This essay provides a conceptual account of contemporary aesthetics defining it as post-nonclassical. The author shows that this aesthetics, which is the direct consequence of the current state of a technogenic, globalizing civilization and is its self-consciousness, is composed of three parts: classic aesthetic metaphysics; opposed to it nonclassical aesthetics, which emerged on the base of a verbal fixation on twentieth-century art practice ; and aesthetic virtualistics, which generalizes the experience of emerging digital and network art experiments. The author (...) introduces the basic aesthetic vocabulary specific to each of the constituent parts of contemporary post-nonclassical aesthetics. (shrink)

In modern European culture the explication and the understanding of nature is determined by the specific traits of systemic objects investigated by science. The paper singles out three types of systemic objects, i.e. simple (mechanical) objects, complex self-regulating, and complex self-developing systems. Categorical structures accounting for each of these types are analyzed.The paper shows that the investigation of every new type of systems changes the type of scientific rationality (classical, nonclassical, post-nonclassical).

A comparative study is made of the eigenvalue problems of electromagnetics and quantum mechanics, with special reference to the operations of spatial inversionP and time inversionT. Electromagnetics, which permits closer agreement with the dictates of relativity (when the latter is extended toP andT), exhibits characteristic differences with respect to quantum mechanics. An evaluation of these distinctions is presented against the backdrop of a choice between absolute scalar action and charge versus pseudoscalar action and charge.

The modern theory of the self-organization of complex systems, or synergetics, is considered in the context of historical traditions of natural philosophy. It is substantiated that it is unfairly to treat synergetics as a modern “speculative physics”, i.e. the natural philosophy of a new type. However, there is no doubt that on the basis of synergetics a certain worldview is built, and this worldview oversteps the boundaries of basic scientific disciplines and reaches a meta-scientific level of research. The paper presents (...) an attempt of a critical analysis of the claims of the theory of complex systems selforganization (synergetics) and the interdisciplinary generalizations and the universal efficacy of its models. The grounds of synergetic models transfer to different disciplinary fields are discussed. It is argued that synergetics is rather a mental scheme or a heuristic approach to exploring the complex behavior of systems, and not a universal key of solving concrete scientific problems. Some prospects of the development and the possible future of synergetics in the next decades are estimated. (shrink)

This edited book focuses on non-classical logics and their applications, highlighting the rapid advances and the new perspectives that are emerging in this area. Non-classical logics are logical formalisms that violate or go beyond classical logic laws, and their specific features make them particularly suited to describing and reason about aspects of social interaction. The richness and diversity of non-classical logics mean that this area is a natural catalyst for ideas and insights from many different fields, from information theory to (...) game theory and business science. This volume is the post-proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Logic and Cognition, held at Sun Yat-Sen University Institute of Logic and Cognition in Guangzhou, China in December 2016. The conference series started in 2001, and is organized by the ILC, often in collaboration with various international research groups. This eighth installment was jointly organized by ILC and Alessandra Palmigiano's Applied Logic research group. The conference series aims to foster the development of effective logical tools to study social behavior from a philosophical, cognitive and formal perspective in order to challenge the field of logic in ways that open up new and exciting research directions. Chapter "The Category of Node-and-Choice Forms, with Subcategories for Choice-Sequence Forms and Choice-Set Forms" of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. (shrink)

Kuipers' model of action explanation is compared, first with that of Anscombe, and then with models in the post-Anscombian tradition. Whereas Kuipers and Anscombe differ on the question of the first-person view, the difference with post-Anscombian writers concerns the so-called intentional statement. Kuipers criticizes the models of both Hempel and von Wright for their lack of an intentional statement. Kuipers' own model seems immune to this criticism, since it contains no less than two intentional statements, a "specific" and (...) an "unspecific" one. I argue that, contrary to appearances, it is not so immune. The call for intentional statements is in fact a call for intentions that are irreducible to beliefs and desires. Kuipers' intentional statements, however, are about intentions that can be so reduced. (shrink)

The article presents grounds for defining the fetish of artificial intelligence (AI). We highlight the fundamental differences of AI from all earlier technological advances, as they are primarily related to its introduction into the human cognitive sphere and generating fundamentally new uncontrollable consequences for society. We provide solid evidence that the leaders of the globalist project are the main beneficiaries of the AI fetish. This is clearly manifested in the works of philosophers who are close to major technology corporations and (...) their mega-projects. We suggest considering the problem of how to use the capabilities of AI to overcome the growing international conflicts and the global crisis. The focus is on the problem of agency, which solution from the standpoint of an anthropomorphic approach to AI is fraught with serious negative consequences. Endowing AI with agency, responsibility is implicitly removed from the person who uses the technology, and the established legislative practice is also destroyed. We present AI as an agent endowed with a set of invariant generalized qualities that is similar to natural subjects. These qualities include: the ability to deliberation, reflexivity, communication and elements of sociability. Such a representation of AI as an agent (pseudo-subject) is consistent with the principle of distributed control in biology and psychology, which was called the principle of a dual subject. In combination with the systems of principles and ontologies specified in the concept of post-nonclassical cybernetics of self-developing environments, this will allow the use of AI as a means of social innovation, while maintaining control over AI technologies. This will also help to pose and solve the problem of integrating formations of artificial and natural intelligence while maintaining the basic qualities of carriers of natural intelligence. (shrink)

Purpose. The dynamics and pace of social and economic transformations that are characteristic of modern society, lead to an increase in tension and the destruction of habitual stereotypes – ideals, values, norms, patterns of behaviour that unite people. These moments encourage us to rethink the understanding of "security" essence, in particular, psychological, which emphasizes the urgency of its study in the philosophical and sociocultural coordinates. Theoretical basis of the research is based on the philosophical methodology of K. Jaspers, E. Fromm (...) and the A. Maslow’s psychological approach to understanding of a person. Originality. Psychological security is considered at different levels: first and foremost, society is a characteristic of social security, that is an analysis of how today’s social technologies, social changes affect the quality of life of the country’s population; secondly, the social environment – the family, the immediate environment, reference groups, training teams; thirdly, a person is an experience of his own security-insecurity, when it is possible to talk about the manifestations of psychological violence, when certain behavioral acts contribute to the violation of the security of the other or to self-destruction. It is found out that the knowledge of psychological security is closely connected with the socio-historical conditions of being, with the level of development of material and spiritual culture, with the interests and values prevailing in society, which determines its ontological, epistemological and axiological features. The presented issue is considered in the correlation of psychological security with types of scientific rationality – classical, nonclassical and post-nonclassical approaches, within the framework of which various perspectives, aspects, forms and types of psychological security are studied. Conclusions. The concept of security requires a systematic description of its manifestations, types, levels, concepts: security as the absence of dangers ; security as a certain activity to ensure or to prevent any threats or dangers ; security as a conscious necessity, the value of the individual. The study systematizes various ideas about psychological security in accordance with the logic of scientific knowledge: in the mainstream of classical, non-classical and post-nonclassical approaches. (shrink)

The focus of the article is scientific rationality. Drawing from the historical development of science, the author identifies three main types of scientific rationality: classical rationality, nonclassical rationality, and post-nonclassical rationality. They are distinguished based on such criteria as 1) features of systematic organization of the objects studied by science; 2) the system of ideals and norms used in research; 3) different types of philosophical-methodological reflection on cognitive activity. The essay discusses each of the three identified types providing a (...) thorough analysis of their main features and characteristics. (shrink)

The article considers modern transformations of the ideas concerning subject’s cognitive abilities towards object because of the emergence and development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The developments of scientists and engineers from National Research University of Electronic Technology (Moscow, Russia) in the field of artificial intelligence have been taken as a foundation and material of this research. Their analysis allows making a conclusion that the humanity is rather far from the realization of ‘strong artificial intelligence’. We need a qualitative breakthrough (...) in AI material and technological basis for it. Applying ‘model-dependent realism’ by S. Hawking in the course of the speculations in the article, the author concludes that the purpose of cognition in modern science is not to describe an objective reality, but to organize its subjective perception by some definite way. So, the purpose of cognition is the perfection of cognition models permitting a subject ‘to capture’ the reality. This idea is completely confirmed by Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis theory and von Foerster’s ‘second-order cybernetics’. The article drafts some prospects of moving away from post-nonclassical scientific thinking in its current understanding, because the development of AI technologies results in ‘blurring’ borders of subjectivity in the cognition process. The author concludes that the modern world is moving in another epistemological paradigm where a new scientific revolution is inevitable. (shrink)

This essay is devoted to the analysis of the scholarly achievements of Victor V. Bychkov, a renowned Russian expert in aesthetics. It demonstrates that he has analyzed systematically and in detail the history of implicit aesthetics of the countries of the Eastern Orthodox region and has subdivided it into four principal stages: Patristic aesthetics, Byzantine aesthetics, Old Russian aesthetics, and Russian theourgic aesthetics. He has devoted special monographs to each of the four areas. Bychkov has created a present-day version of (...) theoretical aesthetics—post-nonclassic aesthetics—which he subdivided into three principal sections: classic, aesthetics; nonclassics ; and aesthetic virtualistics. Based on his analysis of twentieth-century art, Bychkov has suggested the hypothesis "Culture-post-culture," has brought to light the metaphysical meaning of contemporary, art and has provided contemporary definitions of the subject of aesthetics, of principal aesthetic categories, and of the main principles of art. (shrink)

The article considers modern transformations of the ideas concerning subject’s cognitive abilities towards object because of the emergence and development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The developments of scientists and engineers from National Research University of Electronic Technology (Moscow, Russia) in the field of artificial intelligence have been taken as a foundation and material of this research. Their analysis allows making a conclusion that the humanity is rather far from the realization of ‘strong artificial intelligence’. We need a qualitative breakthrough (...) in AI material and technological basis for it. Applying ‘model-dependent realism’ by S. Hawking in the course of the speculations in the article, the author concludes that the purpose of cognition in modern science is not to describe an objective reality, but to organize its subjective perception by some definite way. So, the purpose of cognition is the perfection of cognition models permitting a subject ‘to capture’ the reality. This idea is completely confirmed by Maturana and Varela’s autopoiesis theory and von Foerster’s ‘second-order cybernetics’. The article drafts some prospects of moving away from post-nonclassical scientific thinking in its current understanding, because the development of AI technologies results in ‘blurring’ borders of subjectivity in the cognition process. The author concludes that the modern world is moving in another epistemological paradigm where a new scientific revolution is inevitable. (shrink)

John F. Post argues that physicalistic materialism is compatible with a number of views often deemed incompatible with it, such as the objectivity of values, the irreducibility of subjective experience, the power of the metaphor, the normativity of meaning, and even theism.

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own justificational ancestry. (...) In reply, we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In ita original form the present paper was presented to the American Mathematical Society, April 2k,, as a companion piece to the writer's ...

After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.

John Post has argued that the traditional regress argument against nonfoundational justificatory structures does not go through because it depends on the false assumption that “justifies” is in general transitive. But, says Post, many significant justificatory relations are not transitive. The authors counter that there is an evidential relation essential to all inferential justification, regardless of specific inference form or degree of carried-over justificatory force, which is in general transitive. They respond to attempted counterexamples to transitivity brought by (...) Watkins and Salmon as well as to Post’s, arguing that none of these counterexamples apply to the relation they are describing. Given the revived transitivity assumption using this relation, the regress argument does indeed demonstrate the need for foundational stopping points in inferential justification. (shrink)

This book draws from previously unpublished letters and interviews with physicists, theologians, and Sir John’s close associates and family to present Sir John’s ideas on pure unlimited love. Post, who was in dialogue with Sir John for fifteen years on this topic and who had founded the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, addresses how John Templeton arrived at his philosophy as a youth growing up in Tennessee. Post also shares how classical Presbyterian ideas came to synergize in (...) his mind with the more eastern influences of American transcendentalism and the Unity School of Christianity and ponders if Sir John truly believed that science and spiritualty might fully converge on the same view of Ultimate Reality with their very different ways of knowing. _Is Ultimate Reality Unlimited Love?_ presents Sir John’s hope for spiritual progress with the eventual convergence of ultimate reality and unlimited love at its very center. (shrink)

Aneivas and Nişancıoğlu’s provocative book,How the West Came to Rule, attempts to provide an alternative account of the origins of capitalism to both ‘Political Marxism’ and ‘World-Systems Theory’. By making uneven and combined development a universal dynamic of human history and by utilising a flawed concept of ‘Eurocentrism’, however, they introduce a high degree of causal pluralism into their analysis. Despite important insights into the specific dynamics of different pre-capitalist forms of social labour, their account of the origins of capitalism (...) inHow the West Came to Rulesuffers from causal indeterminacy and historical inaccuracies. (shrink)

The questions of observational error and ambiguity of interpretation that have been raised in connection with the reported observation of a magnetic monopole have precipitated a situation calling for some further insight into the pairing principles of nature. A basic distinction relates to whether or not a pair is “ordered” (e.g., sexual pair) or without a priori order (e.g., mirror pair). It is shown that the polarity of electric charge is to be regarded as an example of pairing without an (...) intrinsic a priori order. It then follows that “action” also exhibits a pairing without a priori order. The relation ofPC andTC to unordered and ordered pairing is discussed, with neutral kaon pairing as a striking example of ordered pairing. The pairing of magnetic charge, if it exists, becomes an ordered pairing! (shrink)

The emphasis on intra-family caregiving that prevailed from ancient until relatively recent times, in both philosophy and practice, was substantially displaced under the influence of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment by an emphasis on individual independence. The ethics of familial relationships ceased to be at the center of philosophical interest. A consequence was growing inattention to the social conditions and practical arrangements needed to support family efforts to take care of the very young, the very old, the physically or mentally ill (...) or disabled, and others in need of care. The myth of the self-sufficient family must be exploded to permit the development of a public policy that will make such support possible. (shrink)

New-wave psychoneural reduction, a la Bickle and Churchland, conflicts with the way certain adaptation properties are individuated according to evolutionary biology. Such properties cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. The New Wave may entail a form of individualism inconsistent with evolutionary biology. All of this causes serious trouble as well for Jaegwon Kim's thesis of the Causal Individuation of Kinds, his Weak Supervenience thesis, Alexander's Dictum, his synchronicity thesis that all psychological (...) kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism, Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing that ALL a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology. (shrink)

Plantation slavery in the New World, in particular its relationship to the emergence of capitalism in Europe and North America, has long been a subject of debate and discussion among historians and social scientists. While there are literally thousands of monographs studying various aspects of chattel slavery in the US South, the Caribbean and Brazil, only a handful of works attempt to provide a synthetic account of its rise and decline from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Few scholars, on the (...) Left or Right, have made as profound a contribution to such a history as Robin Blackburn. Blackburn’s latest work, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights, does not simply summarise and update his earlier work, but extends his analysis to the rise and decline of ‘second slavery’ in nineteenth-century Cuba, Brazil and the US South. The American Crucible provides a multi-causal explanation of the origins and abolition of New World plantation slavery, examining the complex interactions between the rise of capitalism, political crises in the metropolitan countries, the transformation of popular and elite attitudes toward slavery, and the struggles of the slaves themselves. However, Blackburn’s inability to grapple with the specific structure and dynamics of capitalist and slave social-property relations, and their changing historical relationship, weakens key elements of his analysis. (shrink)

The method in question is conceptual analysis. The madness comes of its privileging received usage over theories that would revise our concepts so as to conform to the phenomena, not the other way around. The alternatives to capture-the-concept include revisionary theory-construction as practiced not only in the sciences but in some philosophies. I present a revisionary theory of an important kind of normativity -- the normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being for this or that -- which theory, I argue, (...) undermines the received objections to there being any such normativity objectively in the world. So too for other kinds of normativity, including the moral, insofar as the objections to their objectivity have the same form and presuppositions. (shrink)

Alleged counter-examples based on conceptual thought experiments, including those involving sense or content, have no force against physicalist supervenience theses properly construed. This is largely because of their epistemological status and their modal status. Still, there are empirical examples that do contradict Kim-style theses, due to the latter’s individualism. By contrast, non-individualist supervenience, such as “global” supervenience, remains unscathed, a possibility overlooked by Lynne Baker, as is dear from a physicalist account of sense in the case of non-human biological adaptations (...) that are for producing things about affairs in the world. (shrink)

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

David Papineau’s model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation’s being “for” this or that (say the eye’s being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti-naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cognitivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn’t.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non-cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non-cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

The concept of altruism, or disinterested concern for another's welfare, has been discussed by everyone from theologians to psychologists to biologists. In this book, evolutionary, neurological, developmental, psychological, social, cultural, and religious aspects of altruistic behavior are examined. It is a collaborative examination of one of humanity's essential and defining characteristics by renowned researchers from various disciplines. Their integrative dialogue illustrates that altruistic behavior is a significant mode of expression that can be studied by various scholarly methods and understood from (...) a variety of perspectives in both the humanities and the sciences. Altruism and Altruistic Love establishes a framework for scholarship on altruism by presenting definitions, a historical overview, a review of contemporary research, and debates in various disciplines, as well as a discussion of directions for future work. (shrink)

Collingwood's theory of presuppositions has never been taken very seriously. But critics have completely overlooked its significance as a theory or model of inquiry intimately tied to certain aspects of discourse in a context of investigation. Viewed this way, Collingwood's theory is on very strong ground, especially when it is reconstructed with the aid of a formal language. The reconstruction shows what is essential to the theory and what is not, allowing us to disregard those of Collingwood's extravagant claims which (...) have frustrated an understanding of his theory's real strength. The reconstruction also provides a general framework within which recent discussion of presuppositions can be unified. (shrink)

. In whatever form, terminal philosophy holds that some matters are so fundamental that they are presupposed in any practice of reason-giving; accordingly, if reason-giving were applied to such matters in order to justify them, or even to criticize, then the very attempt to do so would necessarily assume what is at issue, a fatal circularity . No further argumentative recourse is possible at this level of fundamentality ; rational reason-giving must terminate.