This article presents a new hypothesis on the origin of life on Earth. According to this hypothesis, life arose within the limits of a particular material system representing a set of specific local environments integrated by a common circulating liquid medium where relatively short RNA molecules, viroid-like particles, are replicated with great accuracy. In each of the local environments, the synthesis of certain substances that are required for accurate replication and survival of the RNAs is carried out. The system, which (...) we called “diffuse organism,” is, in essence, a very rough and bulky analog of the structural-functional organization of the cell’s biosynthetic machinery. The diffuse organism was an organismal and evolving system at the same time. It seems that only such a system that has emerged in the only specimen as a result of a set of chance events operating under a system of universal physical and chemical laws was able to give rise to life and evolution by means of biological selection. The outlined scenario for the origin of life allows us to narrow down the still insuperable gap between prebiological chemistry and the first living systems without devising conceptions unrelated to the realities of life. (shrink)

In the expansion of health ecosystems, issues of responsibility and sustainability of the data science involved are central. The idea that these values should be central to the practice of data science is increasingly gaining traction, yet there is no agreement on what exactly makes data science responsible or sustainable because these concepts prove slippery when applied to a global field involving commercial, academic and governmental actors. This lack of clarity is causing problems in setting goals and boundaries for data (...) scientific practice, and risks fundamental disagreement on governance principles for this emerging field. We will argue in this commentary for a commons analytical framework as one approach to this problem, since it offers useful signposts for how to establish governance principles for shared resources. (shrink)

The nature of abstract and concrete semantics and differences between them have remained a debated issue in psycholinguistic and cognitive studies for decades. Most of the available behavioral and neuroimaging studies reveal distinctions between these two types of semantics, typically associated with a so-called “concreteness effect.” Many attempts have been made to explain these differences using various approaches, from purely theoretical linguistic and cognitive frameworks to neuroimaging experiments. In this brief overview, we will try to provide a snapshot of these (...) diverse views and relationships between them and highlight the crucial issues preventing this problem from being solved. We will argue that one potentially beneficial way forward is to identify the neural mechanisms underpinning acquisition of the different types of semantics (e.g., by using neurostimulation techniques to establish causal relationships), which may help explain the distinctions found between the processing of concrete and abstract semantics. (shrink)

Ghazzālī; 1058-1111; Ibn Taymīyah, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Ḥalīm, 1263-1328; criticism and interpretation; Islam; doctrines.

The insight phenomenon is thought to comprise two components: cognitive and affective. The exact nature of the Aha! experience remains unclear; however, several explanations have been put forward. Based on the processing fluency account, the source of the Aha! experience is a sudden increase in processing fluency, associated with emerging of a solution. We hypothesized that in a situation which the Aha! experience accompanies the solution in, the problem would be judged as less difficult, regardless of the objective difficulty. We (...) also planned to confirm previously discovered associations between the Aha! experience and accuracy, confidence, and pleasure. To test the proposed hypothesis, during the preliminary stage of the study, we developed a set of 100 remote associate problems in Russian and asked 125 participants to solve problems and indicate the Aha! moment, confidence, difficulty, and likability of each problem. As expected, the Aha! experience often accompanied correct solutions and correlated with confidence judgments. We also found a positive correlation between the Aha! experience and problem likability. As for the main hypothesis, we confirmed that the Aha! experience after the presentation of the solution was associated with a decrease in subjective difficulty. When participants could not solve a problem but experienced the Aha! moment after the solution was presented to them, the problem was perceived as easier than one without the Aha! experience. We didn’t find the same effect for the Aha! after solution generation. Thus, our study partially supports the processing fluency account and demonstrates the association between the Aha! experience and metacognitive judgments about the accuracy and difficulty of problems. (shrink)

Metrical gloss on Śaṅkarācārya's commentary on the Brahmasūtra of Bādarāyaṇa, Vedānta aphorisms; includes text of the Brahmasūtra.

The main subject of the study is the criticism of Aristotelian categorical system proposed by Plotinus. Treatises VI 1-3 focus on the problem of the possibility of thought within particular system of categories. Plotinus identifies categories with the kinds of being, being based on the tradition of such identification originated in the Plato’s “Sophist”. In some texts Aristotle himself speaks of categories as the kinds of being. The article is divided into two main parts. The first part is about Aristotle’s (...) position. I discuss the following questions: 1) what does the common name “being” mean; 2) why may the categories be the kinds of being and why should the substance be the first among the categories; 3) how are the substance and other categories related? The second part is about Plotinus’ criticism. Plotinus asserts 1) that not the substance, but being is the subject matter of the first philosophy, 2) that ten categories are not equally applicable to the intelligible world and to the world of sense, and 3) that the substance has two different meanings with respect to these worlds, and therefore the substance can’t be one kind, which includes the corporeal and incorporeal substances. (shrink)

The article is a reply to Ilya T. Kasavin’s “Creativity as a social phenomenon” and is devoted to the phenomenon of the scientific precariat. A systematic analysis of the relations between the scientific precariat and the academic community as a dialectical opposition of the individual and the collective is undertaken. The method of critical analysis is aimed at rethinking the stable ideas that have developed in science about the collectivity of scientific work. The concepts of labor and employment in science (...) are considered. It is concluded that the global development of digital technologies has led to the disappearance of the boundaries between physical and intellectual labor, against which there is an elevation of creative activity. The availability of information on the Internet, opening up incredible opportunities for research, destroys the monopoly of professional scientific communities on the possession of scientific knowledge. Scientific precarious loudly declare themselves in the public space, demonstrating the boldness and unusual nature of the ideas expressed. Inspired seekers of scientific truth embark on a free voyage through the vastness of the unknown. Traditional scientific communications, while retaining their significance, are enriched with new, non-standard ideas of precarious scientists who, ignoring rules and hierarchies, bring the creative spirit of freedom into modern science. However, the activities of such scientists may have an ambiguous assessment: a precarious scientist completely loses touch with the existing methods and approaches of classical science, and flight from work standards instead of expanding the horizons of scientific creativity turns into new problems caused by “multi-task” and instability of the labor activity of a “free” scientist. Despite the fact that in the conditions of the development of modern society and technology, the opposition of the pair of individual and collective is leveled, many scientists need common structures that determine the development of science, which at the present stage of the development of scientific knowledge are rather represented not by a social organization, but by an intellectual, linguistic and methodological unity focused on the creative development of the world. (shrink)

The transition period brings about a need of working out the social strategy. It optimizes the social processes and helps to use carefully the resources of the society. Its essence is a human being measure of the social things (phenomena and processes) since a human being is the system forming element of a social system. Then it is necessary to analyze a human being as a system himself for concretizing the content of «a human being measure». A human being is (...) researched by the whole complex of the sciences. The humanities take a specific place. Them subject is the specific features of a human being, the consciousness of a man which defines a whole him life activities. Therefore the humanities play a leading part in the system researches of a human being. But there is significant to integrate the humanitarian knowledge himself. The hierarchy of the approaches is such: philosophical – culturological – ethnological –philological (folklore). This hierarchy gives opportunity to form the system knowledge beginning from interpreting the essence of a human being as the norm of his activities to its concrete characteristics. The hypothetic many levels model of the human activities (as analysis shows, cultural-anthropological by its content)serves as means for the well-founded choice of the future, the appreciation of the present through its prism, the electoral relation to the past and the purposeful influence on the social policy. (shrink)

Despite, or perhaps as a form of resistance to contemporary globalization tendencies, the Central Asia region has chosen a way of life that combines modernconditions with deeply ingrained ancient customs and traditions. The gap between the by-gone glorious nomadic past in the communities of the Great Steppe and the socio-cultural and economic setup of the independent countries in this region, for instance Russia and Kazakhstan, is huge, and without access to modern structures of knowledge dissemination, the cultural heritage of these (...) ancient nomadic communities remains largely unexplored. This paper seeks to present some of the hidden cultural treasures of these peoples. In order to do so, the study focuses on the semiotic implications of ornaments as intercultural signs amidst the nomadic cultures of Eurasia. (shrink)

The program of the evolution of the base of knowledge in machines' mechanisms on the example of technical systems of arbitrary purpose and structure with the aim of formalization and structurization of knowledge for creation of new techniques of automatized projecting in suggested. The program is declared as the process of transference of the base of knowledge from its initial state into final one, at the permissible restrictions in quality and resources in real time. The program's concept is based on (...) the introduction of N-measured structural space. Discrete coordinates of the multi-measured vector of this space are: flathierarchical sets of languages, objects, problems, estimations, resources, restrictions, types of working areas, etc. The vectors' co-ordinates define the set of the program projects. The possibility of choice of the optimal program strategies' realization is discussed. The concept can be applied to objects of arbitrary purpose. (shrink)

Thе aim of the paper is to present the problem of boredom in Bogomil Raynov’s fourth book Travelling in Everyday Life. The interpretation of boredom in the novel is seen as based on the idea of a mismatch between expectation and experience. The expectation of the individual turns out to be modeled by the mass commercialization of the 20th century. The "cultural industry" replaces the sublime ideas of the romantic poetics with superfluous clichés, which deny the world its unpredictability, its (...) unexpectedness. It is these kinds of clichés that are subject of irony in Bogomil Raynov's novel – false expectations create a false feeling of boredom. Boredom as a problem has been rarely discussed either by Bulgarian authors, or by Bulgarian literary historians, therefore this paper tries not only to focus scholars’ attention on it, but also to interprete it. (shrink)

Values formed in culture, reflecting social relations, fulfilling a regulatory role, are defined as norms fixed in the culture of society. Moral norms that combine such properties of morality as normativity, imperativeness and evaluativeness act as significant foundations of culture. Values and norms enshrined in culture contribute to the integration and spiritual development of society The transformational processes taking place in modern society have influence on the value system. The relevance of this study is determined by the dialectic of emerging (...) contradictions in modern Russian culture caused by the formation of ambivalent values, norms, and attitudes in mass culture that have a negative impact on collective consciousness, on changing the value foundations of culture in modern society, which jeopardizes the safety of culture. In the focus of the analyzed problem, kitsch culture as a phenomenon of mass culture acts as the subject of research. The purpose of the study is to identify threats to cultural security coming from kitsch culture, which transforms the value foundations of culture, and to identify strategies to protect Russian culture. The study of the voiced issues is carried out through the prism of socio-cultural, structural-functional, interdisciplinary approaches. The novelty of the studied problem lies in the fact that kitsch culture acts as a pseudo-culture, which is devoid of aesthetic and artistic value and moral content, as one of the sources that creates certain risks and poses threats to cultural security. In particular, we are talking about the organization of joint activities of government agencies, public organizations, scientific, cultural and educational spheres, based on the principles of optimizing the constructive impact on the consciousness of the younger generation through the mediation process and inculturation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 87-96.

The psychotherapeutic technologies of the social sciences and humanities are the result of a long process that has shaped its theory and social and therapeutic practice, as part of a specific cultural and ideological context. The use of these technologies as a fundamental prerequisite has a human factor that determines the implementation of communicative mechanisms within the framework of set goals and objectives. Psychotherapeutic technologies are based on a “theory of the human,” which is not a scientific theory in the (...) strict sense of the word, but nonetheless allows for empirical and operational interpretation. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the perspectives on near-death experience in two works, Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Andrei Platonov’s Soul. The author examines the significance of the boun...

The essay explores the special features of French Symbolist aesthetics, which consist of the conceptions of symbolization as correspondence between the spiritual and objective worlds, suggestion, artistic synthesis and synesthesia, beauty, the beautiful and the sublime. The author analyzes the main trends of Symbolist aesthetics in France – the Neoplatonic/Christian and the Solipsistic symbolism – and traces their influence on art. She shows that the attitude toward aesthetic philosophy inherent in French Symbolism turned out to be the backbone for Euro-American (...) culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (shrink)

The essay introduces the reader to Russian contemporary research in the field of aesthetics. It provides a conceptual overview of key topics, discussions, main schools, and genres of the aesthetic scholarship present in today Russia.

The agricultural sector of production is a unique sphere of the national economy, which determines the level and quality of life of the country's population, but largely depends on the level of development and regional characteristics of economic entities, especially small forms of agricultural production – peasant farms. The article presents the features of the development of peasant farms in the regions of Russia. Based on the analysis of features of development of peasant farms of constituent entities of the Russian (...) Federation grouping the number and share of production data of the farmers identified areas that require a differentiated approach in the implementation of state support. (shrink)

The article discusses the causes for the formation of the polysemanticity of the Latin word virtus (virtue; strength, valor, masculinity) and term virtual, which was derived from virtus. The emergence of the polysemantic character of virtual became possible due to the unique semantics of the word virtus, in which there are two dominant meanings – virtue and strength. According to Ekaterina Taratuta, there are two lines of constructing the meanings of concepts based on the root vir(t) – “Platonic” and “Aristotelian.” (...) We believe that on the basis of the first semantic “dominant” of the word virtus (virtue) a “Platonic” group of meanings of the word virtual was formed, and on the basis of the second “dominant” (strength) the “Aristotelian” group of meanings was formed. The first cause of the existence of the “Platonic” group of the meanings of virtual is the translation of the Greek word ἀρετή using the Latin word virtus in Roman philosophy, Biblical texts and Greek-Byzantine patristic writings, as a result of which the concept of virtus has been enriched with the meanings of the Platonic and Christian concept of ἀρετή. The second cause is that through the Plato’s doctrine of arete-eidos the concept of virtus has been enriched with the meanings of the Platonic concept of εἶδος. As Hans Kremer has shown, in Plato’s doctrine eidos is the source of order and beauty, which is reflected in the empirical world as arete – virtue, goodness; thus, eidos is inextricably linked with arete. As a result, in the “Platonic” sense the virtual is understood as the eidetic, the ideal. The first cause of the existence of the “Aristotelian” group of meanings of virtual is the translation of the Greek word δύναμις using the Latin word virtus in Biblical texts and in Greek-Byzantine patristic writings, as a result of which the concept of virtus has been enriched with the Christian meanings of concept of δύναμις. The second cause is the translation of the Aristotelian concept of δύναμις using the Latin word potentia : the word δύναμις has become the medium, linking the words virtus and potentia and, under the influence of the latter, differences in the meanings of virtus and potentia (and especially their derivatives virtualis (virtual) and potentialis (potential)) have gradually disappeared. As a result, in the “Aristotelian” sense the virtual is understood as the potential, the possible. (shrink)

Oholekha Yaʻaḳov -- Et amalenu -- Melekhet H.

This is a reply to the article by A.M. Dorozhkin, S.V. Shibarshina “Epistemological Randomization, or On Creativity in Science”. The comprehension of the general philosophical problems of scientific rationality is inextricably linked with the creative development of the world. An actual philosophical position can be formed on the basis of the intersection of several alternative approaches. The first is connected with the understanding of rationality as a special style of thinking of the epoch, in which the coordinate system of the (...) worldview is set. Such rationality sets general ideas about the cognizability of the world, and forms methodological and theoretical scientific strategies. Rationality outlines the boundaries of a scientist’s creative thought. Addressing the problem of the rationality of scientific creativity involves the use of a second approach, on the basis of which we can talk about the use of a variety of logics in describing the world. At the same time, confidence in their connection with reality allows us to hope for the formation of a holistic description of the problem in the future. In this case, we are dealing with an act of cognitive activity, as a result of which our consciousness throws a rational construct as a network on a situation of uncertainty, explaining and mastering it – the picture of the world is ordered. According to the third position, the evaluation of scientific results is flexible, plastic in nature: what is perceived as methodologically erroneous today may turn out to be a scientific discovery tomorrow. Thus, it can be stated that the creative thinking of the researcher is inscribed in certain cultural conditions of understanding reality, and this situation has a rationally given meaning. At the same time, the human mind always strives beyond the limits of the definable and categorically set, with the help of rationality, progressively groping the boundaries of the unknown and going beyond the limits of the possible. (shrink)