” statements like “Someone is a bachelor if and only if he is an unmarried man”. He proposes that the feature common to the statements that we so classify is that they provide the only “semantic anchor” for a word that does not have, in Quine’s terms, a socially constant stimulus meaning. I argue that, (...) even after modifications are introduced to allow the account to handle certain difficulties, the account falls to some fatal objections. (shrink)

A large team of well-known Soviet scholars is currently preparing a new textbook in philosophy. We thought it might be useful to acquaint the broad philosophical public with the ideas that guided the authors in writing the textbook, and have included its table of contents, preface, and conclusion. We also, together with the team of authors, are hoping for readers' responses. The book will be published shortly by Politizdat Publishers.

In this paper, I respond to the paper “The Validation of Induction” by Robert Pargetter and John Bigelow (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75:1, 1997), in which the authors propound the thesis that the arguments commonly thought of as good inductive arguments “properly construed, are deductively valid”. I maintain that they have not established this claim, and neither have they established a number of associated but logically independent claims that they make about inductive arguments and inductive inferences.

В книге собраны результаты исследований классической для эпистемологии проблемы истины. Для эпистемологов, методологов науки, а также для философов и ученых.

A characteristic mark of the times is the steadily growing interest in our past, in our native philosophical legacy, which by dint of tragic circumstances was expunged from Soviet culture.