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The author invokes issues (integrity of the Universe, epistemological status of its nature, system approach specifics) prompting to discuss once again the nature of the system approach in cosmology. For this purpose, he reviews the genesis of the system approach. The author considers Plato’s representations concerning synthesis of many knowledge and introduction of the concept “system” in Condillac’s and Kant’s works. The opposition identified by them — a system is an organized scientific knowledge and a system as an object of this knowledge — may be found later in many system concepts. However George Shchedrovitsky additionally claims and shows that a system approach has to be specific to the developed subject domain. Therefore, in particular, when creating a system approach for a methodology, he interprets it as a section of methodology, and builds the latter upon this approach. Besides, Shchedrovitsky maintains that activity which was a subject matter in methodology acts as an intermediary between the methodology and the “system language”. The author assumes that there is good reason for creating intermediaries in all similar cases. Agreeing with the division of the history of cosmology into two stages: “prescientific” (mythological and philosophical) and scientific proper, the author suggests calling them “protocosmology” and cosmology proper, claiming that in the first case the whole — Space, Universe — were set by means of mythological or philosophical schemes. The author explains his understanding of the concept of “scheme” and particularities of mythological and philosophical schemes of the Universe. Unlike with protocosmology, in cosmological doctrines Universe models are created on the basis of natural science schemes. But outside natural sciences — in philosophy and human sciences — philosophical schemes still contest these models. Proceeding from Vadim Kazyutinsky’s works, the author asserts that in terms of key parameters Cosmology has to be referred to a humanitarian scientific discipline, and its object cannot be described within one scientific discipline; that “the cosmological reality” is a multi-level one, and each level is characterised by its own patterns which shall be described by different cosmological theories. Based on the above considerations, the author concludes that the system approach has to differ significantly from classical and synergetic approaches.
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The purpose of this paper is to describe the most relevant features of the Global Citizenship Education (GCE) proposed by UNESCO for the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda. Thus, after having submitted an educational, political, and epistemological proposal in Rio+20 to achieve a sustainable development for eradication of poverty, our research will be focused in the construction of new philosophical discussions about the complexity of global problems of humanity in the third millennium. They include poverty, sustainable development, climate change, water scarcity, economic globalization, governance, ethics, health etc. Based on Complex Theory and transdiciplinary methodology, we also propose a transnational and transcultural educational milestone with the intentionality to contextualize human condition in the cosmodernity paradigm, which re-quires looking into the future with a polylogical perspective opened to universal interconnection and complexity of the world-society. Then, we propose the creation of a Constellation of Twinned NGOs-Schools which develop altruistic educational projects of cooperation in all corners of the planet to build, ultimately, a new transdemocratic horizon in the Cyber-Space-Time.
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This article examines legal judgments in light of the two ways that, according to Kant, the Power of Judgment operates. After analyzing both uses of this faculty, it justifies that legal decisions can be considered as a type of reflective judgments, but not as exemplary as the ones treated in the Critique of the Power of Judgment—namely, the aesthetic and teleological.
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Recent research and numerous titles published in the West prove unfounded views about “the end” of the Islamic philosophy after the death of Averroes and testify to the existence of a rich intellectual tradition developed within Muslim intellectual circles. Epistemology, although inextricably linked to the ontology and metaphysics, belongs to the disciplines that are particularly cherished within the later Islamic philosophical thought. The author shows that on the example of the doctrine on unification of intellector and intelligible (Ittihad al-‘āqil wa al-ma‘qūl), and ideas of knowledge-by-presence (‘ilm al-huduri), which are the categories that predominantly belong to Sadrian philosophical tradition.
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The topic of this paper is the question of in virtue of what first-person thoughts are about what they are about. I focus on a dilemma arising from this question. On the one hand, approaches to answering this question that promise to be satisfying seem doomed to be inconsistent with the seeming truism that first-person thought is always about the thinker of the thought. But on the other hand, ensuring consistency with that truism seems doomed to make any answer to the question unsatisfying. Contrary to a careful and enticing recent effort to both sharpen and escape this dilemma by Daniel Morgan, I will argue that the dilemma remains pressing both for broadly epistemic and broadly causal-acquaintance-based accounts of the aboutness of first-person thought.
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Review of: IVAN CEROVAC - Maria Paola Ferretti, The Public Perspective. Public Justification and the Ethics of Belief, London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, 196 pp.
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Subtraction is a critical method whereby a cognitively inaccessible reality is thought in terms of its inaccessibility or “subtraction” from discourse. In this essay I begin by considering the role of subtraction in Alain Badiou’s work, where the method receives its most explicit contemporary articulation. I then generalize subtraction beyond Badiou’s ontology to explore a productive aporia in posthumanist theory. The implicit subtraction of posthumanist epistemology and ontology, I claim, confronts theorists of the posthuman with an inescapable tension between their philosophical language and its deployment within the historical situation I call the “posthumanist predicament.” This reveals an equivalence between ontological subtraction and an empty compulsion to become what one cannot yet think, or “xenophilia.” That is, between a philosophy of limits that forecloses the thought of the posthuman (qua defined structure or subject) through subtraction and an implicit desire to construct or “become” this subtracted, unpresented posthuman.
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Alexander R. Galloway and Jason R. LaRiviére’s article “Compression in Philosophy” seeks to pose François Laruelle’s engagement with metaphysics against Bernard Stiegler’s epistemological rendering of idealism. Identifying Laruelle as the theorist of genericity, through which mankind and the world are identified through an index of “opacity,” the authors argue that Laruelle does away with all deleterious philosophical “data.” Laruelle’s generic immanence is posed against Stiegler’s process of retention and discretization, as Galloway and LaRiviére argue that Stiegler’s philosophy seeks to reveal an enchanted natural world through the development of noesis. By further developing Laruelle and Stiegler’s Marxian projects, I seek to demonstrate the limits of this vantage of “compression.” In turn, I also seek to create further bricolage between Laruelle and Stiegler while also further elaborating on their distinct engagement(s) with Marx, offering the mold of synthesis as an alternative to compression when considering Stiegler’s work on transindividuation. In turn, this paper seeks to survey some of the contemporary theorists drawing from Stiegler (Yuk Hui, Alexander Wilson and Daniel Ross) and Laruelle (Anne-Françoise Schmidt, Gilles Grelet, Ray Brassier, Katerina Kolozova, John Ó Maoilearca and Jonathan Fardy) to examine political discourse regarding the posthuman and non-human, with a particular interest in Kolozova’s unified theory of standard philosophy and Capital.
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The purpose of the work is to give the definition of a notion «musical environment» using a generalization of essential characteristics of «environment» as a universal category relating to different branches of scientific knowledge. The methodology of the study is based upon the use of comparative, theoretic, analytical methods and also general scientific approaches of comparison, systematization, and generalization which help to make a complex investigation of the object. The scientific novelty consists in introducing a new definition. Conclusion. The musical environment is a universal notion as it includes all components of sound music field creation process and perception of this field. Musical environment is an integral phenomenon basing upon music activity. Complex multi-level structure organized by the principle of interrelation, interdependency, and interconditionality of the elements helps to refer musical environment to the systemic phenomenon. In general, musical environment is a sound surrounding of the individual formed in the process of musical activity and covers all its components: creativity, performing, spreading and perception. It is influenced by time and place factors and by dynamics of social changes.
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When one calculates whether a table will fit into the space between a wall and a cupboard, it is likely that a calculation of this sort will be carried out by forming a mental image of the table, the wall, and the cupboard. If I think about my beloved, it is quite plausible that I will bring up a mental image of the one I love. […]
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This paper aims to explore and expand on Wittgenstein’s remarks on the nature of mental imagery. Despite some rather cryptic passages and obvious objections, his notion of mental imagery as possessing a constitutive (and not merely added) element of expressive thought and conceptuality offers critical insights linking perceptual capacities with our shared practices. In particular I seek to further develop Wittgenstein’s claim that perceptual impressions presuppose a “mastery of a technique.” I argue that this sense of technique, understood as acquired conceptual capacities, can explain and capture the rich and varied spectrum of expressive visual content that can be accessed by human beings initiated and embedded in a variety of shared practices. Using Gilbert Ryle’s account of dispositions, I cash out the notion of acquired conceptual capacities as spanning a wide latitude of responsive dispositions from mere “blind” visual habits to more normatively-guided, intelligent, and deliberately-trained visual “skills.” Visual impressions construed as such are hardly perceptually (nor representationally) univocal and instead exhibit a dynamic and reflexive plurivocity manifested through one’s initiation into shared practices and forms of life. This plurivocity makes possible a rich array of visual affordances that would otherwise not be accessible outside the context of a shared practice. This suggests that human beings possess a distinctive kind of expressive and responsive intelligence which picks out visual affordances determined not so much by a merely receptive perceptual faculty but by the subject’s skillful, active, and responsive engagement with the world.
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This paper offers a study of the less known today and less analysed epistolary novel by Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It focuses on the instances of female protagonist's unconventional behaviour according to the existing societal norms of the Victorian era. The research aims at pointing out the reasons modifying heroine’s behaviour and analysis of the reactions that the protagonist’s acts of nonconformity elicits in other characters of the novel. The undertaken study is believed to raise awareness of less studied Brontë sisters works in university literature and gender studies courses, as it touches upon the emerging issues of the female strength in the Victorian society.
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The aim of this article is to reconsider Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's book Social construction of realiy in the context of the contemporary research in sociology of knowledge and sociological discourse analysis. The impact and reception of the book is differentiated from the impact of the term „social construction“. The assumption is that methodological turn in this book is very important for contemporary sociological research of knowledge and discourse. It is emphasized that methodological turn meant turn towards the study of language and meaning as the key tools in the process of objectivation of social reality, but also the new approach to knowledge and social reality. At the same time, the research impulses of the book opened the space for new sociological research. One of the prominent contemporary research agenda within the sociology of knowledge – Sociology of knowledge approach to discourse – is also presented, since it is developed after the influence of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's Social construction of reality
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This paper deals with the poetics of one of the most important contemporary American playwrights, David Mamet.It emphasizes the crucial importance of language, of both what is said and what is omitted in Memet's plays, referring to the existential and ontological questions raised by them and the interpersonal relations in hierarchical structures established by the phallic order. Memet's plays by general consensus considered best are recognizable by its aggressive machismo, often "all-male" cast, "filthy language" and an implicit critique of liberal capitalism. Susceptible to changes in the socio-cultural context from nineties onwards Mamet has turned to writing plays featuring various versions of "otherness" – gender, social, ethnic, racial, sexual, showing via this private "affirmative action" that there are (at least) two sides to every story but choosing to stay out of the story altogether, siding with none of the “perspectives”.
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The aim of this text is to examine the vacant quotation as one of the intertextual variants in the recent Macedonian short story. The subject of analysis is the short story Rakopisot od Kitab-an by Vlada Urosevik. The analysis shows the main characteristics and procedures of this model of quotation (pseudoquotation, deductive narration, mistification, paradoxes) as well as shows his metatextual functions: this short story contains implicit comment on the intertextuality and comment on studies of intertextuality. Accordingly, Urosevik shows the epistemological uncertainity and ontological relativism of the literature and in the literature.
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Reconsidering Joseph Conrad’s, E. M. Forster’s, and D. H. Lawrence’s hermeneutic hesitations, this paper proposes that the rejection of inherited epistemology traceable in their texts carries an existential risk and points out that already modernism thought itself an inadequate approach to the other. Conceptualized as not-me, utterly unapproachable by means through which I know I am, the other becomes synonymous with death. In approaching the amoral geographical phenomena of the other, the texts of all the three travellers abound with strikingly similar imagery, of holes and reptiles, which is intrinsically abhorrent in Euro-Christian signification. In addition, the otherness unbearable to the accessible literary medium and the deceptiveness of the symbolical exchange are pointed out, in all the three cases, by sudden textual ruptures.
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The article covers theoretical considerations concerning the essence of paradigm and scientific orientations in security-related science. The importance of ontological and epistemological questions being crucial and helpful in considering reality and explanation of security-related phenomena is also emphasised. The problem of scientific assumptions and positions was mentioned with the emphasis on the importance of the need to combine various perspectives and manners of practising science that would favour encompassing the entire profusion of security reality.
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Feminist epistemologies have promoted other worlds as not only thinkable and realizable but already materialized – at the fringes or margins or flip sides of dominating views: in new ma- terialist accounts these practices of world making are called “other worldings”. To think the world, and hence truth and reality as plural and in process, as collaborative worldly endeav- ours and related to multiple entangled – or situated – speaking subjects, has been a crucial achievement of feminist epistemology until today. On this basis, the paper brings together ethical approaches from feminist new materialism with decolonial contestations of Enlight- enment accounts on autonomous subjectivity towards a radical re-valuation of interrelating with others and enactments of the “methodology of the oppressed”.The city, in our view, is not only the place of neo-liberal divisions and high-tech competi- tions but also best suited for realizing encounter zones and creating space for transversal queer-feminist movements. maiz – Autonomous Centre by and for Migrant Women* in the city of Linz in Austria serves as an example for such a realization of theoretical and practical worlding, as we aim to show in this paper, especially with the foundation of the “University of Ignoramuses” and migrazine.at. We argue that not only this encounter zone seems prom- ising but also its realization in the social, material and virtual space were the pleasure of networking and lived relations of solidarity, learning, un-learning and transformation can be discovered and trained with experts in the field.On this way, the paper brings together an onto-ethico-epistemological approach with an ac- tivist approach for transformation of reality.
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In this article, the author investigated modern relevance of the philosophy of Juraj Dragišić, especially in connection with his attitude towards the problem of God’s omniscience (foreknowledge) and free will. Namely, while investigating this problem in the work Proročanska rješenja, the author found out interesting and very innovative attempts of resolving the issue, those which are even today included into list of the most actual and famous solutions. The discussion in Proročanska rješenja starts with the question whether it is possible to affirm compatibilism between God’s omniscience (foreknowledge) and human free will. It seems that Dragišić’s final conclusion is that this can be done, but only if he doesn’n know future (doesn’t have the knowledge of future, or the foreknowledge), what we tried to show and to prove (defend) by exhibiting various solutions.
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