This study aimed to examine how anxiety related to different styles of coping during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these relationships were moderated by the cultural orientations of individualism/collectivism and a person’s sense of meaning in life. A sample of 849 participants from Georgia completed an online survey during the final stage of lockdown. To measure the main variables, we used the State Anxiety Inventory, the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism Scale, the Meaning of Life Questionnaire, the COVID-19 Worry (...) Scale, and the Ways of Coping Scale tailored to COVID-19 pandemic. The latter measured rational coping via the subscales of information accessing/processing and action-planning coping, and affective coping – via the subscales of passive-submissive and avoidant coping. Results suggested that anxiety positively predicted both affective coping styles and negatively predicted the action-planning coping style, while COVID-19 worry predicted all coping styles; presence of meaning in life positively predicted both rational coping styles and negatively predicted the avoidant coping style, while search for meaning positively predicted all coping styles; individualism negatively predicted the passive-submissive style and positively predicted the action-planning style, whereas collectivism predicted all coping styles; furthermore, individualism and collectivism moderated the link between anxiety and the passive-submissive coping style, presence of meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and avoidant coping style, while search for meaning in life moderated the link between anxiety and the action-planning coping style. Overall, the findings enrich the cultural transactional theory of stress and coping, and generate insights for the culture-sensitive approach to the meaning in life. The results were conceptualized vis-a-vis Georgia’s intermediate position between clear-cut individualism and clear-cut collectivism. (shrink)

Physicists of my generation have for fifty years been employing the findings of Einstein's work, sometimes without noticing it any more than healthy people think about the air they breathe. On this occasion it is our duty to evaluate his scientific accomplishment, to pay his works their due, and to trace their influence on contemporary science.

Central among the complex philosophical problems created by the development of contemporary physics is the problem of the objectivity of physical knowledge, the problem of the reflection of objective reality in our knowledge.

In the heroic chronicle of Russia's revolutionary movement, the Decembrists - representatives of the first stage of that movement - hold a special place. The boldness of the initiative they displayed, the self-sacrifice of the heroes who rose in struggle against the autocracy, the at least partly conscious intention of creating - albeit at the price of their own lives! - a historic precedent: all this compels one to look closely at the moral content of their activity. The significance of (...) the moral factor in the historical experience of Decembrism is determined by yet another noteworthy circumstance: the finest members of the nobility were rising against the privileges of their own class. This feature was noted by Herzen when he wrote that this movement included members of the wealthiest and most famous noble families of Russia, and that "Pestel' proposed to them that they seek, even at the cost of their lives, the expropriation of their own estates.". (shrink)

In November 1969, the USSR Academy of Sciences' Presidium held a discussion on the principal lines of work being engaged in by the Academy's Institute of Philosophy. A report on this matter was presented by the Institute's director, P. V. Kopnin, Member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Participants in the discussion of the report were M. V. Keldysh, President of the USSR Academy, Academicians F. V. Konstantinov, M. B. Mitin, A. M. Rumiantsev and P. N. Fedoseev, and Corresponding Academician (...) Ts. A. Stepanian. (shrink)

The Patriotic War of 1812 was a tremendous historical testing of our people against the world's most powerful enemy — the army of Napoleon. The treacherous invasion of Russia by the Napoleonic hordes called forth in our country a feeling of hatred for the foreign conquerors, self-sacrifice and heroism. The people as a whole rose to struggle against the invaders. Alongside the Russian Army there were numerous folk levies and guerrilla bands, all with the single motive of freeing their homeland (...) from the foreign conquerors. Whereas Napoleon's was a war of conquest against Russia, the War of 1812 was, from the very outset, a just war of national liberation for their country on the part of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and other peoples. (shrink)

Lenin's work "On the Significance of Militant Materialism," written in the spring of 1922, is justly regarded as the philosophical testament of our leader. In it, the tasks of the day were merged with the tasks of the entire epoch on the basis of a profound analysis of reality.

In joining a discussion of the subject, object, method, and other specifications of culturology, one should first define one's view of the correlation between culture and history, culturological and historical knowledge, the purposiveness of history as a social movement, and its certainty as a science. From the point of view of positivist philosophy and the social science based on it, history a priori lacks any teleology, goal-orientation, or inner meaning and is simply the sum of the collective life of people. (...) I would even risk defining the historical process as a dynamics of people's realization of the collective forms of their life activity and an accumulation of justified models of the corresponding social experience. In that case, historical knowledge can be defined as a special way of describing and systematizing the most socially significant processes and results of people's realization of their sociality, that is, technologies of collective existence. I draw attention to the fact that what we are talking about, first of all, is the way we-the interested people-have chosen to describe past events we had systematized in some way or another on some suitable basis. In itself, history is not a living entity and cannot have any independent goals, meanings, intentions, or other manifestations of free will, which are characteristic of a freely acting human individual. (shrink)

I investigate Bocheński's first-order logic formalization of the argument for the incorruptibility of the human soul given by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae (Ia,75,6). I suggest a slightly different axiomatization that reflect better Aquinas' informal argument. Along the way, I also fix a mistake in Bocheński's derivation that the human soul is not corruptible per se.

The review of Prof. Bywater′s new edition of the Poetics once more raised the question of the interpretation of dfuipria in Aristotle′s definition of the tragic hero.

This allegory is among the most well-traversed passages in Plato's dialogues and deservedly so. Its emotional impact is undeniable, yet it confronts the reader with several problems of interpretation. There is a strong sense that it is of central importance to the crucial questions of the Platonic philosopher's education and his role in society, and it possibly holds one key to an understanding of the Republic as a whole.

Although it is not yet officially recognized as a clinical entity which is diagnosable, Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) has been included in section III for further study in the DSM-5 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2013). This is important because there is increasing evidence that people of all ages, in particular teens and young adults, are facing very real and sometimes very severe consequences in daily life resulting from an addictive use of online games. This article summarizes general aspects (...) of IGD including diagnostic criteria and arguments for the classification as an addictive disorder including evidence from neurobiological studies. Based on previous theoretical considerations and empirical findings, this paper examines the use of one recently proposed model, the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model, for inspiring future research and for developing new treatment protocols for IGD. The I-PACE model is a theoretical framework that explains symptoms of Internet addiction by looking at interactions between predisposing factors, moderators, and mediators in combination with reduced executive functioning and diminished decision making. Finally, the paper discusses how current treatment protocols focusing on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Internet addiction (CBT-IA) fit with the processes hypothesized in the I-PACE model. (shrink)

Alexithymia is a dimensional trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings and an externally oriented thinking (EOT) style. Here, we explored interrelationships between alexithymia and measures assessing how individuals process and regulate their responses to environmental and body-based cues. Young adults (N= 201) completed self-report questionnaires assessing alexithymia, sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), interoceptive accuracy (IA), sensory processing styles, and current levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Whereas EOT was related to low orienting sensitivity, problems with emotional appraisal (difficulties identifying (...) feelings/difficulties describing feelings) were related to heightened sensory sensitivity. In addition, features of SPS improved the prediction of alexithymia above and beyond that accounted for by IA. We suggest that EOT is linked to problems maintaining a representation of one’s emotions in working memory and that low IA and problems with emotional appraisal are linked to atypicalities in sensory processing that may impact embodiment. A latent profile analysis revealed five classes of individuals distinguished by the relative strength of different alexithymic traits and by differences in IA and sensory processing styles. The classes identified included two lexithymic, one modal, and two alexithymic groups, showing different susceptibilities to SPS. Overall, our findings lend support to the view that alexithymia is associated with atypicalities in both bottom–up and top–down processes that impact emotion processing and regulation. They also raise the possibility that individuals with different alexithymia subtypes may differ with regard to a range of factors, including not only SPS but also early life experiences, mental health outcomes, and susceptibility to various personality disorders. (shrink)