Much attention is given to education in philosophy in the USSR, in which the study of dialectical and historical materialism occupies a special place. The practical achievements involved in the transformation of society, together with the advance of the natural and social sciences, have demonstrated most clearly the great strength of dialectical materialism as the scientific world view of the working people and as the philosophical foundation of their practical activity. It is therefore no accident that philosophy has an immense (...) attraction for people in our country. (shrink)

Jardine examines the evolution of concepts of dialectics during the Renaissance and problems of methodology that influenced the teachings of the founder of philosophy in the modern era, F. Bacon. The work traces the sources of these problems in the dialectics of antiquity and its medieval interpretation. Sources little known to the Soviet reader are cited. In order to evaluate Bacon's reaction to the dialectics of his day, the author also describes works named in the statutes of Cambridge University in (...) the sixteenth century as textbooks on dialectics. They are writings by humanists — bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment — I. Caesarius, R. Agricola, D. Seton, and others. To a certain extent they were based on the work by Peter the Spaniard Summulae Logicales, which is taken as a point of departure for the further evolution of dialectics. (shrink)

Jardine examines the evolution of concepts of dialectics during the Renaissance and problems of methodology that influenced the teachings of the founder of philosophy in the modern era, F. Bacon. The work traces the sources of these problems in the dialectics of antiquity and its medieval interpretation. Sources little known to the Soviet reader are cited. In order to evaluate Bacon's reaction to the dialectics of his day, the author also describes works named in the statutes of Cambridge University in (...) the sixteenth century as textbooks on dialectics. They are writings by humanists — bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment — I. Caesarius, R. Agricola, D. Seton, and others. To a certain extent they were based on the work by Peter the Spaniard Summulae Logicales, which is taken as a point of departure for the further evolution of dialectics. (shrink)

As with every new trend in science, cybernetics has revived many old philosophical problems and posed a number of new ones. They include problems of similarity and difference in the functioning of the brain and of cybernetic machines, interrelationships between artificial creations and human beings, the nature of the machine, etc. An imprecise posing of these intimately related problems is often the source of confusion in discussions of the philosophical problems of cybernetics.

In the academic year just past, the Expert Commission on Philosophical Disciplines of the Higher Certification Committee [VAK] processed 441 cases pertaining to the award of degrees and ranks. Of these, positive decisions were handed down in 333 cases, and negative decisions in 9 cases, while final decisions have not yet been taken on 99. Of the total number, 418 cases were examined, 114 of these for the degree of Doctor of Philosophical Sciences and 304 for Candidate in Philosophical Sciences, (...) and final decisions were taken on 323, while 95 were referred to further expert examination. (shrink)

Marx said that a science attains perfection when it is successful in employing mathematics.

Many methods are conceivable for resolution of the difficulties arising when motion is depicted in the logic of concepts. We shall set forth some of these methods, presenting them within the framework of the discussion in which V. I. Sviderskii, B. A. Dragun, and I. S. Narskii have already participated. In our opinion, attention must be directed primarily to the fact that in resolving the contradictions in the presentation of motion by means of ideal mathematical abstractions, it is impossible to (...) base ourselves directly upon that which is occurring in the sphere of the things which we perceive with our senses. It is particularly when one forgets this fact that contradictory situations usually result. However, this does not at all mean that these data are of little value in treating of motion. Furthermore, the refinement of the meaning of the concepts in terms of which motion is described, taken together with the requirement that there be a rigorous differentiation between theories based on ideal abstractions and theories based on concepts derived from the sphere of empirical existence, may lead to the resolution of Zeno's paradoxes. (shrink)

The question of a universal human nature and the universally human significance of values, first and foremost moral values—a question that, it would seem, had long ago been thoroughly scrutinized in the works of Marxist scholars, including V. P. Tugarinov—has suddenly acquired a "second wind" in public consciousness and in the journalism of our days. Well-known writers, journalists, and scholars have come together on a theoretical platform, which is summed up in a statement by D. S. Likhachev: "Morality is a (...) part of human nature. Its norms are stable and eternal. Indeed, what can be counterposed to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill'? Some new commandment? ‘Kill’? And what about the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal’? or ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’?". (shrink)

Recently, we have faced the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 in the world, which has attracted the attention of all people. Stress has become a word familiar to all people. The stressors of life are relatively clear and some of them cannot be eliminated by humans. One of the stressors in the life of humans is the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors believe that the virus is controllable but its prevalence is quicker and deadlier than other viruses. In addition, the virus (...) puts the elderly and those with underlying diseases at extreme risk. Therefore, more care is seriously required to protect members of society. However, this psychological imbalance caused by the virus is associated with stress and anxiety. Lack of proper management of this stress will be associated with emotional impacts, physiological impacts, cognitive impacts and behavioural impact.Contribution: Given the importance of this topic, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between religious beliefs and coping with COVID-19-related stress amongst Muslim students in three cities of Russia – Ingushetia, Chechnya and the Republic of Dagestan – in 2020. Data were collected using questionnaires, the validity and reliability of which were previously confirmed. According to the results, religious beliefs had an impact on stress coping by p = 0.657. In other words, students’ ability to cope with stress improved by 0.657 units, with each unit of enhancement in their religious beliefs. (shrink)

The problems of the tolal energy and quasilocalenergy density or an isolated spherically symmetric static system in general relativity (GR) are considered with examples of some exact suintions. The field formulation of GR dereloped earlier hy L. P. Grishchuk. el al. (1984). in ihe framework of which all the dynamical fields, including the gravitation field, are considered in a fixed background spacetime is used intensively. The exact Schwarzschild and Reissner Nordstrom solutions are investigated in detail, and the results are compared (...) with those in the recent work by J. D. Brown and J. W. York. Jr. (1993) as well as discussed with respect to the principle of nonlocalization of the gravitational energy in GR. Those examples are illustrative and simple because the background is selected as Minkowski spacetime and, in fact, the field configurations are studied in the framework of special relativity. It is shown that some problems of the Schwarzschild solution which are difficult to resolve in the standard geometrical framework of GR are resolved in the framework of the field formulation. (shrink)

Executive functions represent higher order top-down mechanisms regulating information processing. While suboptimal EF have been studied in various patient groups, their impact on successful behavior is still not well described. Previously, it has been suggested that design fluency —a test including several simultaneous EF components mainly related to fluency, cognitive flexibility, and creativity—predicts successful behavior in a quickly changing environment where fast and dynamic adaptions are required, such as ball sports. We hypothesized that similar behaviors are of importance in the (...) selection process of elite police force applicants. To test this hypothesis, we compared elite police force applicants with a control group of police officer trainees. Although both groups were better than the norm, the elite police force applicants had a significantly better performance in DF total correct when adjusting for sex and age [F = 18.98, p < 0.001]. To understand how this capacity was altered by stress and tiredness, we re-tested the elite police force applicants several days during an extreme field assessment lasting 10 days. The results suggested that there was a lower than expected improvement in DF total correct and a decline in the DF3-subtest that includes a larger component of cognitive flexibility than the other subtests. Although there was a positive correlation between the baseline session and the re-test in DF3 [r = 0.49, p = 0.001], the applicants having the highest scores in the baseline test also displayed the largest percentage decline in the re-test [r = −0.46, p = 0.003]. In conclusion, our result suggests that higher order EF that include cognitive flexibility and creativity are of importance in the application for becoming an elite police officer but relatively compromised in a stressful situation. Moreover, as the decline is different between the individuals, the results suggest that applicants should be tested during baseline conditions and during stressful conditions to describe their cognitive capacity fully. (shrink)

The article by Academician P. L. Kapitsa published below is devoted to problems of the utmost importance, which have come to be termed "global." The Twenty - fifth Congress of the CPSU pointed to the need to study them scientifically and solve them practically, emphasizing that they touch on the interests of humanity as a whole and will exercise an increasingly marked influence on the lives of every people and on the entire system of international relations. In their social philosophical (...) aspects they have been discussed more than once in the pages of Voprosy filosofii. Discussions of these problems took place at the round tables entitled "Man and His Environment" [See translation in our Fall-Winter 1974 number. — Ed., Soviet Studies in Philosophy], "Social Philosophy Problems of Demography," and "Science and Global Problems of Our Time," and numerous articles have been published in such series as "Science and Social Progress," "The Peace Program and the Dialectics of International Relations" [See translation in our Fall 1975 issue. — Ed., Soviet Studies in Philosophy], and "Man — Society — Nature." The editors of the journal, guided by the directives of the Twenty-fifth Party Congress on the need for further investigation of such global problems of our time, are inclined to continue the discussion of them in the future; another round table devoted to these problems is being planned now. The article by Academician P. L. Kapitsa, it seems to us, will provide fruitful stimuli for discussion at this round table, which will probably be published in several installments. As the author himself emphasizes, certain positions in his article are debatable and require discussion. The journal invites philosophers, demographers, economists, and representatives of the natural sciences to take part in discussions of the problems posed. Certain questions examined in Kapitsa's article are also treated in articles by Howard L. Parsons, A. D. Ado, and Iu. A. Kirshin published in this issue of the journal. (shrink)

My reflections will have more of an interrogative than an affirmative character. And the questions will be posed not only to others but also to myself. At the outset let me broach two questions. First, why is this work ethic needed; and second, who needs it? And at the same time I should like to translate some of the general ideological and cultural problems that have been discussed here into the language of political economy and sociology. This should, it seems (...) to me, enable us more quickly to find the common language between our emotionally colored discussions about Russia and the "Western" understanding of it. Otherwise, regardless of whether we discuss our Russian situation from a Slavophile or a Westernizing point of view, what one always gets in the final analysis is that Russia cannot be understood with the intellect. And if that is so, then why all this "intellectual noise". (shrink)

A hundred years have passed since the death of a man named Karl Marx. A whole century. A century of dramatic upheavals, revolutionary turmoil, and radical changes in the destiny of humankind. A century that has overturned and swept away a multitude of philosophical conceptions, social theories, and political doctrines. A century that has seen a continuous succession of victories of Marxism and its growing influence on social development.

Not only Greek philosophers listened to prophets. René Descartes also long pondered over the familiar words of Ausonius: "What path shall I choose for myself in life?" And-what an amusing play on words-the idea of methodos entered philosophy with Descartes. The very path of his metaphysical thought was the last possible one within the confines of Aristotelian metaphysics, when, having posited certain principles of discourse, in the end they themselves are conclusively reached and the entire system becomes a manifest certainty. (...) Descartes provides a glimpse of the possibility of a new type of metaphysical reflection in which the correctness of the chosen principles is grounded in the completeness and noncontradictoriness of the system built on their basis but not confined to them. (shrink)

It is customary to associate the birth of European science with the name of Thales. For example: "In the history of mankind there come moments when new forms of action or thought arise so suddenly that they produce the impression of an explosion. Such is precisely the case with the rise of science—rationalistic scientific knowledge—in Asiatic Greece, in Ionia, at the end of the seventh century B.C.E., with Thales of Miletus and his school".

Postmodernism as a mythologem reflecting the remarkable shift that has taken place in contemporary Western culture as a whole entered the consciousness of our intelligentsia with the usual delay. This is not surprising if one bears in mind the constantly "lagging" character of our consciousness, which also colors in corresponding tones the whole of "Russian civilization," and if one believes that it is condemned to be always "catching up" and making up for lost time. Having arisen in the West as (...) a concept describing certain special characteristics of the latest architectural style that no longer fitted into the rather passé category of modernism, the concept of the postmodern was initially current, both in the West and in Russia, among people close to architecture. At that time it had not yet been able to acquire the "philosophical" subtext that is already felt in the book of Charles Jencks that came out in 1977 in Germany under the gaudy title The Language of Postmodern Architecture. (shrink)

The fundamentals of the Frankfurt school's conception of art were expounded in Horkheimer and Adorno's book, Dialectic of Enlightenment, where the "critical theory of society" appeared in the form of a specific philosophy of history—the history of bourgeois enlightenment, whose sources the authors trace to ancient Greek mythology.

The transition in the discussion of activity from production-labor and industrial-technological problems to practical problems of life activity proper means that forms of life activity that were formerly unshakable are now becoming the primary object of transformations and purposeful changes: the family, kinship systems, forms of communal life, the genetic basis of man, and man himself with his various capabilities and functions.

A hundred years have passed since publication of the first edition of Engels's book The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which Lenin regarded as "one of the basic works of modern socialism." Engels's interest in the remote past of mankind and Lenin's evaluation of his work were, of course, not coincidental. They may be explained by the tremendous role played by the concept of primitive history in a general materialist understanding of the universal historical process. What (...) was the nature of this very first term in the sequence of socioeconomic formations, this cornerstone of the Marxist concept of universal history? When did private property, antagonistic social classes, and state power, separate from the people, emerge, and what were they, original and permanent institutions, or historically determined institutions of human communal life? These problems are clearly of great philosophical importance. They were, and continue to be, the arena of a bitter ideological struggle, and inevitably attracted the most conscientious attention of the founders of scientific communism. (shrink)

The comparative analysis of the approaches to philosophy and philosophizing by the two prominent Russian thinkers of the Soviet era: Evald V. Ilyenkov and Merab K. Mamardashvili. The author discusses specific methodological and conceptual features of Ilyenkov's dialectic and Mamardashvili's phenomenology, showing their theoretical and topical affinity.