The scientific and technological development of modern society determines the need to monitor the innovative activities of universities, departments, and teaching staff. One of the leading factors influencing the formation of professional competencies of cadets studying at a military University is the innovative activity of departments. According to the authors of the article, the quality of training of future military specialists depends on this. The article reveals the aspects of creating conditions for creative self-development of cadets and their active participation (...) in round tables on scientific and technical topics at the Department of military higher education. It is concluded that the innovative activity of University departments has a great influence on the motivation of cadets to participate in scientific work under the guidance of the teaching staff, and also ensures the development of the intellectual potential of future military specialists. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of Law and Legal Thinking in Critical Theory with specific reference to the arguments that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri offer in their book Commonwealth. The core idea is that Critical Theory is no less radical, but much more concrete, when it is performing not only an external, but also an internal critique of the Law. It shows that the role of the law in critical theory emerges as a problem when the latter claims that (...) ‘there is no outside’ and that ‘the legal base of the system structures our lives.’ It then discusses optimistic and pessimistic strategies to overcome the problem, and argue for a demanding strategy which consist in articulating the external and the internal critique of the law. To make this point, the paper goes back to the epistemic context in which critical attitudes are deployed (the ‘Conflict of the Faculties’), describes the four theoretical moves constitutive of the historical moment in which, at the end of the 18th Century, modern law as we know it was conceived of and founded; and sketches the key moments of the history of the internal critique of the law. It then illustrates the demanding strategy with examples taken from the field of Intellectual Property, and concludes that the Law is malleable and open enough to allow the thinking and practicing of radical alternatives from within the legal system and also that alternatives spoken in the language of the law are no less radical, but certainly, more concrete than others. (shrink)

This book is not only a major twentieth-century contribution to Dostoevsky’s studies, but also one of the most important theories of the novel produced in our century. As a modern reinterpretation of poetics, it bears comparison with Aristotle.“Bakhtin’s statement on the dialogical nature of artistic creation, and his differentiation of this from a history of monological commentary, is profoundly original and illuminating. This is a classic work on Dostoevsky and a statement of importance to critical theory.” Edward Wasiolek“Concentrating on the (...) particular features of ‘Dostoevskian discourse,’ how Dostoevsky structures a hero and a plot, and what it means to write dialogically, Bakhtin concludes with a major theoretical statement on dialogue as a category of language. One of the most important theories of the novel in this century.” The Bloomsbury Review. (shrink)

Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus attention on the psychology and biology of human morality. One research program that has recently gained attention is universal moral grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky's program in linguistics. This approach is thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate moral competence from computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological and phylogenetic perspectives. In this article, (...) I outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence that supports it. I also propose a novel computational analysis of moral intuitions and argue that future research on this topic should draw more directly on legal theory. (shrink)

We exhibit a 10-element semigroup Q such that the question “Does a given quasi-identity hold inQ?” is co-NP-complete while the question “Does a given identity hold inQ?” can be answered in linear time.

Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for (...) jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement. (shrink)

The aim of the dissertation is to formulate a research program in moral cognition modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar and organized around three classic problems in moral epistemology: What constitutes moral knowledge? How is moral knowledge acquired? How is moral knowledge put to use? Drawing on the work of Rawls and Chomsky, a framework for investigating -- is proposed. The framework is defended against a range of philosophical objections and contrasted with the approach of developmentalists like Piaget and Kohlberg. (...) ;One chapter consists of an interpretation of the analogy Rawls draws in A Theory of Justice between moral theory and generative linguistics. A second chapter clarifies the empirical significance of Rawls' linguistic analogy by formulating a solution to the problem of descriptive adequacy with respect to a class of commonsense moral intuitions, including those discussed in the trolley problem literature originating in the work of Foot and Thomson. Three remaining chapters defend Rawls' linguistic analogy against some of its critics. In response to Hare's objection that Rawls' conception of moral theory is too empirical and insufficiently normative, it is argued that Hare fails to acknowledge both the centrality of the problem of empirical adequacy in the history of moral philosophy and the complexity of Rawls' approach to the problem of normative adequacy. In response to Nagel's claim that the analogy between moral theory and linguistics is false because whatever native speakers agree on is English, but whatever ordinary men agree in condemning is not necessarily wrong, it is argued that the criticism ignores both Rawls' use of the competence-performance distinction and the theory-dependence of the corresponding distinction in linguistics. In response to Dworkin's claim that Rawls' conception of moral theory is incompatible with naturalism and presupposes constructivism, it is argued that Dworkin's distinction between naturalism and constructivism represents a false antithesis; neither is an accurate interpretation of the model of moral theory Rawls describes in A Theory of Justice. The thesis concludes by situating Rawls' linguistic analogy within the context of broader debates in metaethics, democratic theory, natural law theory, and the theory of moral development. (shrink)

My primary aims in this paper are to explain what exploitation is, when it’s wrong, and what makes it wrong. I argue that exploitation is not always wrong, but that it can be, and that its wrongness cannot be fully explained with familiar moral constraints such as those against harming people, coercing them, or using them as a means, or with familiar moral obligations such as an obligation to rescue those in distress or not to take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. (...) Its deepest wrongness, I argue, lies in our moral obligation not to extract excessive benefits from people who cannot, or cannot reasonably, refuse our offers. (shrink)

We exhibit a 10-element semigroup Q such that the question Does a given quasi-identity hold in Q? is co-NP-complete while the question Does a given identity hold in Q? can be answered in linear time.

There is a dilemma in modern medicine, and, as a general family practitioner, this dilemma has great impact on me as a professional with a responsibility to my patients, and on the treatments I prescribe. Every day we receive a lot of updated information about relevant issues in treatment of various conditions we encounter in our daily practice. There is a great deal of interesting, serious research; however, frequently results and conclusions are very different and at times, contradictory. It is (...) extremely difficult to evaluate updated research information, and to understand trends in current medicine. Our responsibility to our patients is to find a solution for this problem. (shrink)

The object of the research of this article is the modern philosophical discourse on the problem of identity of personality. The subject of the study is the substantial approach of R. Swinburne and his place in this discourse. The author analyzes R. Swinburne's approach and, in particular, its main advantages – the ability to solve the problem of personality reduplication. However, as the author of the article shows, the substantive approach itself is not devoid of vulnerabilities. First of all, he (...) is vulnerable to criticism using the verification principle. Swinburne believes that his approach is not consistent only with a strong version of the verification principle. However, as the author of this article shows, even a weak version of the verification principle is a problem for Swinburne's substantive approach. The author presents his own alternative to the substantial approach for overcoming the reduplication argument and interpreting hypothetical situations associated with it. Such an alternative is the perdurant theory of personality. The article presents a study in the field of the history of modern analytical philosophy. Therefore, the key research method used is historical and philosophical. In particular, the study used a textual analysis of the works of philosophers, first of all, R. Swinburne, according to several sources, a reconstruction of his views was carried out. The article also uses the method of comparative analysis, in particular, a comparison of empiricist approaches and a substantive approach to the problem of identity of personality is made. The article is devoted to the substantial concept of identity of R. Swinburne's personality. Despite the fact that this concept represents an important alternative to solving the problem of identity, it has not been studied much, especially in the Russian history of philosophy. The novelty of the article also lies in a detailed analysis of the verification counterargument in relation to the substantive approach. The author of the article also presents his own alternative to the substantial approach, which allows overcoming the indicated difficulties. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that the substantial approach only partially solves the problem of asynchronous identity of personality, and is most vulnerable to criticism with the help of the verification argument. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Could a computer be programmed to make moral judgments about cases of intentional harm and unreasonable risk that match those judgments people already make intuitively? If the human moral sense is an unconscious computational mechanism of some sort, as many cognitive scientists have suggested, then the answer should be yes. So too if the search for reflective equilibrium is a sound enterprise, since achieving this state of affairs requires demarcating a set of considered judgments, stating them as explanandum sentences, and (...) formulating a set of algorithms from which they can be derived. The same is true for theories that emphasize the role of emotions or heuristics in moral cognition, since they ultimately depend on intuitive appraisals of the stimulus that accomplish essentially the same tasks. Drawing on deontic logic, action theory, moral philosophy, and the common law of tort, particularly Terry's five-variable calculus of risk, I outline a formal model of moral grammar and intuitive jurisprudence along the foregoing lines, which defines the abstract properties of the relevant mapping and demonstrates their descriptive adequacy with respect to a range of common moral intuitions, which experimental studies have suggested may be universal or nearly so. Framing effects, protected values, and implications for the neuroscience of moral intuition are also discussed. (shrink)

In this comment on Joshua Greene's essay, The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul, I argue that a notable weakness of Greene's approach to moral psychology is its neglect of computational theory. A central problem moral cognition must solve is to recognize (i.e., compute representations of) the deontic status of human acts and omissions. How do people actually do this? What is the theory which explains their practice?

Many pigmented heterokonts are able to synthesize elements of their cell walls (the frustules) of dense biogenic silica. These include diatom algae, which occupy a significant place in the biosphere. The siliceous frustules of diatoms have species‐specific patterns of surface structures between 10 and a few hundred nanometers. The present review considers possible mechanisms of uptake of silicic acid from the aquatic environment, its transport across the plasmalemma, and intracellular transport and deposition of silica inside the specialized Silica Deposition Vesicle (...) (SDV) where elements of the new frustule are formed. It is proposed that a complex of silicic acid with positively charged proteins silaffins and polypropylamines remains a homogeneous solution during the intracellular transport to SDV, where biogenic silica precipitates. The high density of the deposited biogenic silica may be due to removal of water from the SDV by aquaporins followed by syneresis—a process during which pore water is expelled from the network of the contracting gel. The pattern of aquaporins in the silicalemma, the membrane embracing the SDV, can determine the pattern of species‐specific siliceous nanostructures. BioEssays 30:328–337, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Inspired by the views by the American educationalist Henry Giroux on the role teachers and educationalists should be playing in the time of postmodernism and by Abraham Maslow's concept of biological idioscyncrasy, the author discusses how the concepts of the dialogues created by the representatives of Norwegian Dialogue Pedagogy, Hans Skjervheim, Jon Hellesnes, and Lars Løvlie, can be applied in the area of higher education. The aim of pedagogy in the time of postmodernism is to provide learners with knowledge and (...) skills that will allow them to earn a living, maintain democracy and fight social, racial or gender injustice. This can be achieved only if educationalists provide for educating thinking and emancipated individuals and accordingly consider the issues of identities, ethics, differences, language, transformative intellectuals, and biological idiosyncrasy. The main pedagogical function of the dialogue concepts is to encourage Bildung by enlightening learners to seen and unseen power and authority relations. The dialogue can have a form of a discussion in class, at meetings, in talk between a teacher and a learner, and parents and a child, where everyone should be allowed to speak his or her mind. The dialogue in instructional situations is also understood as a dialogue in a broad sense, including texts in the text-books. Depending on the type of problem that is discussed, a dialogue can take many different forms, all of which can and should be used in supervising graduate and post-graduate students, as the use of the concepts will promote emancipation and self-determination. When it comes to the issues of ethics, transformative intellectuals and biological idiosyncrasy, the use of the concepts should be an approach of choice. However, the author argues that the dialogue concepts do not meet the requirement for the language that Giroux suggests that pedagogy in the time of postmodernism should use, and are based on assumptions that partly conflict with the postmodern understanding of the truth. The author proposes that a new type of a dialogue, the dialogue that allows existence of several narratives at the same time, should be developed. (shrink)

This article provides a brief analysis of the life, work, and character of Nikolai Berdyaev. He is described as both a captive and apologist of freedom, and as an influential representative of existential personalism.

In this paper, the predicate counterparts, defined both axiomatically and semantically by means of Kripke frames, of the modal propositional logics $\textbf {GL}$, $\textbf {Grz}$, $\textbf {wGrz}$ and their extensions are considered. It is proved that the set of semantical consequences on Kripke frames of every logic between $\textbf {QwGrz}$ and $\textbf {QGL.3}$ or between $\textbf {QwGrz}$ and $\textbf {QGrz.3}$ is $\Pi ^1_1$-hard even in languages with three (sometimes, two) individual variables, two (sometimes, one) unary predicate letters, and a single (...) proposition letter. As a corollary, it is proved that infinite families of modal predicate axiomatic systems, based on the classical first-order logic and the modal propositional logics $\textbf {GL}$, $\textbf {Grz}$, $\textbf {wGrz}$ are not Kripke complete. Both $\Pi ^1_1$-hardness and Kripke incompleteness results of the paper do not depend on whether the logics contain the Barcan formula. (shrink)

When is it immoral to take advantage of another person for one's own benefit? For some, such as Ruth Sample, John Roemer, and Will Kymlicka, the answer at least partly depends on whether what one takes advantage of is the fact that this person is, or has been, the victim of injustice. I argue, however, that whether person A wrongly exploits person B is wholly unrelated to whether A takes advantage of the fact that B is, or was, the victim (...) of injustice. I also develop a positive account regarding which personal attributes one should not exploit for personal gain. (shrink)

In this guest column, Epstein offers “a new sign” that, he argues, resolves difficulties that have arisen in many theories and practices, including linguistics, semiotics, literary theory, poetics, aesthetics, ecology, ecophilology, eco-ethics, metaphysics, theology, psychology, and phenomenology. The new sign, a pair of quotation marks around a blank space, signfies the absence of any sign. Most generally, “ ” relates to the blank space that surrounds and underlies a text; by locating “ ” within the text, the margins are brought (...) inside and can become the focus of attention. Not only the margins but also the material background of a text (the page or screen) can be brought forward and focused on through the transparency of the sign “ ”, in which case “ ” becomes a sign of itself. Consubstantial with its medium, therefore, this sign is both relative and universal: “ ” is the same everywhere, on every surface, in every language, and also in the arts. Epstein analyzes works by Rauschenberg, Malevich, Ilya Kabakov, and Vasilisk Gdenov in the visual arts, as well as music by John Cage, to demonstrate the usefulness of his new sign for aesthetics and art criticism. Each discipline, he argues, has its own nonspeakable conditions and assumptions that it needs to bring inside disciplinary frontiers. At the frontier of language, “ ” is both inside and outside, and therefore can express the nonspeakable condition of speakability. In concluding, Epstein suggests that the task of the avant-garde in theory today is to develop a “negative semiotics”: a semiotics of nonsigns, modeled on negative (apophatic) theology. (shrink)

This article argues that the key elements of the prima facie case of harmful battery may form critical building blocks of moral cognition in both humans and nonhuman animals. By contrast, at least some of the rules and representations presupposed by familiar justifications to battery appear to be uniquely human. The article also argues that many famous thought experiments in ethics and many influential experiments in moral psychology rely on harmful battery scenarios without acknowledging this fact or considering its theoretical (...) or empirical implications. The unifying factor in all these studies is goal-directed harmful contact, inflicted without consent or justification. (shrink)

Publication date: 16 April 2018 Source: Author: Svitlana Serdiuk, Dmytro Volkov This article highlights the results of the research on psychological features of eschatological expectations of young people with different levels of creative thinking. Our study shows that 26 % of respondents believe that the End of the World will not arrive. Twenty-four per cent of respondents are skeptical about the likelihood of the Apocalypse, but they admit its possibility. Thirty-seven per cent of respondents believe that the End of (...) Time will not come soon and the remaining 13% expect the Apocalypse very soon. Some respondents indicate that growth in the rate of prophecies connected with the End of the World in recent years suggests that humanity itself seeks it, while 9 % of respondents state the religious point of view in their works. Also 9 % of respondents believe that there will be no destruction of civilization or destruction of the planet but there will be a mental transition to another level of being. The existence of correlation between creative thinking and eschatological expectations was also empirically established in our study, especially in the group of respondents with a high level of verbal creativity. There is no correlation between the index of non-verbal creativity, personal religiosity and eschatological expectations in the sample. These results confirm that our study is relevant and offers great prospects for further scientific research. (shrink)

I argue against the view that there is intrinsic value in making one's own decisions about the direction and shape of one's life.

In the paper, the authors explore the relations between educational technology and educational ideology through the lens of philosophical inquiry. The optics of critical analysis is applied to review the instructional tools, services and systems which compose the complex picture of contemporary educational technology. The authors claim that even when initially established in the ideological domain of educational anarchism most educational technologies when being applied systemically can end up on the more oppressive side of the ideological spectrum close to educational (...) totalitarianism. They focus on the risks of technology that are growing with the social change brought by the lifelong learning paradigm in education. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to test the pedagogical potential of design and research activities in the context of the formation of research independence of cadets of a military higher educational institution through experimental work. The article reveals the technological aspect of the implementation of design and research activities by cadets of a military university. Scientific novelty lies in the identification and verification of the effectiveness of the pedagogical conditions that contribute to the formation of research independence of cadets (...) of a military higher educational institution. The article presents the author's edition of the thematic focus and content of the design and research assignments. As a result of the study, the empirical method proved the effectiveness of the revealed pedagogical conditions on the process of forming the research independence of cadets of a military higher educational institution. (shrink)