In contemporary scientific discourse, interest in memory problems has increased significantly. This trend, in our opinion, is due to a number of factors, among which one of the leading places is «democratization» of history. This process began to a large extent under the influence of a violent wave of emancipation of peoples and ethnic groups, which began at the end of the twentieth century. It actualized the need to rethink the past and revive a large part of the cultural heritage (...) of a number of ethnic and ethno-regional communities.Growth of attention to memory studios was facilitated by globalization. Itsliberal-oriented universalist intentions led to the erosion of the foundations of national identity without deprecating sociality as such. The fluidity and rapid change in social standards that have become a logical consequence of this process have shown the urgent need to find those ideological landmarks that can provide certainty at least on a daily basis. Here, a person feels the need for group consolidation, which is perceived directly through participation in social practices. Such practices reproduce the identity of the group and at the same time broadcast a historically formed and established system of group values. The revival of local forms of identity, which takes place under the influence of globalization in the conditions of the rapidity of social standards, can be regarded as a completely positive phenomenon. Meanwhile, in cases of politicization of collective memories, such local groups can significantly undermine the stable development of national states. The purpose of the study is to reveal the value of collective memories in the process of forming and preserving group identity.The task of the paper was to identify the universal foundations of human sociality and to reveal the importance of collective memories in the process of formation and preservation of group identity. Methods. The methodological basis of the study was the multidisciplinary approach, which was combined with the principles of objectivity and impartiality. The basic place in the process of scientific understanding of the role of memory in the process of formation and preservation of group identity was played by general scientific principles and methods, namely: the principles of historical and logical unity, objectivity, integrity and comprehensiveness. Also were used such general scientific methods as analysis and synthesis, induction, analogy, retrospective,comparison, etc. Along with the mentioned methods were widely used methods of cultural, social and categorical analysis, as well as the principles of philosophical hermeneutics. Results In the course of the study, M. Halbwachs’es implicit conclusion about the key role of collective memories in the process of formation of collective identity was refuted, some aspects of collective memory theory developed by him were specified. In particular, the provision on the decisive role of collective memory in the process of formation of group identity was revised and the importance of social friendship in the process of formation of the social community was shown, the persistence and moral significance of which is determined by common memories.Memories provide the appearance of images that become the status of collective identity symbols, which contain behavioral patterns and moral teachings for members of the community. Common memories can be transmitted through direct communication that covers a limited social space, or to be executed in a ritual and/or text. Due to rites or texts reinterpretations, a significant part of the memorization that is important for the collective identity can remain unchanged for a long time. (shrink)

The most ancient monuments of ancient Christian art were found in catacombs located outside the cities. The Christian catacombs were a complex plexus of underground narrow galleries with numerous niches where the coffins of martyrs and bishops were placed. These niches formed a kind of rectangular chambers, the walls and surfaces of which were decorated with images. Thus, early Christian art begins with catacomb paintings.

From the earliest times, the very existence of Soviet power to combat religion and tirades, along with methods of economic and ideological pressure, actively using legal factors, is a rather strict system. Following the massive unveiling of solidarity and white army officials who were unable to leave the peninsula in November 1920, they began to form in the Crimea various branches of government, including their judicial system, which was published in a new regime of elements of legitimacy. However, the legal (...) system created on the peninsula was annexed to a radical political system, so when there were various problems, they were members of principles of political expediency, not morality and rights. (shrink)

Referring to certain lexical units of Roget’s Thesaurus, the authors consider in the article philosophical interpretation of verbal means for creation and further transformation of culturally significant senses and meanings that are aligned with death and dying. Thus, the given study involves one of the most famous and historically significant treasuries of language into plentiful and practically oriented philosophical examination. The authors propose a heuristic scheme to classify lexical units according to their structure and meaning with taking general and peripheral (...) meanings into account. The article hermeneutically reveals linguistic and cultural sources of common images and concepts of death and dying. The authors make up a conclusion about sense-generative, gnoseological, world-view, cultural and communicative functions of the above-mentioned units that point to death and dying. Thus, Roget’s Thesaurus can be considered a helpful guide to philosophical examination of culturally prescribed or determined concepts of death and dying, of verbally expressed attitudes to death issues. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers presented at Seminar on the subject of Siddhantavada, organized by Department of Nyayavaisheshika, Shri Lalbahadur Shastri Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, New Delhi in 2016.

This paper proposes a revision of our understanding of causation that is designed to address what Hartry Field has suggested is the central problem in the metaphysics of causation today: reconciling Bertrand Russell’s arguments that the concept of causation can play no role in the advanced sciences with Nancy Cartwright’s arguments that causal concepts are essential to a scientific understanding of the world. The paper shows that Russell’s main argument is, ironically, very similar to an argument that Cartwright has put (...) forward against the truth of universal laws of nature. The paper uses this insight to develop an account of causation that does justice to traditional views yet avoids the arguments of Russell. (shrink)

Religious life Islam; Religious life Shīʻah.

In the article the psychological base of heroic characters of the mediaeval German epos “Das Nibelungenlied” and the Scandinavian “Edda” in literary interpretations of the playwrights and realists F. Hebbel and H. Ibsen is presented.

In the article, the semantics of image text in media discourse is reviewed. The authors describe the growing influence of media on society as well as its means in formation of the certain opinion on events or stereotyping in one single social group. They draw attention to the process of globalization typical for modern society and emphasize that the potential of media is turned to unification of society, presentation of common standards, values and all humankind’s fashion. The authors of the (...) article are concerned with the problem of ethnical identity and the need to develop and promote the image of different ethnic groups. One of the tools for creating an image is an image text. In image text, the information is presented in a way that the audience perceives all events and persons mentioned in it positively. The significant quality of the image text is an estimated lexicon. There are several types of such material, for example: note, interview, report, biography etc. In addition, the authors of the article explore the image texts based on the materials published in mass media of the Republic of Buryatia. These materials make the positive image of Buryats, representing the smallest ethnic group of Baikal Region. In conclusion, the authors note that the media discourse of the image texts have considerable influence on the objective reality and human behavior. Taking into consideration the experience of using the image texts in politics, business, and other spheres of human activities, they can become one of effective means of development the image of ethnic group. (shrink)

The past decade has seen notable development of conceptual engineering – a field of analytical philosophy that focuses on the critical evaluation of concepts. Most authors engaged with this area identify Rudolf Carnap’s ideas as its methodological framework and theoretical origin, placing particular emphasis on the philosopher’s method of explication. This article highlights the unquestionable influence Carnap’s thought had on conceptual engineering whilst by no means reducing it to the utilisation and advancement of explication within this field of analytical philosophy: (...) indeed, conceptual engineering has incorporated – and brought to the forefront – much broader tenets of Carnap’s concept. This study draws on a series of the philosopher’s works, as well as his ‘Intellectual Autobiography’, to trace the evolution of his ideas about language and describe the fundamental elements revealing the ‘engineering perspective’ in his reflection. Most clearly, this perspective is evident in his interpretation of logic as a conceptual tool for acquiring and processing knowledge, ‘assembling’ it into a structure and refining the procedures of logic itself. It is shown that the origins of the engineering perspective trace back, on the one hand, to Carnap’s interest in the methodological framework of physics, particularly the measurement problem and its epistemological analysis, and, on the other, his fascination with interpretations of the nature of mathematical theory and the idea of unifying logicism and formalism by introducing the principle of tolerance, which adds a pragmatic dimension to methodology. The article examines in detail the idea of explication and its theoretical origins, which lie, in particular, in Carnap’s intention to exactify the notions expressing the degree of validity and probability. His idea of a link between the results of explication and its goal became the central principle of conceptual engineering, distinguishing it from mere conceptual analysis. It is concluded that, when considered together, Carnap’s two major ideas – explication and the principle of tolerance – can be placed in a broader context of a project seeking a rational reconstruction of the life of society and providing it with knowledge-based underpinnings. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)