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In the paper is considered the history of philosophy and philosophers in Veliko Turnovo before the official foundation of our Faculty of Philosophy. Some their advantages are commented from the point of view of the present-day philosophy.
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The understanding of human consciousness as a kind of computer is insufficient and even irrelevant, taking into account the modern advances in the development of cognitive science. The author argues that a certain paradigm shift in the understanding of human consciousness and its creative abilities takes place. Consciousness is rather dynamic and autopoietic entity that is embedded into environment and intimately related with the human body. Consciousness is embodied, situated and enactive. A great contribution to this conception of human consciousness (mind) is made by Francisco Varela and his followers. Autopoiesis of consciousness means that it is able to maintain its integrity in the processes of self-organization in the permanently changing environment. An autopoietic activity of consciousness it directed to the search of elements that are missed, it longs for completing integral structures. For these reasons, it is possible to create a new, fresh view on the creative activities of consciousness, if we base our notions on the modern theories of complexity, dynamic chaos and self-organization. In the theoretical frames, chaos acquires a creative image; it is not simply a destroying force. Complex structures emerge in chaos and out of chaos. Chaos is organized and it organizes. When destroying, it builds. Chaos has many facets. Chaos is a way of renovation of complex organizations. A periodical immersion of human consciousness into chaos is a way of stimulation of its cognitive and creative activities.
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The paper seeks to investigate some of the anthropological consequences of the First World War, which was not simply just another but the first total war. It was without a clear dividing line between the front and the rear; it was with long duration, involving the mobilization of millions of people, most of whom not specialized in conducting military actions. In this perspective, the paper analyses some specific modes of the interpenetrations of peacetime’ attitudes and frontline’ experiences. Special attention is paid to the rearrangement of the human sensorium of the soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. Another subject is the correspondence between soldiers and their families in the rear. The letters contain both the experience from the front and the peacetime attitudes of the soldiers. Their language is shaped by the tension between the two worlds – of the war and of the peace.
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Contemporary cognition theory claims to be a separate branch, separate from philosophy. Would that mean that the other major pillar ontology would also become independent? What will be left of the philosophical body in that case? This, however, will not be a topic to be dealt with here, but only with this side of epistemology that is relevant to anthropology and the social sciences. The context of anthropology will give another status of knowledge theory to the human world, which is socially constructed. The problem of reality and truth will be related to what people believe and adhere to.
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The NOEMA Journal continues to publish, in a series, the book THE SECRET OF GENIALITY (Yerevan, Armenia, Noyan Tapan Printing House, 2002) by our colleague Robert Djidjian, not only because we all must know the philosophical research and creation (in our domain of epistemology and philosophy of science and technology) from a wider geographic area than that provided by the established fashion in virtue of both extra-scientific reasons and a yet obsolete manner to communicate and value the research; but also because the book as such is living, challenging and very instructive. The title of the book is suggestive enough to make us to focus on an old age question: the dialectic of the insight, of the discovery, its psychology moving between flashes of intuitions and cognizance stored in memory, and its logic of composition of knowledge from hypotheses to their demonstration and verification. The realm of science is most conducive to the understanding of this dialectic and the constitution of the ideas which are the proofs of what is the most certain for humans: the “world 3”, as Popper called the kingdom of human results of their intellection, and though transient and perishable in both their uniqueness and cosmic fate, the only certain proof of the reason to be of homo sapiens in the frame of multiversal existence. Therefore, creation is the secret of the human geniality, and how to create science is a main part of this secret.
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The aim of the present paper is to present the ontology of mathematical objects using the Meinongianism. Exactly in this framework we can accept abstract objects as non-existing, which are an object of knowledge, because they bear properties. We can apply these facts on mathematical objects, which are а type of abstract objects. So we can talk about non-existing math objects instead of their existence. I will use the dilemma of Benacerraf to prove the consequences of this acceptance of math objects as existing. But there is one deficiency of them being non-existing objects. First I will review the approach in the ontology and in the abstract objects. The next step will be to apply Maiong`s method to ontology of math objects and to demonstrate its strengths and weaknesses. And accordingly to the results, how far can we use this decision of the problem of abstract objects and special to math objects.
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Kanawrow's anthropology traces the transcendental-phenomenological path of the formal-rational construction of human being. It is constructed by virtue of the creative activity of thinking and is not identical with the immediate existence of man as a natural, rational and social being. The pure form of thinking (reason) rationally formats the givenness of the immediacy of man, as the synthetic unity of the obtained result is ontologically presented as being of man. Two points are critically important. First, the immediate existence of man as a natural, reasonable and social being is not obliterated or destroyed. It is a permanent basic prerequisite that unendingly and sustainably accompanies human existence. Second, in the critical version, the rational formatting takes place not directly and brutally, but indirectly, transcendentally, through phenomena. On the a priori-posterior portal, phenomena (transcendental schemes, Kant) are born. They are not equivalent to experiences. In the field of experience, phenomena mediate and exert cognitively and ontologically the constructive power of reason. Many phenomena make up the transcendental and the process of transcendentalization. According to Kanawrow, transcendental phenomena are space-time-number, love, language, politics, freedom and religion (other phenomena may be revealed, as well). They have a spontaneous occurrence in the a priori-posterior transition of pure thinking and a playful manifestation in the field of experience. In this transcendental-phenomenological way, based on the immediate givenness of man (natural being, gender, emotions, communication, cohabitation, consciousness, faith, etc.), Kanawrow shows how reason ontologically builds human being as an organism, family, people, state, spirit , church and more. In this ontological typicality, one is simultaneously a body, husband/wife, individual, citizen, personality, layman, etc. According to Kanawrow, the unity of these modes of being of man is the Self. It is a synthetic philosophical picture of man that is alternative to his existence.
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This article reflects a particular aspect of Merleau-Ponty phenomenological understanding of expression which solves the problem of other selves. As part of the solution I have explained Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of materialism and intellectualism and the introduction of embodied subjectivity. When we understand embodied subjectivity as the constitutive aspect that refers to the totality of an individual, this enables us to understand the concept of expression both in terms of bodily gestures and also from the perspective of linguistic expressions. When we understand the meaning of expressions in this way the concept of expression thus opens us up to understand others because of the sharing aspect of language as well as the world. It thus explains from the embodied expression to the notion of bodily gestures and from the bodily expression to facial expression in particular and expression in general dismissing the idea that expressions are not the result of our mental states.
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When philosophy of mind goes into every detail in explaining about consciousness and its every aspect, the problem of other minds being its part is not spared. In such context going against the traditional way of giving justification Wittgenstein novel approach to other minds is remarkable and is close to the phenomenological understanding. The analysis of the sensation of pain as one of its important factors in solving the other minds problem is unique and it is this that proves how Wittgenstein dissolves the problem rather than giving a solution. This article focuses Wittgenstein’s two important factors: Private Language Argument and the concept of the sensation of pain in dissolving the issue. And in this I have made an attempt to show how his novelty in approaching this problem gains importance even today.
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An extended approach to the comprehension of virtual reality is developed in the article. Virtual reality is understood not only as a logically possible or cybernetically constructed reality but also as continuous turbulence of potencies of the complex natural and social world we live in, the wandering of complex systems and organizations over a field of possibilities, such a realization of forms and structures in which many formations remain in latent, potential forms, and are in the permanent process of making and multiplying a spectrum of possibilities, lead to the growth of the evolutionary tree of paths of development. It is shown that such an understanding of virtual reality corresponds to concepts and notions developed in the modern science of complexity. The most significant concepts are considered, such as the nonlinearity of time, the relationship of space and time, the uncertainty of the past and the openness of the future, the choice and construction of the future at the moments of passing the bifurcation points. Some cultural and historical prototypes of these modern ideas of virtual reality are given. It is substantiated that the vision of virtual reality being developed today can play the role of a heuristic tool for understanding the functioning and stimulation of human creativity.
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Aristotle defined the ethical and intellectual virtues which are recognized as fundamental even today. Contemporary virtue ethics still takes into account Aristotelian virtues. The modern moral philosophers have tried to find new ethical values in a society in which religions are in decline and the old values lost their meaning. The starting point of their research has been Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” which has remained the most important work in ethics influencing the philosophical thinking until nowadays. This paper seeks to explain the actual importance of the cardinal Aristotelian virtues and how they are seen today.
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This article aims to analyze the beginning of the transition from logos to myth. To incorporate the religious into his Enlightenment philosophical system, Schelling presents a reconstruction of myth. The conceptions of the religious consciousness of the Self from antiquity as presented. The myth embodies cultural reality and the history of self-consciousness, an idea that was later considered by Mircea Eliade. Myths evolve in parallel with human evolution. The need for the development of abstract thinking and the complex social environment presuppose the new mythology. Christianity in history appears as part of the mechanism of human development, which generally symbolizes the transition from mythology to Christianity. Theology must abstract mythologies from the purely divine, but together they participate in the formation of human consciousness.
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The article presents a critique of the commonly held assumption about the practical advantage of endurantism over perdurantism regarding the problem of future-directed self-concern of a person. The future-directed self-concern of a person crucially depends on the possibility of the right differentiation of diverging futures of distinct persons, therefore any theory of persistence that does not entail a special non-branching relation of a person to only their future self seems to be counterintuitive or unrealistic for practical purposes of personal persistence. I argue that this pragmatic rationale about future-directed self-concern is equally challenging for both theories of persistence. Moreover, I indicate, that both of these theories fall and stand on the practical feasibility of hidden ontological presuppositions about specific second-order notions of concerns of persons for their future.
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In this paper I present a new dimension for philosophical and scientific analysis of artifacts as anthropogenic abiotic objects along the lines of the distinction between real and virtual. This distinction purports to replace the classical opposition material–ideal as a better way of defining what an artifact is and as one more compatible with the scientific description and explanation of artefacts. The virtual relativity of the virtual artifacts is their relatedness to local language forms as an adequate coordinate system. The real relativity of artifacts is their relatedness to local and global human life processes. The article follows empirical science as a technique of studying artifacts, and subscribes to the anthropological paradigm.
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The main objective of this article is to demonstrate why despite the growing interest in justifying AI’s trustworthiness, one can argue for AI’s reliability. By analyzing why trustworthiness ethics in Nickel’s sense provides some well-grounded hints for rethinking the rational, affective and normative accounts of trust in respect to AI, I examine some concerns about the trustworthiness of Savulescu and Maslen’s model of moral AI as an adviser. Specifically, I tackle one of its exemplifications regarding Klincewicz’s hypothetical scenario of John which is refracted through the lens of the HLEG’s fifth requirement of trustworthy artificial intelligence (TAI), namely, that of Diversity, non-discrimination and fairness.
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The essay puts to the test Darwinian evolutionist theories, especially the key concepts of adaptation, natural selection and survival of the fittest, in the reading of several plots and fictions (some of them Ark-related animal fictions) concerned with evolution, trauma, adaptability, mimicry/mimesis and survival: Julian Barnes’s Flaubert Parrot and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage, Robert Kroetsch’s The Studhorse Man and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Weaving its critical argument with reference to several of Derrida’s reflections – on the impossibility of a pure origin, the proximity between commencement and commandment, the logic of obsequence, or relation between being and following (je suis), applied deconstructively to the traditional hierarchy between the human and the animal, mastery and monstrosity, and logos and bêtise, etc. – ‘Zo(o)graphies’ is structured in a series of interlinked tableaux, bestiaries as well as insets (Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Jacques Derrida’s Glas). Following from the opening evocation of Peter Greenaway’s Vermeer-themed film A Zed & Two Noughts, which introduces the joint semantics of zographein: to paint from life, and zoon: animal, discreetly at work throughout, this study will eventually attempt to recast the problematic of the evolution of literature and literary forms as involution and regression.
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The unconscious (das Unbewusste; etymologically, that which is unknown) is a relatively modern concept that naturalized areas of the unknown previously explored by literature, mythology, and metaphysics. Each in their own domain, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche, the three ‘masters of suspicion’ (according to Paul Ricoeur), debunked the hubristic claims of modern rational consciousness, exposing its social, existential and psychological grey zones. 1 Inspired by, yet critiquing humanity’s confidence in the power of reason, their acknowledgement of the limits of the Enlightenment is emblematized in Freud’s charting of the conflictual relations between the orderly ego and the unruly id.
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This article is about philosophy as a path, leading man, a civilised being, to re-establish communication with what Gilles Deleuze calls “primordial nature.” This foundational phenomenon, being the primary reservoir of life energy, underpins the existence of the human civilised world. However, by the same token, this phenomenon, since exempt from conditioning and subject to no restrictions or constraints, can disrupt the functioning of this world. Thus, disengagement from primordial nature is the fundamental purpose of the existence of civilization. Unfortunately, its development over time excessively diminishes that connection, deepening alienation, frustration and aggression in social life. I will undertake to demonstrate that the practice of philosophy can be one of the basic ways of coping with that inevitable civilisational impasse.
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The article deals with the process of formulating the subjectivity in Bolesław Miciński’s “Journeys to hells”. The main research tool for the analysis and interpretation of the essay is Hans Blumenberg’s idea of metaphorology. The interpretation is guided by the two thinkers’ shared view of issues concerning philosophical language – both, in their own way, shunned linguistic conceptualization of any sort. Blumenberg’s metaphor of terra incognita, as interpreter by Miciński, is utilized in diverse ways to present the image of the world as well as individual and social dimensions of human existence. The notion of “journey”, a problematic thread of modernity and psychoanalysis allow the author to highlight the imaginative potential inherent in the metaphor itself. Considering the “travelers” significant for Miciński, namely Odysseus and Descartes, as well as a stylistic richness of the analyzed essay, allows for showing that the metaphor of “unknown lands” can be useful in interpretation. The aim of the article aims to present the subjectivity presented in “Journeys to Hell” which, manifesting itself in a metaphorical language distant from discursive counterparts, does not fit into any conceptual forms.
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Through the Fates Myth we understand a series of ancient customs that we encounter during the Birth cycle, accompanied by the beliefs and specifics of each people. If we refer to Fates from a historical point of view, we notice the fact that ancient man placed a high value on his destiny and fate. The three Greco-Roman goddesses decided the course of a man’s life, in general, benevolent, although they could also have an evil character, depending on the actions and deeds of the intended. Compared to other people, in Romanian mythology, the Fates do not have specific names. It is known that there are three of them and they are represented like young girls, more precisely like fairies who come to the window at night, on the third day, after the birth of the child. In the mythology of the Indo-Europeans, the belief in Fates refers specifically to the three defining moments of life, Birth, Marriage and Death. Capricious or not, good or evil are divided arbitrarily, and the balance somehow remains balanced within this ritual. What is destined cannot be changed, but fate can somehow be improved through various less Christian practices.
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