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The paper discusses three major points:1. Concerning the matrix of intelligence, as a solution to the problem, Popper proposes a Darwinian model based on a hierarchical idea of causality (downward causality);2. Underlying hierarchical causality are systemic properties, whether they be holistic or reductionist;3. Intelligence is a hierarchical causality imposed by an external agent – i.e., whenever an external agent is able to impose its system characteristics upon the object of its impact
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Usually associated with the notion of scientific cognition is the notion of scientific rationality. But science is bivalent – it is a synthesis of cognitive and social components, factors, functions, results. It develops under the influence of broader cognitive and social contexts. It is natural that, within science, cognitive rationality is closely intertwined with specific forms of value-normative rationality. This significantly, and often decisively, affects the process of the production of scientific knowledge and its impact on society.
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The main aim of this article is to analyse the relationship between two innovative concepts—the technoself and process identity—from a perspective inspired by process ontology. The working hypothesis is that industrialized and mass societies entered into a post-industrial or informational sphere of capitalism, becoming networking societies—also known as knowledge-based societies—which closely followed their role in approaching the plural identity of the digital Subject and the surveillance practices exercised in its governance as correspondent models for the changes of the current reality. The first section of the article is devoted to research on the technoself, a concept recently introduced by Luppicini in 2013. Criticizing the technoself in terms of process ontology and as a result of digitalization, subjectivity, and technical rationality, I will argue that the constitution of digital subjects, as well as their interactions, should be defined in terms of processes. Therefore, I introduce the concept of process identity—which includes the technoself—and explain how this approach contributes to the development of different research fields (such as speculative realism and object-oriented ontology) and how it affects Floridi’s distinction between digital ontology and informational ontology. The second section focuses on the effects of the digital environment on self-constitution practices and techniques, virtual worlds experiencing what Foucault recognizes as the aesthetics of existence. In the final part, I confront Bentham’s and Foucault’s panopticism, arguing that based on what is accomplished by process identities, networking societies represent societies of control, not disciplinary ones, and consequently this distinction should be applied in governing virtual communities. In the end, I will explain why notions such as digital personae or databased selves are insufficient, and should be replaced by the concepts of process identity and technoself, respectively, in order to improve the models of governing networking societies.
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This article discusses the significance of Hilary Putnam’s “brains in a vat” argument for the metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language in the last 30 – 35 years; the presentation is limited only to the classical discussion of the argument, almost entirely leaving aside the contemporary debate. Putnam devised this argument in order to refute both metaphysical realism and skepticism in philosophy. The analysis of the argument against metaphysical realism demonstrates that this realism is based on the causal restriction of linguistic reference. After the reconstruction of Putnam’s argument, the article attempts to show by further analyzing it the extent of its consequences for a philosopher’s epistemological stance, and especially for theories of truth.
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Using an analytical and synthetic approach, the article presents a summary of the changes that have taken place in the social context of science in the modern knowledge society as compared with the earlier industrial society. The author identifies the intense dynamic changes in the role, status and social functions of science occurring during the formation of knowledge-based societies. The article also identifies various concepts, models and political theses that, while focusing on one or another of the important aspect of these processes, fail to adequately articulate or explain the whole range of changes taking place in the exo-systemic social context of modern science. This proliferation of theoretical concepts and the diversity of their main focuses calls for a reconceptualization of the social dimensions of modern science, which would allow a sharper delineation of the new elements in the positioning of science as a factor of social development and in the interaction between science and society. It would also enable a more adequate and detailed interpretation of the respective processes. In this connection, a new concept of “socially robust science” is introduced.
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The article aims to indicate the aspects of reality we measure daily with our own imagination, perception and reason. The hidden reality inside that reality appears within life’s emanations. What we think, what we do, what we experience, refer to a hidden reality unknown to us; yet this parabolic reality is active everywhere and always. The main way to capture this new extra-dimensional world is through metaphor or, more generally, through tropology in the arts. We use tropes to reach the hidden levels of our reality, because they are infinite and produce paradoxes that lead to parabolic reality.
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The article argues that theorizing about the origin of the universe is imbued with metaphorical language. Only such a language can produce intuitive representations about some cosmic “cause” of the birth of the universe. Nor can it be otherwise, when one strives to say something about the genesis of everything – whether the theorizing be couched in theological or in purely scientific concepts.
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The Principle of Common Cause (PCC) puts forward the idea that events which occur simultaneously and are correlated have a prior common cause which screens off the correlation. I endorse the view that the PCC does qualify as a principle that can be used as a tool in explaining improbable coincidences. However, though there are epistemological advantages in common cause explanations of correlated events, the PCC is not impeccable. This paper offers a preliminary assessment of the PCC advocated by Reichenbach, and then attempts to illustrate three scenarios in which the principle might be inadequate in explaining correlated events. The paper also compares the Common Cause Principle and the Causal Markov Condition (CMC), and examines the advantages of CMC over the Common Cause Principle.
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The main aim of this article is to examine the contrast between humanism and anti-humanism as two different modern paradigms of considering the individual’s relation-ship with nature. My thesis is that ecology, as an ideological discourse, reshaped the both the democratic and totalitarian perspectives on humanism and anti-humanism by addressing liberties, self-care, and authenticity in terms of normative laws for environment, health, and the idea of natural-ness. Reconsidering Luc Ferry’s analysis from The New Ecological Order: Tree, Animal, Human, I will explain how a social-critical theory of modernity might be conceived in the terms of humanism and anti-humanism, represented by different ecological discourses whose main contribution was to add to the modern social contract the value of non-human beings, including animals, plants, and natural objects as subjects of law (in their most democratic versions) or to discount the value of humans (in their totalitarian structures), viewing racism, for example, as a clinical, biopolitical, and hence “ecological” discourse. I will argue that this condition is a cultural symptom of the anti-natural attitude of the modern individual.
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The article aims to analyze three observable obstacles facing the systems of science and education in Bulgaria, and, based on a relevant assessment of the intrinsic cultural and practical role of the two institutions for the prosperity of society, to propose adequate reforms in government policy for improving their functioning.
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Alfred North Whitehead, although probably known best for his collaborative work with Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica, also developed an original theory of learning and instruction which has much to offer for our times. His theory will be discussed in this paper. In order to do so, two criteria are first developed which in their combination give rise to five categories: radical behaviorism, cognitivism, and radical constructivism, with the intermediary categories of moderate behaviorism and moderate constructivism. A great number of educational researchers are ascribed to one of these five categories. After discussing the shortcomings of the three major philosophical proponents of these three major educational approaches (Hume, Kant, and Berkeley), the basic assumptions of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism are presented, and his assumptions concerning learning and teaching are discussed in view of it. Finally, it is shown that Whitehead’s organismic philosophy is able to offer a frame for integrating Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, thereby solving a long standing scandal of education.
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Whitehead believed that education must give us ideas that are usable in our actual lives. This line of thought is naturally provoked by the significant abundance of inert ideas that people pile up though education. The main reason for that, I claim, is the wrong focus of traditional education. It aims at producing individuals that would deliver high results on exams and tests. I take Whitehead’s claim the education must put emphasis on usable ideas as my starting point. I give a specific interpretation of useable ideas as abilities or functions. This provides a ground for connecting Whiteheadian thought to an already existing educational platform, offered by Nel Noddings1. Noddings develops a cognitive theory of education which places cognitive structures (I assume a robust analogy between structures, functions, and abilities) in the center of educational concern. At the end of the paper, I estimate some consequences from adopting the terminology of functions for connecting between human and machine learning.
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An undiscovered chapter in the history of architecture comes from the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia. Poetics of Architecture is the name given to the studioworkshop at the Georgian Technical University set up by the Georgian architect Shota Bostanashvili (1948–2013). From 1990 until his death he delivered insightful, playful and rather provocative lectures on architecture at this university. He preferred to call his architectural philosophy, critical discourse on architecture. Themes ranged from poetics to metapoetics of architecture. His philosophy of architecture is illustrated by some of his designs and executed projects which demonstrate a drift from existentialism to the philosophy of play. This study includes reference to his last building, a project whose demolition Bostanashvili witnessed before passing away. Based on the concept of the return of the sacred, this edifice was a sort of counter movement to technogenic architecture.
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1) The adaptation of our system of knowledge to “recalcitrant experience” can be postponed, even indefinitely. 2) This also holds true for the elimination of contradictions internal to the system. 3) Hence, the system does not automatically obey the laws of logic and the logical relations between statements are never definite. 4) There is not only one system of knowledge comprising all sentences, ranging “from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic”; there are numerous such systems. 5) Since logic is no less answerable to the “tribunal of sense experience” than are the natural sciences, their laws can also be regarded as rules of inference. 6) The system’s function (and the stimulus to its continuous reconstruction) is not merely to predict future sense perceptions, but also to actively create phenomena.
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The article presents a critical analysis of the Russell-Strawson debate of the 1950s, focused both on the problem of definite descriptions; but the author also discusses the expressions currently defined as indexicals. The article presents a critical review of Russell’s views on egocentric particulars (his term for indexicals) in his An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940) and Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948). Тhe article traces his theoretical insights, that can be thought of both in the spirit of the “wisdom” (criticized by Russell himself ) of Wittgenstein’s later works, and as closely approaching Strawson’s problematic of ordinary language. Among these insights are the notion of implicit egocentricity (1948) as well as of variable denotation, a notion introduced much earlier, in the manuscript of On Meaning and Denotation (1903), and that offers a possibility for rethinking the distinction between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions that Keith Donnellan presents in Reference and Definite Descriptions (1966). In this context, the author emphasizes the productivity of the thesis suggested by Strawson regarding the direct link between the problem of indexicality and that of definite descriptions.
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Ontological parsimony requires that if we can dispense with A when best explaining B, or when deducing a nominalistically statable conclusion B from nominalistically statable premises, we must indeed dispense with A. When A is a mathematical theory and it has been established that its conservativeness undermines the platonistic force of mathematical derivations (Field), or that a nonnumerical formulation of some explanans may be obtained so that the platonistic force of the best numericalbased account of the explanandum is also undermined (Rizza), the parsimony principle has been respected.
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This paper discusses the polemical question of whether explanations that produce understanding must be true. It argues positively for the role of truth in reaching explanatory understanding, by presenting three lines of criticism of alternative accounts. The first is that by rejecting truth as a criterion for evaluating explanations, any non-factual account thereby effectively cuts ties with the central theories of explanations, which provide at least partial criteria for explanatory understanding. The second line of criticism is that some of the most well-known non-factual accounts implicitly operate over a notion of partial-truth, and as such, they do not provide a valid alternative. The final critical argument is that, in the place of truth evaluations, these accounts often offer a multiplicity of other criteria, and by changing a unitary criterion such as truth for a collection of other requirements, these non-factive theories introduce a level of ad hoc-ness, which diminishes their normative value.
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The article explores yet another view of the history of mankind, and examines global problems related to historical processes, which are still far from receiving an unequivocal explanation. As an alternative to Marxism and other theories of social development that shed light on key historical events and global processes, I propose an account based on the hypothesis of the age periodization of the intellectual evolution of mankind. The main provisions of the hypothesis are set out in the content of the article. The methodological basis of the hypothesis is a comparative analysis of ontogenesis and phylogenesis. In other words, on the basis of known laws of intellectual development in ontogeny, I examine historical processes occurring in phylogeny, paying special attention to the substantiation of the main provisions of the hypothesis of the age periodization of the intellectual evolution of mankind.
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