In the 1960s Mancur Olson and Samuel Huntington suggested that the positive correlation between per capita income and the level of sociopolitical destabilization that they detected for low and middle income countries might be partly accounted for by the growth of the inequality associated with the economic and technological development in these countries. The empirical tests we perform generally support this hypothesis, but they also identify certain limits for such an explanation. Our tests reveal for low and middle income countries (...) a statistically significant correlation between GDP per capita and the economic inequality levels, but this correlation is not particularly strong. Earlier we found for the same countries significantly stronger positive correlations between GDP per capita and some important components of sociopolitical destabilization, such as the intensity of political assassinations, general strikes and anti-government demonstrations. It is quite clear that the strong association between the increase in the intensity of these components of sociopolitical destabilization and GDP per capita growth, can be explained by a much weaker tendency toward the growth of economic inequality only partly. In addition, our empirical tests suggest the presence of a certain threshold level of about 40 points on the Gini scale, after crossing which one can expect a radical increase in levels of sociopolitical destabilization in general, and the intensity of terrorist acts / guerrilla warfare and anti-government demonstrations in particular. According to the World Bank, the value of the Gini coefficient for Russia is now just in this zone, which suggests that the further growth of inequality in Russia could lead to an abrupt increase in political destabilization. (shrink)

Discusses current global conditions including peace, changes in society, education, religion, spirituality, and consciousness.

This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint...

This article attempts to define a historical epistemology not as separate place in disciplinary space, but as rather specific area, which unstable configuration and “stuff" are determined by quite different from philosophy ways of talking and investigation of knowledge, especially in social sciences. More significant than emergence of competitors of philosophy in production of knowledge about knowledge (sociology, history, anthropology) was that they introduce a new regime of this production. This regime became empirical. Within that regime knowledge is objectified not (...) as homogeneous order of representation, but as fuzzy dynamic set of heterogeneous elements, relations between which are complex and historically variable. The claims of non-philosophical disciplines to investigate knowledge generate the field of uncertainties and problematisations. Just this field is referred to as “historical epistemology". But this field is also space of conceptual imagination, where the new ways to investigate knowledge are worked on, when refusing to ascribe to it any ultimate (transcendent or transcendental) specification. (shrink)

In order to understand what happened to Russian philosophy in our country, let us perform a thought experiment: let us imagine that the same thing happened to Russian literature. That is, that we were left with only "revolutionary democrats" and the writers in agreement with them—the materialist atheists. To keep the experiment pure and simple, let us take only the greatest names. Thus we will publish, esteem, and study only "progressive" writers in the above sense. Only two writers would perhaps (...) remain: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Nekrasov, and even with these two we would be stretching the point a bit—Shchedrin is after all the author of Provincial Sketches [Gubernskie ocherki] and Nekrasov is the author of Vlas, in which there is so much love for holy Rus' with its God's fools [iurodivye] and its beggars. Now let us look at whom we would leave out, whom we would not publish or study. First, of course, there are Tolstoi and Dostoevskii; their religiosity leaves not the slightest doubt. (shrink)

T. 1. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Nachahmungsästhetik und Affektenlehre sowie der idealistischen Musikästhetik in Deutschland.--T. 2. Die Romantik und der Kampf ästhetische Richtungen.

They are right all who would say nothing, all right. But the Church, whatever it does, will always be criticized. If it becomes very popular with all the protesters, it will go to the Maidan, it will fall under the hail of criticism from the authorities. He will not go away - she is also criticized with the words: "How is this, she became aloof when such problems are solved, is it not the church anyway, how people live, why it (...) does not react to social problems, things that are happening - the lack of courts, the prosecutor's office, Raider attacks, how can the church silence "? We have to choose a middle ground here, we have to say something, support people because they are right, they have the right to defend themselves, this is a normal healthy reaction of free people who said: "No, we do not want to live like that". They need to be supported in this. (shrink)

This book explains what civilization is in its essence and why the very its functioning leads it to an unavoidable collapse. The fact is people weren't adapted to such strange conditions as to living in cities so our nature necessarily will retaliate and civilization as we know it will die.

Sahlqvist formulas are a syntactically specified class of modal formulas proposed by Hendrik Sahlqvist in 1975. They are important because of their first-order definability and canonicity, and hence axiomatize complete modal logics. The first-order properties definable by Sahlqvist formulas were syntactically characterized by Marcus Kracht in 1993. The present paper extends Kracht's theorem to the class of ‘generalized Sahlqvist formulas' introduced by Goranko and Vakarelov and describes an appropriate generalization of Kracht formulas.

What can the creation of artificial habitats to replace old-growth forests tell us about the process, value and future of design? This chapter takes a concrete and provocative example and uses it to rethink design as a gradual, ecological action. To illustrate this understanding, the chapter begins with a description of a proposal to provide artificial habitats for wild animals such as birds, bats and invertebrates. The controversial idea to replace rapidly disappearing old-growth trees with artificial structures puts in doubt (...) habitual assumptions about the clients, procedures and goals of design. This example is of relevance to all design because the need to provide artificial habitats to nonhumans will be increasingly common under the influence of such phenomena as global warming or urbanisation. … The invention of artificial structures in place of natural habitats is described in this chapter as an incitement that highlights the need for further research into values, participants and methods of design. This discussion concludes with a proposal for an attitude of modesty in the face of increasingly overwhelming volumes of information as well as in the presence of an even greater ignorance about the futures of nondeterministic, volatile and incompletely controllable natural systems. The dilemma of design in these conditions is in the tension between its remit to act and the uncertainty that inescapably underlies any creative endeavour. (shrink)

Our concern is the completeness problem for spi-logics, that is, sets of implications between strictly positive formulas built from propositional variables, conjunction and modal diamond operators. Originated in logic, algebra and computer science, spi-logics have two natural semantics: meet-semilattices with monotone operators providing Birkhoff-style calculi and first-order relational structures (aka Kripke frames) often used as the intended structures in applications. Here we lay foundations for a completeness theory that aims to answer the question whether the two semantics define the same (...) consequence relations for a given spi-logic. (shrink)

Each professional researcher of the religious and philosophical tradition of Ukraine XI-XIV centuries. convinced of the glow of theoretical understanding of the manuscript corpus of texts of a certain period, realizes that 90% of the monuments of that time are waiting for study, knows that the subject-based, scientific sources are aimed at reconstructing how the beginning and the end were presented, stages, goals, the factors, essence and meaning of world history in the culture of are still in the embryonic phase, (...) and the problem of understanding the role of the Holy Cross in the historical process has not been raised or analyzed yet by the bearers of this culture. These facts lead to an attempt to fill the existing lacuna. (shrink)

The author considers two additions to analysis of technoscience, suggested by Olga Koshovets and Igor Frolov. First, technoscience is not just regime of knowledge production, which brings into play enormous technological and organizational resources, but is a regime, regulated by mandatory requirement to produce knowledge, which should be transformed into endowed with market value goods and services (technoobjects). Second, technoscience is an ever-faster colonization of natural and social worlds by technoobjects. In the author's view, the main problem with technoscience is (...) not to hold the next round of conceptual clarification and theoretical reorganization of previous distinctions (nature/society, basic science/applied science, scientific fact/technoobject, social connections/technological connections) or introduction of new ones. The challenge is how to turn the concrete realization of technoscience into empirical research objects. The complexity of such enterprise is demonstrated in the case of research biobanking, which has become one of exemplary embodiment of technoscience and contemporary mode of biopolitics. (shrink)

In his theory of society Protagoras, one of the most influential sophists thinkers, applies a contractarian approach, similar in many respects to those of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau. Protagoras, unlike Aristotle or Plato, was convinced that individual perceptions and beliefs as well as those of the body political are relative, because there is no uniform ground on which things could be perceived or experienced. He offers an evolutionary account of the development of human species, arguing that society is a result (...) of a contract among its members, based on commonly shared and taught social virtues. On the other hand, Protagoras is not a nihilist: In his account there is still a possibility of an expertise within the polis, related to the good of the particular community. (shrink)

Among the many outstanding personalities of the Middle Ages, Severin Boethius, a brilliant representative of early Christian culture, stands out. The great connoisseur, sympathizer and popularizer of Aristotle Boethius' classical antique logic culture was, in fact, the first and last thinker of his time to understand so deeply the role and importance of his father's work of logic. He translated into Latin almost all his logical works, which, unfortunately, medieval theology and philosophy could not properly use.

The main goal of the article is to describe selected aspects of the sex trade as viewed by clients who make use of the services provided by sex workers. We use data obtained through a content analysis of selected topics discussed on an erotic forum called Nornik.net. The topics were: Can a person stop “screwing”?; what was your first contact with the sex trade and how can a person hide their visits to sex workers? In the course of the analysis, (...) we identified an additional category that featured in all the topics: “trophy collecting”. The discussants perceive sex workers as a commodity to be purchased and subsequently evaluated. The discussants tended to compete among themselves to visit the most sex workers or to be first to visit the latest sex worker. The discussion forum serves as a support centre and contains hints and tips on different areas of “screwing” and related issues. The forum also displays certain features of a community. (shrink)

The current stage of the development of amateur stayer running practices can be characterized as personality-building, since the main goals of runners (especially marathon runners and super marathon runners) are not so much related to strengthening health, as to the sphere of personal improvement and self-knowledge: the development of will, character, testing yourself in an extreme situation, testing previously inaccessible emotions and states of consciousness. The object of the study is ego texts (books for a wide audience, including the online (...) "samizdat") of modern Russian running enthusiasts. The method of studying these texts is the biographical method, which makes it possible to determine the multidimensional influence of running activity on fundamental changes in personality development and the formation of her life path. The analyzed biographies inherit both the confessional tradition of Augustine (the contrast of the aimless and vicious "pre-race" life, as well as the traumatic experience of running neophyte and significant achievements in many areas of personal development after the adoption of the values expressed through running Coubertin's "religio athleticae"), and the adventurous and heroic biographical tradition noted by M. M. Bakhtin, inherent in the Renaissance, as well as romanticism and Nietzscheanism with their focus on the formation (in our case, through a stayer run) of a new (or "super-") person. The qualitative result of running activity is the achievement by the subject of a new stage of development – a person running (homo currens), which is characterized by activity, mobility, heroism, asceticism, striving for maximum self-realization, achieving harmony of body and spirit. Homo currens opposes both virtual pastime and the fetishization of comfort culture, suggesting, referring to the concept of Viktor Frankl, filling life with new meanings and values through overcoming the inevitable suffering for a stayer run. Amateur running is considered by writers as a publicly available and effective means of gaining physical, mental and social well-being, which expresses its humanistic essence and gives philosophical and anthropological significance to the works under study. (shrink)

The second half of the twentieth century was marked by the appearance of a new and original school in Russian sinology which uses the so-called methodology of ‘structural analysis’ in studying Chinese classics and attempts to find an authentic methodology among Chinese philosophers themselves. Its most influential representatives are V.S. Spirin, A. M. Karapetyants, A. I. Kobzev and A. A. Krushinsky. The main thesis of Russian ‘structuralists’ is that the composition of the ancient Chinese text influences its content directly. A (...) composition of a text is derived from a configuration of its parallel passages. The method of ‘structural analysis’, therefore, aims to detect and describe these parallelisms, and then makes some interpretation of them. The present paper gives a short introduction to the history of this school, its main representatives and concepts, and also shows how the method of ‘structural analysis’ works on some concrete examples. (shrink)

Стаття є детальним історіографічним оглядом проблеми політики СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. У ній розглядається та аналізується науковий доробок як вітчизняної історіографії класичного радянського періоду, періоду "перебудови", так і сучасної пострадянської історіографії. Окрема увага в статті приділяється роботам західних дослідників другої половини ХХ - початку ХХІ століття, які вивчали державно-релігійні відносини в СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. Розглядається також конфесійна історіографія проблеми, яка з'явилась в останні роки існування СРСР та набула свого розквіту у 2000-і роки.

A concept of Pagan Theology has been producing a number of discussions throughout the last decade and particularly in the last few years both inside and outside Pagan community. In this paper, the author analyzes three aspects of the phenomenon of Pagan Theology and discussions emerged around it. The first aspect is the genesis of the idea of Pagan Theology. It includes an examination of academic and religious roots of this research programme. The second aspect is a view on Pagan (...) Theology from the perspective of the academia. While for some scholars Pagan Theology appears to be a legitimate field of study and/or research programme in Pagan Studies, others describe it is an attempt of Pagan intervention in the academia. Finally, the third aspect is a discussion on Pagan Theology emerged among Pagans, whose reflections of this topic are very ambiguous too. In spite of this fact, the author concludes that the idea of Pagan Theology was a necessary stage of development, both in the conceptualization of contemporary Paganism itself and in Pagan Studies at the same time. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyzes dominating contemporary approaches to the study of esotericism including those of W. Hanegraaff that is popular today among European scholars and its alternatives developing in the USA and the United Kingdom. The author argues that these methodologies should be understood as competitive „research programmes‟ inside the complex field of the academic study of esotericism and can‟t be described in terms of „old‟ and „new‟ paradigms like Hanegraaff tends to do it.

In this paper we examine Interaction-free measurement where both the probe and the object are quantum particles. We argue that in this case the description of the measurement procedure must by symmetrical with respect to interchange of the roles of probe and object. A thought experiment is being suggested that helps to determine what does and what doesn’t happen to the state of the particles in such a setup. It seems that unlike the case of classical object, here the state (...) of both the probe and the object must change. A possible explanation of this might be that the probe and the object form an entangled pair as a result of non-interaction. (shrink)

In his theory of society Protagoras, one of the most influential sophists thinkers, applies a contractarian approach, similar in many respects to those of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau. Protagoras, unlike Aristotle or Plato, was convinced that individual perceptions and beliefs as well as those of the body political are relative, because there is no uniform ground on which things could be perceived or experienced. He offers an evolutionary account of the development of human species, arguing that society is a result (...) of a contract among its members, based on commonly shared and taught social virtues. On the other hand, Protagoras is not a nihilist: In his account there is still a possibility of an expertise within the polis, related to the good of the particular community. (shrink)

Commentary on Karl Jaspers’ concept of philosophical faith.

The European Union’s funding of electricity made of biogas that is obtained from purpose-grown plants accelerated the global boom of renewable energy two decades ago. Tens of thousands of biogas plants were built in EU farms soon after. As this specific trend toward renewable energy globally spreads, it has the potential to alter the features of agriculture in the future. Such conceptual changes are related to a variety of socio-economic and environmental implications that manifest itself over a large time scale. (...) Regarding renewables made of purpose-grown plants, a majority of reservations are related to its production economy, particularly since these biofuels are expected to compete with food or feed. So far, little attention has been paid to the fact that the fields of farms that run biogas stations are subject to shortly repeated erosive crops followed by the intensive application of the fermentation residues obtained. The various types of soil on different European farms, which have been operating biogas stations for at least two decades, were analyzed. It was revealed for the first time that such practices cause soil degradation and pose a threat to food production, which has been overlooked until now. The relations between ethical and economical points of view are discussed. (shrink)

Can matter, things, nonhuman organisms, technologies, tools and machines, biota or institutions be seen as creative? How does such creativity reposition the visionary activities of humans? This article is an elaboration of such questions as well as an attempt at a partial response. It was written as an editorial for the special issue of the Digital Creativity journal that interrogates the conception of Post-Anthropocentric Creativity. However, the text below is a rather unconventional editorial. It does not attempt to provide an (...) overview of the issue’s theme but, instead, samples it via a particular example. The idea of the issue was to think about post-anthropocentricism by considering (1) agents, recipients and processes of creativity alongside with its (2) purpose, value, ethics and politics. This article addresses the first subtheme by puzzling at the paradoxes of “field learning” and picks at the second by considering the texture of “automated beauty”. Both of these parts use chess for an example. The narrative on chess is intermitted by a section “on creativity” that attempts to contextualize the case-based discussion in the wider context and to consider motivations and implications. (shrink)

Recent advances in a variety of scientific disciplines have revealed the limitations of the Newtonian-Cartesian model of the universe. One of the interesting aspects of this development is the increasing convergence of science and the "perennial philosophy." The new research has led to a critical revaluation of ancient spiritual systems long ignored or rejected because of their assumed incompatibility with science. Here are Swami Muktananda on the mind. Swami Prajnananda on Karma. Swami Kripananda on the Kundalini. Ajit Mookerjee on the (...) Kundalini. Joseph Chilton Pearce on spiritual development. Mother Teresa on love and service. Jack Kornfield on Buddhism for Americans. Fritjof Capra on the new paradigms. Rupert Sheldrake on morphic resonance. Karl Pribram on the holographic model. Claudio Naranjo on meditation, and more. The papers in this book were presented at the seventh Conference of the International Transpersonal Association held in Bombay. The ITA is a non-profit organization that brings together individuals of different nationalities, professions, and philosophical or spiritual preferences who share in the view that there is a fundamental unity underlying all of humanity and the material world. The cover photo is from the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art in the Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the normal modal logics of elementary classes defined by first-order formulas of the form \. We prove that many properties of these logics, such as finite axiomatisability, elementarity, axiomatisability by a set of canonical formulas or by a single generalised Sahlqvist formula, together with modal definability of the initial formula, either simultaneously hold or simultaneously do not hold.