Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Cyclin-dependent kinase 5 has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that overexpression of p25, an activator of cdk5, led to increased levels of BACE1 mRNA and protein in vitro and in vivo. A p25/cdk5 responsive region containing multiple sites for signal transducer and activator of transcription was identified in the BACE1 promoter. STAT3 interacts with the BACE1 promoter, and p25-overexpressing mice had elevated levels of pSTAT3 and BACE1, whereas cdk5-deficient mice had reduced levels. Furthermore, mice with a (...) targeted mutation in the STAT3 cdk5 responsive site had lower levels of BACE1. Increased BACE levels in p25 overexpressing mice correlated with enhanced amyloidogenic processing that could be reversed by a cdk5 inhibitor. These data demonstrate a pathway by which p25/cdk5 increases the amyloidogenic processing of APP through STAT3-mediated transcriptional control of BACE1 that could have implications for AD pathogenesis. (shrink)

Based on brain imaging findings, we present a model according to which addiction emerges as an imbalance in the information processing and integration among various brain circuits and functions. The dysfunctions reflect (a) decreased sensitivity of reward circuits, (b) enhanced sensitivity of memory circuits to conditioned expectations to drugs and drug cues, stress reactivity, and (c) negative mood, and a weakened control circuit. Although initial experimentation with a drug of abuse is largely a voluntary behavior, continued drug use can eventually (...) impair neuronal circuits in the brain that are involved in free will, turning drug use into an automatic compulsive behavior. The ability of addictive drugs to co‐opt neurotransmitter signals between neurons (including dopamine, glutamate, and GABA) modifies the function of different neuronal circuits, which begin to falter at different stages of an addiction trajectory. Upon exposure to the drug, drug cues or stress this results in unrestrained hyperactivation of the motivation/drive circuit that results in the compulsive drug intake that characterizes addiction. (shrink)

Purpose: The cognitive effects of total sleep deprivation on the brain remain poorly understood. Electroencephalography is a very useful tool for detecting spontaneous brain activity in the resting state. Quasi-stable electrical distributions, known as microstates, carry useful information about the dynamics of large-scale brain networks. In this study, microstate analysis was used to study changes in brain activity after 24 h of total sleep deprivation.Participants and Methods: Twenty-seven healthy volunteers were recruited and underwent EEG scans before and after 24 h (...) of TSD. Microstate analysis was applied, and six microstate classes were identified. Topographies and temporal parameters of the microstates were compared between the rested wakefulness and TSD conditions.Results: Microstate class A showed lower global explained variance, frequency of occurrence, and time coverage in TSD than RW, whereas microstate class D displayed higher GEV, frequency of occurrence, and time coverage in TSD compared to RW. Moreover, subjective sleepiness was significantly negatively correlated with the microstate parameters of class A and positively correlated with the microstate parameters of class D. Transition analysis revealed that class B exhibited a higher probability of transition than did classes D and F in TSD compared to RW.Conclusion: The observation suggests alterations of the dynamic brain-state properties of TSD in healthy young male subjects, which may serve as system-level neural underpinnings for cognitive declines in sleep-deprived subjects. (shrink)

I'm now in my forties, but my teacher is still alive and well; so I'm still one of the junior generation. When I was a graduate student, my teacher told me that I didn't have enough background in Chinese traditional studies, and in a burst of energy I went off and read my way, albeit in a rather random fashion, through everything from the Four Books to the Cheng brothers [Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Confucian scholars of the Song dynasty] (...) and Zhu Xi. My studies had started off with fiction, and the Four Books came afterwards; I had started off as an "educated youth," and became a student later. Doing things that way round, one can expect to have problems; but even so, when I read the ancient classics, I still feel some singular emotions, which I cherish purely because they are my own. When I finished reading the Analects and closed my eyes to think about it, I felt that to utter those great truths so often and so earnestly Confucius must have been a very sweet and naive old man. His students were always hanging on his every word and, in his concern for them, he said that A could do this, or B could do that, like an old lady listing the characteristics of her grandchildren. Sometimes the old gentleman had a furtive side to him, as in the chapter "The Master went to see Nanzi" [See Analects VI. 28; Nanzi was the wife of Duke Ling of Wei]. When he emerged, he insisted that he had committed no "impropriety." In a nutshell, I liked him, and if I had been born during the Spring and Autumn period [722-481 b.c.e.], I would have gone and studied under him, because the atmosphere round him was like that of the Pickwick Club. His ideas were actually pretty ordinary, and there is nothing special about them to win our admiration. The ceremonial on which he laid such particular emphasis was in my view much the same as the rituals performed during the Cultural Revolution—I've been through all those morning requests for instructions and evening reports myself and it wasn't very interesting. It may be indispensable for the very young, but for educated adults it is a burden. However, if I'd gone along to be taught by Confucius, I would have gone for the atmosphere, and I would not have expected to learn much. (shrink)

Lachlan observed that the infimum of two r.e. degrees considered in the r.e. degrees coincides with the one considered in the ${\Delta_2^0}$ degrees. It is not true anymore for the d.r.e. degrees. Kaddah proved in (Ann Pure Appl Log 62(3):207–263, 1993) that there are d.r.e. degrees a, b, c and a 3-r.e. degree x such that a is the infimum of b, c in the d.r.e. degrees, but not in the 3-r.e. degrees, as a < x < b, c. In (...) this paper, we extend Kaddah’s result by showing that such a structural difference occurs densely in the r.e. degrees. Our result immediately implies that the isolated 3-r.e. degrees are dense in the r.e. degrees, which was first proved by LaForte. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 89-104 [Access article in PDF] The Ethical Power of Music:Ancient Greek and Chinese Thoughts Yuhwen Wang Both the ancient Chinese and Greeks from around the fifth century B.C. to around third century A.D. recognized the immense impact that music has on the development of one's personality, and both regarded it as crucial in cultivation for the proper disposition in youth. Music's (...) power over one's ethos 1 — that is, human disposition — was emphasized by Plato and by Chinese authors of various documents. 2 As will become clear, music in both cultures was considered an important means for a proper education and a powerful tool for cultivating and controlling the people of a nation-state. In both cases, the power of music was further connected to the way the universe works. Yet despite their similar views about music, the reasoning strategies used in the two cultures differ enormously. Observing how the two remote cultures conceived the relationship between music and the ethos may give us some insight to music's role in aesthetic education among us modern listeners.In this essay, I investigate how the power of music was understood and explained in these two ancient cultures, and the similarities and differences in their explanations and reasoning strategies. What mechanisms were thought to be at work behind this musical power? How close are ancient Greeks and Chinese in their conceptions of musical power upon the ethos? In particular, the Yue Ji (Record of Music, from the Li Ji) and the Yue Shu (Book of Music, from the Shi Ji) from ancient China, and Plato's writings from ancient Greece will be taken as the foci of the comparison.The Yue Ji and Yue Shu are two of the most important documents in ancient Chinese musical philosophy, respectively included as individual sections in the Li Ji (Record of Rituals) and Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian). Both are believed to be later versions of the same source document, which has never been found. In the Chinese textual tradition, the Yue Ji is the earliest fully developed treatise on music that has come down to us. Its authorship has been debated for centuries, but scholars generally agree that [End Page 89] it was completed prior to the middle of the Western Han dynasty (second and first centuries B.C.) The entire contents of the Yue Ji are included in the Yue Shu. The latter contains additional material, is organized in a more logical way, and is also thought to have been compiled during the Western Han dynasty. 3In the first part of this essay, I will use the Yue Ji, the Yue Shu, and Plato's writings to show how the concept of music's power over the ethos evolved in the two ancient cultures. This is closely related to their views on music's effect in regulating human behavior, its educational value, its benefits for governing a state, and its close association with Nature and the universe. Then in the second part, I will focus on the ways that Plato and the authors of the Yue Ji and Yue Shu explained this power, and the reasoning strategies that they used. Essential Belief in Music's Power The close relationship between music and the ethos is explicitly announced in the Yue Ji and the Yue Shu. Both documents state approvingly that "music represented (made clear) virtue" for the ancient rulers (SSJ, 5, 678). 4 Various kinds of music are then pointed out as having different effects upon human ethos and emotion: Men have powers of the body and powers of the mind but they cannot remain stable with regard to grief, pleasure, joy, and anger. They are moved by external causes. Thus originates the appearance of the various affections. Therefore, if feeble, trivial, and rushed music prevails, people will be sad. If harmonious, peaceful, varied but simple music prevails, people will be gratified and happy. If vigorous, violent, and forceful music prevails, which arouses people to... (shrink)

The phrase “minimal risk,” as defined in the United States’ federal research regulations, is ambiguous and poorly defined. This article argues that most of the ambiguity that one finds in the phrase stems from the “daily life risks” standard in the definition of minimal risk. In this article, the author argues that the daily life risks standard should be dropped and that “minimal risk” should be defined as simply “the probability and magnitude of the harm or discomfort anticipated in research (...) are not greater than those encountered during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.1 (2004) 89-104 [Access article in PDF] The Ethical Power of Music:Ancient Greek and Chinese Thoughts Yuhwen Wang Both the ancient Chinese and Greeks from around the fifth century B.C. to around third century A.D. recognized the immense impact that music has on the development of one's personality, and both regarded it as crucial in cultivation for the proper disposition in youth. Music's (...) power over one's ethos 1 — that is, human disposition — was emphasized by Plato and by Chinese authors of various documents. 2 As will become clear, music in both cultures was considered an important means for a proper education and a powerful tool for cultivating and controlling the people of a nation-state. In both cases, the power of music was further connected to the way the universe works. Yet despite their similar views about music, the reasoning strategies used in the two cultures differ enormously. Observing how the two remote cultures conceived the relationship between music and the ethos may give us some insight to music's role in aesthetic education among us modern listeners.In this essay, I investigate how the power of music was understood and explained in these two ancient cultures, and the similarities and differences in their explanations and reasoning strategies. What mechanisms were thought to be at work behind this musical power? How close are ancient Greeks and Chinese in their conceptions of musical power upon the ethos? In particular, the Yue Ji (Record of Music, from the Li Ji) and the Yue Shu (Book of Music, from the Shi Ji) from ancient China, and Plato's writings from ancient Greece will be taken as the foci of the comparison.The Yue Ji and Yue Shu are two of the most important documents in ancient Chinese musical philosophy, respectively included as individual sections in the Li Ji (Record of Rituals) and Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian). Both are believed to be later versions of the same source document, which has never been found. In the Chinese textual tradition, the Yue Ji is the earliest fully developed treatise on music that has come down to us. Its authorship has been debated for centuries, but scholars generally agree that [End Page 89] it was completed prior to the middle of the Western Han dynasty (second and first centuries B.C.) The entire contents of the Yue Ji are included in the Yue Shu. The latter contains additional material, is organized in a more logical way, and is also thought to have been compiled during the Western Han dynasty. 3In the first part of this essay, I will use the Yue Ji, the Yue Shu, and Plato's writings to show how the concept of music's power over the ethos evolved in the two ancient cultures. This is closely related to their views on music's effect in regulating human behavior, its educational value, its benefits for governing a state, and its close association with Nature and the universe. Then in the second part, I will focus on the ways that Plato and the authors of the Yue Ji and Yue Shu explained this power, and the reasoning strategies that they used. Essential Belief in Music's Power The close relationship between music and the ethos is explicitly announced in the Yue Ji and the Yue Shu. Both documents state approvingly that "music represented (made clear) virtue" for the ancient rulers (SSJ, 5, 678). 4 Various kinds of music are then pointed out as having different effects upon human ethos and emotion: Men have powers of the body and powers of the mind but they cannot remain stable with regard to grief, pleasure, joy, and anger. They are moved by external causes. Thus originates the appearance of the various affections. Therefore, if feeble, trivial, and rushed music prevails, people will be sad. If harmonious, peaceful, varied but simple music prevails, people will be gratified and happy. If vigorous, violent, and forceful music prevails, which arouses people to... (shrink)

The power grid is an important connection between power sources and users, responsible for supplying and distributing electric energy to users. Modern power grids are widely distributed and large in scale, and their security faces new problems and challenges. Information entropy theory is an objective weighting method that compares the information order of each evaluation index to judge the weight value. With the wide application of entropy theory in various disciplines, the subject of introducing entropy into the power system has (...) been gradually concerned. This article aims to study the smart terminal security technology of the power grid perception layer based on information entropy data mining. This article analyzes its related methods and designs a smart terminal for the power grid. On this basis, a data analysis platform is built and a safety plan is designed. The result is that the average absolute error, root mean square error, average absolute percentage error, and mean square error of the platform's power load forecast are 1.58, 1.96, 8.2%, and 3.93, respectively. These error values are within the ideal range, and the data processing ability is strong. The packet loss rate of the adversary's eavesdropping was tested, and the average packet loss rates at locations a, b, c, and d were 1.05, 1.2, 1.81, and 2.2%, respectively. Data packets will be definitely lost, so the platform is highly secure. (shrink)

Stone & Wang collate the nascent research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with social media use. In particular, they highlight two important factors in understanding how social media use shapes the way individuals and groups remember the past: the type of information (personal vs. public) and the role (producer vs. consumer) individuals undertake when engaging with social media. Stone and Wang investigate those two features in relation to induced forgetting for personal information and false memories/truthiness for public information.

This article discusses some ethical issues that can arise when researchers decide to increase the amount of payment offered to research subjects to boost enrollment. Would increasing the amount of payment be unfair to subjects who have already consented to participate in the study? This article considers how five different models of payment—the free market model, the wage payment model, the reimbursement model, the appreciation model, and the fair benefits model—would approach this issue. The article also considers several practical problems (...) related to changing the amount of payment, including determining whether there is enough money in the budget to offer additional payments to subjects who have already enrolled, ascertaining how difficult it will be to re-contact subjects, and developing a plan of action for responding to subjects who find out they are receiving less money and demand an explanation. (shrink)

The concept of hysteria is traced from Hippocrates, where it was thought to be caused by a wandering uterus, through Galen and up to Freud. Throughout the history of medicine from the early Greeks up to the end of the nineteenth century, the definition and diagnosis of hysteria had a function similar to that found in the persecution of witchcraft: it sought to eradicate the outbursts of nonconforming and emotionally threatening conduct of women. At the beginning of the twentieth century, (...) however, the category virtually disappears from psychiatric nosologies. (shrink)

This essay reviews six different approaches to intellectual property. It and argues that none of these accounts provide an adequate justification of intellectual property laws and policies because (1) there are many different types of intellectual property, and (2) a variety of incommensurable values play a role in the justification of intellectual property. The best approach to intellectual property is to assess and balance competing moral values in light of the particular facts and circumstances.

Most of the discussion in bioethics and health policy concerning social responsibility for health has focused on society’s obligation to provide access to healthcare. While ensuring access to healthcare is an important social responsibility, societies can promote health in many other ways, such as through sanitation, pollution control, food and drug safety, health education, disease surveillance, urban planning and occupational health. Greater attention should be paid to strategies for health promotion other than access to healthcare, such as environmental and public (...) health and health research.Lifestyle plays a major role in most of the illnesses in industrialised nations.1 Six of the 10 leading factors contributing to the global burden of disease are lifestyle related: unsafe sex, high blood pressure, tobacco use, alcohol use, high cholesterol and obesity.2 Lifestyle-related illnesses also contribute to the rising costs of healthcare. Spending on healthcare accounts for about 16% of the gross domestic product in the USA, or US$1.9 trillion.3 Although smoking has declined steadily there since the 1960s, smoking-related medical expenses are still about US$75.5 billion per year.4 Obesity, which has been climbing in the past two decades, accounts for about US$75 billion in healthcare costs there each year.5 Alcoholism and drug addiction in the USA account for annual healthcare costs of about US$22.5 billion and US$12 billion, respectively.6,7 Federal government spending on healthcare relating to HIV/AIDS is over US$13 billion per year.8Given the well-documented relationship between lifestyle, disease burden and healthcare costs, it makes economic and medical sense to hold individuals morally responsible for their health-related choices. While this view has a great deal of intuitive appeal, it also faces numerous objections.9–12 First, holding individuals entirely responsible for their own health conflicts with medicine’s obligation to treat the sick and society’s obligation …. (shrink)

Susan Schneider (2019) has proposed two new tests for consciousness in AI (artificial intelligence) systems, the AI Consciousness Test and the Chip Test. On their face, the two tests seem to have the virtue of proving satisfactory to a wide range of consciousness theorists holding divergent theoretical positions, rather than narrowly relying on the truth of any particular theory of consciousness. Unfortunately, both tests are undermined in having an ‘audience problem’: Those theorists with the kind of architectural worries that motivate (...) the need for such tests should, on similar grounds, doubt that the tests establish the existence of genuine consciousness in the AI in question. Nonetheless, the proposed tests constitute progress, as they could find use by some theorists holding fitting views about consciousness and perhaps in conjunction with other tests for AI consciousness. (shrink)

This essay develops a framework for thinking about the moral basis for the commodification of human reproductive materials. It argues that selling and buying gametes and genes is morally acceptable although there should not be a market for zygotes, embryos, or genomes. Also a market in gametes and genes should be regulated in order to address concerns about the adverse social consequences of commodification.

Inappropriate authorship is a common problem in biomedical research and may be becoming one in bioethics, due to the increase in multiple authorship. This paper investigates the authorship policies of bioethics journals to determine whether they provide adequate guidance for researchers who submit articles for publication, which can help deter inappropriate authorship. It was found that 63.3% of bioethics journals provide no guidance on authorship; 36.7% provide guidance on which contributions merit authorship, 23.3% provide guidance on which contributions do not (...) merit authorship, 23.3% require authors to take responsibility for their contributions or for the article as a whole, 20% provide guidance on which contributions merit an acknowledgement but not authorship, 6.7% require authors to describe their contributions, and only 3.3% distinguish between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. To provide authors with effective guidance and promote integrity in bioethics research, bioethics journals should adopt authorship policies that address several important topics, such as the qualifications for authorship, describing authorship contributions, taking responsibility for the research and the difference between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. (shrink)

Informed consent is one of the foundational ethical and legal requirements of research with human subjects. The Nuremberg Code, the Helsinki Declaration, the Belmont Report, the Common Rule and many other laws and codes require that research subjects make a voluntary, informed choice to participate in research.12345 Informed consent is based on the moral principle of respect for autonomy, which holds that rational individuals have a right to make decisions and take actions that reflect their values and preferences. 6 Whereas (...) most guidelines and codes also require that informed consent be properly documented, informed consent is much more than signing a piece of paper: It is a continuous process of communication between the investigator and the research subject. 7 Because the body of knowledge impacting a study frequently changes, subjects should receive information from investigators after they have enrolled in a study, such as significant new findings that may affect their decision to participate in research or clinically useful tests results. 8910 In large studies, some investigators use newsletters to update subjects on the progress of research and other developments.11Most of the ongoing communications between investigators and subjects involve little more than information sharing, without revisiting the decision to participate in research or signing any additional documents. Sometimes, however, it may be necessary for subjects to reaffirm their decision to participate, to re-consent, or to sign or re-sign a document. 8 Re-consent can be defined as an action in which a subject makes the decision to participate in research once again. Re-consent is different from reaffirming a commitment to participate in a study, because in re-consent one actually reconsiders the information necessary to make decision, whereas in reaffirmation one simply expresses …. (shrink)

Psychopaths routinely disregard social norms by engaging in selfish, antisocial, often violent behavior. Commonly characterized as mentally disordered, recent evidence suggests that psychopaths are executing a well-functioning, if unscrupulous strategy that historically increased reproductive success at the expense of others. Natural selection ought to have favored strategies that spared close kin from harm, however, because actions affecting the fitness of genetic relatives contribute to an individual’s inclusive fitness. Conversely, there is evidence that mental disorders can disrupt psychological mechanisms designed to (...) protect relatives. Thus, mental disorder and adaptation accounts of psychopathy generate opposing hypotheses: psychopathy should be associated with an increase in the victimization of kin in the former account but not in the latter. Contrary to the mental disorder hypothesis, we show here in a sample of 289 violent offenders that variation in psychopathy predicts a decrease in the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders; that is, psychopathy predicts an increased likelihood of harming non-relatives. Because nepotistic inhibition in violence may be caused by dispersal or kin discrimination, we examined the effects of psychopathy on (1) the dispersal of offenders and their kin and (2) sexual assault frequency (as a window on kin discrimination). Although psychopathy was negatively associated with coresidence with kin and positively associated with the commission of sexual assault, it remained negatively associated with the genetic relatedness of victims to offenders after removing cases of offenders who had coresided with kin and cases of sexual assault from the analyses. These results stand in contrast to models positing psychopathy as a pathology, and provide support for the hypothesis that psychopathy reflects an evolutionary strategy largely favoring the exploitation of non-relatives. (shrink)

In Gorgias, Socrates stands accused of argumentative "foul play" involving manipulation by shame. Polus says that Socrates wins the fight with Gorgias by shaming him into the admission that "a rhetorician knows what is right . . . and would teach this to his pupils" . And later, when Polus himself has been "tied up" and "muzzled" , Callicles says that he was refuted only because he was ashamed to reveal his true convictions. These allegations, if justified, directly undermine Socrates' (...) claim to be improving his interlocutors by argument. For if Socrates' use of shame tends to produce insincere assertion, then elenchus cannot serve as a tool for moral reform. In an important recent paper, Jessica Moss presents a new apologia for Socrates on these old charges. According to Moss, although Socrates adopts a strategy of shaming rather than reasoning his interlocutors into agreement, this is legitimate because his appeals to shame function as appeals to a moral sense, which connect a person to his own "deep" convictions. Moreover, she claims that shame "can be a more effective tool of persuasion than reason," for it is capable, where reason is not, of dislodging a person's "intuitive" moral beliefs. This essay argues that each of these points is mistaken. (shrink)

The question of how to distinguish between science and non-science, the so-called ' demarcation problem', is one of the most high-profile, perennial, and intractable issues in the philosophy of science. It is not merely a philosophical issue, however, since it has a significant bearing on practical policy questions and practical decisions. This essay develops a pragmatic approach to the demarcation problem: it argues that while there are some core principles that we can use in distinguishing between science and non-science, particular (...) judgments and decisions about something's scientific status depend, in part, on practical goals and concerns. (shrink)

Purpose. The aim of the article is to clarify the content of the concept of culture as an explication of vitality within the philosophy of life and its further modifications in current problems of contemporary. The analysis performed standing from the point, that contrasting of nature and culture is irrelevant, since culture does not contradict natural determinants and patterns, but rather qualitatively alters them. So, are justified the idea of culture as a phenomenon that exist accordingly and in proportion to (...) nature, need to form its potential and content and not contradict the axioms and values of life. Theoretical basis. In the theoretical field of philosophy of life, the local development of the problem of culture as an explication of vitality produces grounds for analytical and prognostic activity concerning meaningful transformations in a separate historical and social horizon. The fundamental categories of culture: spirit, value, symbol, freedom, justice and harmony receive the requested content and meaning. The idea of the constancy and super-naturality of cultural universals is illusory and dangerous. The consequences of such a "non-cosmological" justification of freedom and will, and the assertion of values, that contradict the logic of life, are the global environmental, economic and social crisis of our time. Originality. The originality of the authors’ thought lies in the interpretation of the essence of culture as an explication of vitality, as a logical and natural extension of life. In this formulation of the problem of culture, the possibility of reconciling the natural, social and value determinants of human life is formed. Theorists of the philosophy of life substantiated the primacy and supremacy of the values of life over the values and meanings of culture. The position of authors position consists in the need to understand culture as an environmentally appropriate and dimensional phenomenon, the content and strategies of which are determined by a single ontology. Conclusions. The analysis let authors understand the voluntarily chaotic element of life. Culture in its philosophical analysis took on a clearer anthropomorphic dimension: the immanent logic of being in substantiating the essence and purpose of man and the value of his being localized the universe of transcendence in the concept of "living world", "inhabited space", "human, too human". Accordingly, the range of cultural evaluations has been polarized: from the approving statement of its vital essence, to the disparaging calls for its reform. The chaotic state of voluntarily acts is transformed into cultural codes and stereotypes by rationalization. The modern global nature of crisis phenomena, both in the worldview, in the social, and in the ecological dimension, requires reformatting the understanding of culture as a continuation of nature, and not its antipode. (shrink)