Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova's central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet fiercely independent in (...) her thinking, Sedakova's ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the "new left" and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova's "conservatism" is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates "old totalitarianism" and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics. (shrink)

The present paper contains some technical results on a many-valued logic with truth values from the interval of real numbers [0; 1]. This logic, discussed originally in [1], latter in [2] and [3], was called the logic of fuzzy concepts. Our aim is to give an algebraic axiomatics for fuzzy propositional logic. For this purpose the variety of L-algebras with signature en- riched with a unary operation { involution is stud- ied. A one-to-one correspondence between congruences on an LI-algebra and (...) lters of a special kind is used to prove the representation theorem for LI-algebras. By this theorem every LI-algebra is isomorphic to a subdirect product of chains. The full characteristic of the subdirectly irreducible LI-algebras is given . It turns out that the variety of all L-algebras, as well as any of its subvarieties, is generated by its nite algebras. (shrink)

McLaughlin’s case for the theoretical relevance of either "Escape" or of Freudian social theory generally proves counter-productive. He offers very weak criteria for theory acceptance and often takes mere labels to be explanatory theories. He does so particularly in his promotion of the con- cept of ambivalence. I will engage the proposed case study and explain why the use of “ambivalence” in psychoanalysis (especially by Bleuler or Freud) and sociology (by Smelser and his followers) is untenable. I point to a (...) notable conflict between McLaughlin’s rationalist and other inten- tions, and will show how he shares the approach to social theories that makes for the state of affairs in the humanities which he deplores. (shrink)

ArgumentEvery new level achieved by technology attracted the attention of physiologists and turned their thoughts in a new direction; they often unwittingly modeled life processes in the image of contemporary engineering achievements.–This article reinterprets the debate between orthodox followers of the Pavlovian reflex theory and Soviet “cybernetic physiologists” in the 1950s and 60s as a clash of opposing man-machine metaphors. While both sides accused each other of “mechanistic,” reductionist methodology, they did not see anything “mechanistic” about their own central metaphors: (...) the telephone switchboard metaphor for nervous activity, and the analogies between the human body and a servomechanism and between the human brain and a computer. I argue that the scientific utility of machine analogies was closely intertwined with their philosophical and political meanings and that new interpretations of these metaphors emerged as a result of political conflicts and a realignment of forces within the scientific community and in society at large. I suggest that the constant travel of man-machine analogies back and forth between physiology and technology has blurred the traditional categories of the “mechanistic” and the “organic” in Soviet neurophysiology, as perhaps in the history of physiology in general. (shrink)

La letteratura slava ecclesiastica durante l'intero arco della sua storia vive in primo luogo di traduzioni, eseguite soprattutto, seppure non esclusivamente, a partire da modelli greci. Mentre tuttavia sul piano storico-letterario l'attenzione si concentra per ovvie ragioni sulla produzione originale, in sede di analisi linguistica le opere di traduzione mantengono, o almeno dovrebbero mantenere, un ruolo fondamentale. A questo proposito ci si può addirittura spingere ad affermare che uno dei motivi per i quali a tutt'oggi mancano una storia complessiva (...) e un grande dizionario storico della lingua slava ecclesiastica risiede verosimilmente proprio nella carenza di ricerche approfondite intorno a molte traduzioni slave ecclesiastiche. Su tale sfondo va letto il libro che qui si recensisce, incentrato sul lessico delle versioni di cinque cronache bizantine, composte in ordine cronologico da Giovanni Malala, Giorgio Amartolo, Simeone Logoteta, Costantino Manasse e Giovanni Zonara, e tradotte in slavo ecclesiastico in tempi e luoghi diversi. Come si ricava dalla breve premessa di A. Guillou (p. 3), lo studio di Katia Tchérémissinoff è approdato alle stampe solo dopo un lungo intervallo dalla sua composizione; un intervallo che la bibliografia usufruita, ferma in buona sostanza al 1980, permette di quantificare in vent'anni. Prima di esaminare il volume più da vicino, il recensore purtroppo non potrà non registrare (e lamentare) il numero esorbitante di errori di stampa che coinvolgono anzitutto i nomi degli autori e i titoli delle opere citate, come per es. Bujuklev in luogo di Bujukliev (p. 19, n. 29), Sandelf per Sandfeld (p. 24, n. 37), Aitzemuller invece di Aitzetmüller (p. 30, n. 52); M. A. Meščeskij per N. A. Meščerskij (p. 42, n. 72; e vd. anche p. 98, n. 157); e quindi, “Das slavische Zort für Kirsche” (in luogo di “Das slavische Wort für Kirche”, a p. 149, n. 240), “Costantinopple byzantine” (p. 186, nn. 303 e 304, e passim), “Byzantinische Uhrkundenlehre. I. Die Kaiser Uhrkunden” (p. 196, n. 310), e così via. Dove però deve essere stato il diavolo in persona a metterci lo zampino, è nelle citazioni slave ecclesiastiche nelle quali, nonostante la revisione cui è stato sottoposto il volume (vd. p. 3), gli errori, grandi e piccoli, semplicemente non si contano: il che di certo non agevola il compito del lettore, sia egli più o meno esperto di slavo ecclesiastico. (shrink)

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527-Criticism and interpretation ; Political science-Translating.

This paper explores how civic food networks (CFN) use public forums to engage with other initiatives and stakeholders in civil society. It develops the concept of social infrastructure to capture the assemblages of discourses, networking and spaces around agrifood forums. The research then examines how social infrastructures support CFNs’ capacity to organize communities and challenge power relations in the agrifood system. Two cases are compared: News&Market, a Taiwan-based agrifood news platform which also sells organic food products, and Foodthink, a collective (...) blog created by a farmers’ market in China. Both started in the late 2010s but one focuses on policy critiques while the other focuses on market critiques. A comparison finds that CFNs develop different critiques to address the specific challenges facing local alternative food networks (AFNs), and use networking and space creation to promote social dialogue with other stakeholders or build networks across AFNs and NGOs. The paper argues that a social infrastructure such as that built around agrifood forums enables CFNs to shape food democracy and food citizenship practices in new ways. (shrink)

Contributed seminar papers on Vedic theory of creation, philosophy and science.

Anxiety shifts visual attention and perceptual mechanisms, preparing oneself to detect potentially threatening information more rapidly. Despite being demonstrated for threat‐related social stimuli, such as fearful expressions, it remains unexplored if these effects encompass other social cues of danger, such as aggressive gestures/actions. To this end, we recruited a total of 65 participants and asked them to identify, as quickly and accurately as possible, potentially aggressive actions depicted by an agent. By introducing and manipulating the occurrence of electric shocks, we (...) induced safe and threatening conditions. In addition, the association between electric shocks and aggression was also manipulated. Our result showed that participants have improved sensitivity, with no changes to criterion, when detecting aggressive gestures during threat compared to safe conditions. Furthermore, drift diffusion model analysis showed that under threat participants exhibited faster evidence accumulation toward the correct perceptual decision. Lastly, the relationship between threat source and aggression appeared to not impact any of the effects described above. Overall, our results indicate that the benefits gained from states of anxiety, such as increased sensitivity toward threat and greater evidence accumulation, are transposable to social stimuli capable of signaling danger other than facial expressions. (shrink)

Epistrofē, ili, Fenomen "vozvrashchenii︠a︡" v pervoĭ evropeĭskoĭ kulʹture -- "Osevye veka" evropeĭskoĭ istorii -- Logika istorii -- Istina i istorii︠a︡ -- Evropeĭskiĭ istorizm (nekotorye aspekty problemy).

Religion, environment, tradition, needs, and character determine the framework of people's eating habits. In this context, a special area is reserved for nutrition in the Qur'an. One of the prominent words in the relevant field is “rizq,” referring to things that Allah gives to all creatures for their own benefit. Broadly, children, spouse, action, knowledge, and wisdom can also be evaluated in this context. This study aims to reach detailed data on the subject by examining the verses where the word (...) rizq is mentioned in Surah al-Baqara in terms of language and rhetoric. In every language, but especially in the Arabic language, the words that make up the sentences, the forms of the words, the syntax of the sentence, the forms of expression, and the style are important while determining the meaning. First, the comparison method was applied in the determination of the eloquence subtleties that were taken as a basis in the study. By this method, we compared verses, sentences, and words with other related verses and possible/fictional sentences in different linguistic dimensions; determined the differences between them, and tested the results by applying them to the relevant text. Considering every linguistic structure in the Qur'anic style and investigating its meaning is essential for understanding the Qur'an. In such a reading, the presence as well as the absence of language elements should be taken into consideration and used effectively in determining the meaning. The words used in the Qur'an are fundamental because their presence or absence, the structure of words that they are used together, and the whole text constitute an important and different aspect of the conveyed message. In this paper, ten verses where the word rizq is mentioned in Surah al-Baqara are examined within the framework of the study method. Their application provides examples to a certain extent for the understanding of the specified method. Various data has been obtained about the concept of rizq as reflected in general social life. As rizq, the foods must be healthy and tasty as well as halal in terms of their ingredients and acquisition. The desire for foods of human body may vary according to various factors. However, prohibitions on food are based on reasonable, scientific, or religious reasons. The moral and philosophical dimensions of the subject are always present in the background of these justifications. One of the duties assigned to human beings is to obtain rizq within the framework of the possibilities and capabilities given to them in the world and to distribute it, if any, to those they are responsible for, creatures, and other needy people. It is a requirement of faith to utilize the rizq by considering its raison for existence and to ensure that the way of acquisition is legal and ethical. Legitimate acquisition, sharing, and distribution of what is acquired is primarily related to the sense of conscience. Therefore, it is not in the nature of faith to interfere with what is given to animals, plants, and other people as rizq. From this point of view, infaq plays an important role in understanding the concept of rizq. The Qur'an strongly expresses the desire of man to be fair and generous in the sharing of rizq. (shrink)