"The Party's struggle to educate the people as atheists," said Comrade L. F. Il'ichev in his report to the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, November 25, 1963, "has had a history and has gone through stages, at each of which concrete problems were solved, and forms and methods of work specific to the given period were developed.".

First of all - about the connections of culture and religion. This question is one of those who, in the recent past, was subjected to all kinds of distortions. Consequently, our contemporary Ukrainian society needs a true meeting of religion and culture. The attempt of Marxism to create a new humanism, which completely rejects religion and is based only on atheism, and even that which was given a militant character, proved to be insolvent. Even now we understand that it is (...) impossible to build a culture denying the close connection between religion and culture. (shrink)

A stable classification of practical principles into mutually exclusive types is foundational to Kant’s moral theory. Yet, other than a few brief hints on the distinction between maxims and laws, he does not provide any elaborate discussion on the classification and the types of practical principles in his works. This has led Onora O’Neill and Lewis Beck to reinterpret Kant’s classification of practical principles in a way that would clarify the conceptual connection between maxims and laws. In this paper I (...) argue that the revised interpretations of O’Neill and Beck stem from a mistaken reading of the fundamental basis of the classification of practical principles. To show this, I first argue that Kant distinguishes between maxims and laws on the bases of validity and reality. I then argue that although a practical principle necessarily has the feature of validity, its reality in actually moving the agents to action sufficiently makes a principle a practical principle. If this is so, I argue that the classification of practical principles must be based on the extent to which they are effective in human agents. Such a classification yields us three exhaustive and mutually exclusive types namely, “maxims that are not potential laws”, “maxims that are potential laws” and “laws that are not maxims”. (shrink)

Substantive scientific letter writing is a cost-effective mode of complementing observational and experimental research. The value of such philosophically uncommitted and unsponsored well-balanced scientific activity has been relegated. Critical letter writing entails the abilities to: maintain rational scepticism; refuse to conform in order to explain data; persist in keeping common sense centre-stage; exercise logic to evaluate the biological significance of mathematical figures, including statistics, and the ability to sustain the will to share insights regarding disease mechanisms on an ostensibly lower (...) research platform. During peer review, innovative letter writing may share the occasionally unfortunate fate of innovative research. Rejected scientific letters do not automatically lose copyright. Periodicals with high letter loads will see some valuable contributions wasted, but that is the price for maintaining autonomy in scientific publication. The scientific community is an integrated whole that must respect the rights of authors at all levels. Unauthorised forwarding of rejected letters sets the dangerous precedent of justifying unjust means. (shrink)

The article gives a short account of V.A. Smirnovs scientific biography, including his work in Tomsk University in Siberia and in the Department of Logic of the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow.

Книга является едва ли не первой попыткой отрефлектировать, как происходило становление философского самосознания в России.

The volume presents a set of invited papers based on analyses of legal discourse drawn from a number of international contexts where often the English language ...

Nunez's description of the brain as a medium capable of wave propagation has provided some fundamental insights into its dynamics. This approach soon reaches the descriptive limits of the brain as a physical system, however. We point out some biological constraints which differentiate the brain from physical systems and we elaborate on its consequences for future research.