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 social ontology are conducts investigations into how social and institutional facts exist, what is a social group or collective intentionality. Phenomenology is one of the 20th-century philosophical movements whose contributions of its representatives over the aforementioned topics are significant (including von Hildebrandt, Reinach, Scheler, Stein). The purpose of this article was to consider Ingarden's potential contribution to social ontology. The article is divided into two parts: an overview and an interpretation. In the first, I pointed out why phenomenology is (...) misguidedly considered "asocial." In the second, I reconstructed Ingarden's metaontological views from his magnum opus: Controversy over the Existence of the World. According to his declaration in this book, socio-objects are entities with heteronomous and purely intentional elements. In the article I showed that Ingarden explicite does not formulate a theory of social being, but on the basis of his ontology a sketch of such a theory can be trying to be presented. In order to achieve this, I thought it was relevant to attempt to outline the difference between the objects of fiction and socio-legal objects within its ontology. (shrink)

As contact languages, pidgins and creoles arise in mixed linguistic environments. Drawing much of their vocabularies from one, frequently European, language and – to a lesser extent – from a number of indigenous languages, they have lexicons that are reduced in comparison with those of their lexifiers. To compensate for the poor lexification, pidgin and creoles create novel polysemy-based extensions of lexical items or develop periphrastic constructions equivalent of the missing lexical roots. Assuming a cognitive linguistic perspective, which emphasizes the (...) role of conceptualization in the construction of meaning and the figurative character of concepts, the paper deals with the lexicons of Nigerian Pidgin English and Tok Pisin, two contact languages representative for the Atlantic and the Pacific – the two major areas of linguistic contact. The analysis focuses on the first of the above-mentioned compensation strategies. It is argued that (i) the expressions borrowed from English and various indigenous languages acquire senses that are absent in English; (ii) the new senses are frequently based on metonymy, which serves as a major polysemy-based strategy of lexicon extension; (iii) most of the novel lexical extensions fall within the metonymic patterns that are well-established in English. (shrink)

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)

The framework of cognitive linguistics can be an efficient tool to represent the conceptual scope of meaning extension in reduced lexicons of pidgins and creoles. Image-schema based metaphors (Lakoff, 1993; Cienki, 1998) underlie the usage of English straight and its Tok Pisin counterpart stret, but the creole employs the concept in more contexts than English. The resultant variation in the scope of metaphor takes the form of a particular source domain being used to conceptualize more target domains than in the (...) lexifier language. Functioning mainly as a compensation strategy, the variation is the effect of strong influence of English on the conceptual system of the creole. (shrink)

Herman Cappelen w książce Fixing language (2018) zaproponował projekt w ramach inżynierii pojęciowej, w myśl którego to, co rewidujemy w pojęciach, to ich intensja i ekstensja. Podjął on polemikę z koncepcjami w inżynierii pojęciowej, zgodnie z którymi przy rewizji odwołujemy się do funkcji i celów. W pierwszej części artykułu opisuję wspomnianą dyskusję. W realizacji tego zamiaru korzystam z odwołań do artykułu Amie Thomasson „A Pragmatic Method for Normative Conceptual Work” (2020). Następnie podejmuję próbę obrony stanowisk odwołujących się przy rewizji pojęciowej (...) do funkcji i celów. W tym celu odnoszę się do artykułu Michaela Prinzinga „The Revisionist’s Rubic: Conceptual Engineering and Discontinuity Objection” (2018). W drugiej części artykułu opisuję metodę eksplikacji jako jedną z metod, za której pomocą dokonuje się rewizji pojęciowej. Zwracam uwagę na eksplikacje stosowaną przez Quine’a, który proponuje skupić się przy eksplikacji na funkcjach, jakie pełnią pojęcia. (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.

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)

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)

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.

Ernest Nagel’s two-part article entitled “Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy in Europe” undoubtedly played a crucial role in the development of analytic philosophy in both Europe and the United States. Nagel articulates the shared metaphilosophical assumptions embraced by philosophers from various centres, including Prague, Vienna, Lviv, Warsaw, and Cambridge. Nevertheless, it is important to note that philosophers began to describe themselves using the term “analytical philosopher,” or a similar term, particularly within the intellectual centre of Cambridge, in the early (...) 1930s in Britain. In this article, I shall compare how these philosophers conceptualized “analytic philosophy” with the metaphilosophical assumptions outlined by Nagel. Then, I shall draw a comparison between the understanding of analytic philosophy in the early 1930s in Britain, and contemporary conceptions such as “conceptual creativity” and “conceptual engineering.” As it turns out, a part of contemporary analytic philosophy is more open to social-practical issues than it was in the early 1930s in Britain, especially in the intellectual centre that was Cambridge. (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.

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)

The impacts that AI and robotics systems can and will have on our everyday lives are already making themselves manifest. However, there is a lack of research on the ethical impacts and means for amelioration regarding AI and robotics within tourism and hospitality. Given the importance of designing technologies that cross national boundaries, and given that the tourism and hospitality industry is fundamentally predicated on multicultural interactions, this is an area of research and application that requires particular attention. Specifically, tourism (...) and hospitality have a range of context-unique stakeholders that need to be accounted for in the salient design of AI systems is to be achieved. This paper adopts a stakeholder approach to develop the conceptual framework to centralize human values in designing and deploying AI and robotics systems in tourism and hospitality. The conceptual framework includes several layers – ‘Human-human-AI’ interaction level, direct and indirect stakeholders, and the macroenvironment. The ethical issues on each layer are outlined as well as some possible solutions to them. Additionally, the paper develops a research agenda on the topic. (shrink)

Contemporary social and political theory is not wholly sufficient for dealing with environmental issues unless it will be more informed by political theories of justice. I present the view that environmental justice can be fruitfully approached from the point of view of contemporary social contract theory, mainly the one inspired by the work of John Rawls. Healthy natural environment is indispensable for many reasons for every human society; however, nature possesses also value going beyond pure instrumentality for human beings. Because (...) humans can have great impact on natural environment in either positive or negative way, this entails duties on their part. Society’s dealings with the environment are regulated by laws and other publicmeasures, which in turn have their deeper justification in general theory of justice of that particular society. The article tries to show that contemporary social contract theory can fruitfully grasp principles of environmental justice, which could lead to more environment sensitive policies and be acceptable from liberal point of view at the same time.Politické myšlení nemůže adekvátně reagovat na environmentální problémy současné společnosti, pokud nebude více pracovat s konceptem environmentální spravedlnosti. V tomto článku se snažím ukázat způsob, jak může být otázka environmentální spravedlnosti uchopena pomocí teorie společenské smlouvy v podání Johna Rawlse. Lidé mají svoji činností významný dopad na životní prostředí, což má za následek nerovnou distribuci environmentálních dober a škod. Proto existují vůči ostatním lidem povinnosti vyplývající ze spravedlnosti vztahující se na environmentální oblast. Environmentální otázky se nicméně musí řešit pomocí závazných společenských pravidel, která mají podobu zákonů vynucovaných státem. Tyto zákony mají své hlubší ospravedlnění právě v určité teorii spravedlnosti, která zakládá jejich legitimitu. Ve článku se snažím ukázat, že pomoci teorie společenské smlouvy lze konstruovat soubor principů environmentální spravedlnosti pro společnost, která se chce stát více odpovědnou vůči životnímu prostředí a zároveň fungovat podle liberálních principů. (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 institution of the proskynesis at the Roman imperial court seems to have its roots in the world of Iranian peoples, be it the Parthian Empire or Sassanid Persia. Many hints in our sources point eastwards when we consider the origin of this custom. The contacts between the Graeco-Roman and Persian world had a long tradition by the time of Diocletian. For several reasons, it is hard to imagine that the proskynesis, as an act of obeisance before the late antique (...) Emperors, evolved purely within the Empire and unaffected by Eastern influences. (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)

One of the claims of creole exceptionalism is that creole languages have lexicons of reduced conceptual and expressive complexity. Building on previous studies of the lexicon of Nigerian Pidgin/NP and the applications of the cognitive linguistic framework in creole linguistics, the present paper aims to counter the exceptionalism claim by analysing the conceptual structure of body part expressions in NP. It is argued that the expressions not only involve embodied universal patterns of imaginative reasoning, but also blend the substratum patterns (...) of West African languages with the superstratum influence of colonial lexifiers, especially English. Thanks to this, NP speakers can deal with diverse aspects of experience, such as emotions, mental life, social interaction, or business transactions, which is strong evidence for the complex conceptual structure and the richly expressive character of the NP lexicon. (shrink)

У статті проведено аналіз впливу зовнішньополітичного аспекту на процес генезису "нової релігійної політики" Й. Сталіна, її інституціоналізації та причин, що призвели до охолодження в державно-церковних відносинах наприкінці 40-х років ХХ століття. Показані роль та місце, яке займали євангельські церкви в цьому процесі.

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)

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)

Ervin Laszlo's revolutionary concept of the Akashic Field and his connectivity hypothesis offer elegant solutions for the baffling paradoxes associated with "anomalous phenomena" - otherwise unexplainable observations which many scientific disciplines encountered in the course of the 20th century. This article explores the ground-breaking contributions that Laszlo's work has made to psychology by providing a plausible conceptual framework for a large number of observations and experiences amassed by modern consciousness research, which challenge the most fundamental assumptions of the traditional scientific (...) worldview. (shrink)