An important factor in the socio-political life in the process of the formation of an independent Ukrainian state was the need to create its own state ideology, which would be based on the moral principles of Christianity. The problems of the moral and peaceful functioning of any society, including the Ukrainian one, today occupy a prominent place in the whole complex of economic, social-political and spiritual transformations. In this context, the role played by the ecumenical ideas of the (...) hierarchs of the UGCC is of paramount importance. (shrink)

Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity,” spanning both the 2013–2014 protests in Kyiv’s city center and the mass mobilization of grass-roots resistance against Russian aggression in 2014–2015 and thereafter, manifest new interpretations of ideas and philosophical concepts. In the first part of the article we unravel the meaning of the Ukrainian word hidnist – a moniker of the revolution whose significance remains underestimated. In the second part we situate Ukraine’s revolution within a broader context of “modernity” and suggest its individualist foundation (...) may be replaced by a form of “personalism” – an ethic that echoes that of Ukraine’s revolutionaries. In the third part of the article, we delve into the substance of the revolution’s agenda: its protagonists’ promise to build a non-hierarchical community of “fairness”. In the fourth and final section, the main argument of the article is summarized, namely: that the shift from individualism to personalism in social interaction and the transition from hierarchy to heterarchy in power relations, particularly with respect to institutionalizing “fairness,” embodied in the various structures and organizations formed during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, may have been reflective of more comprehensive trends in ideational change affecting European civilization. (shrink)

During the German occupation, the fratricidal Polish-Ukrainian conflict became particularly acute. In 1941 Archbishop Boleslav Tvardovsky and Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky discussed the question of their pastoral duty to prevent the rise of crimes caused by this conflict. At the same time, both hierarchs expressed some despair that they did not have sufficient influence on the perpetrators of these crimes.

The main purpose of the article is to highlight the content and logic of formation the concepts of the state that emerged among the Ukrainian Orthodox intellectuals in the end of XVI - early XVII century. During this period was decisive for the formation of early modern Ukrainian nation as a new community and the beginning of its struggle for statehood. Major political role in the formation of Ukrainian nation at that time played Cossacks, but the Orthodox (...) clergy not only gave ideological support Cossack, but had his own concept of nation. As the main creators of the concept were Meletius Smotrytsky, Zachariy Kopystensky, Jov Boretskiy, Petro Mohyla. His complete registration it has acquired at the time of the restoration of Orthodox Metropolis of Kyiv and the metropolitan of Petro Mohyla (1620-1646). The principal features of this concept is defined as follows: State Orthodox intellectuals understood as a voluntary association of people of all classes around one idea. This idea was determined public good that church leaders perceived primarily as a transcendent grace. The symbol of grace was heavenly Jerusalem, which advocated earthly projection Kyiv. Orthodox church leaders deliberately refused confession from the ideal state for aggressive ideal spiritual state. This identified a fundamental difference from the then existing state ideologies of the Rzeczpospolita and Moskovia. Ruler of the concept of the ideal state is determined Orthodox hierarchs not a person but a state, personified in its most charismatic spokespersons. At first, the prince, then the gentry, then the Cossacks. The main objective is the defense of the state governor and care about the welfare of his subjects. At the same time Ukrainian clerics fundamentally alien to the idea of autocracy, they differ greatly from contemporary Moscow clergy. Another important feature of the state concept Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Cossack era is persistent assertion priority of the spiritual over the secular government that does not coincide with the ideals of the Cossacks and was often a source of conflict. The main conclusions of the note is the fundamental notions of state formation in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the difference between these concepts from Moscow-Byzantine ideology and proximity to European humanistic model of the state than is largely due to the role of the Orthodox Church in the national liberation revolution led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and conflicts Kyiv Metropolis with the Moscow Patriarchate in the future. (shrink)

Among the first Orthodox hierarchs who bestowed the greatest benefit on the defense of the Ukrainian Church before the oppression of its Polish authorities was Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia, Joseph II Soltan 62. But his successes in this matter could not have a look for the further purpose, because the fate of the Orthodox Church under the Catholic power of the kings of Poland, which at the same time was the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, (...) was predetermined by the Catholic interests of Poland. When the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was an act of the Union of Lublin Poland incorporated into the Polish state, the implementation of the plan for the abolition of the Orthodox Church in this Catholic state was already a matter of the near-time. (shrink)

Restoration of religious life, the formation of an autocephalous Orthodox church in the occupied German troops, Ukraine faced a number of foreign-policy and domestic problems. First of all, it is about the approach of different personalities and groups of Orthodox hierarchs to their solution. At that time, there were two irreconcilable, antagonistic concepts - Metropolitan of Warsaw Dionysius and Archbishop of Kholmsky and Podlyassky Hilarion. It should be noted at the outset that both these hierarchs were in Poland, (...) which was declared by the General Governorate of Hitler and actually bordered by the Germans occupied by Ukrainian lands, most of which were included in the "Reichscommissariat Ukraine". It was in these occupational administrative formations, under the direct guidance of Hitler and his close circle, that the whole range of Ukrainian problems - political, economic, national, cultural, and church - was solved. Ukrainian Orthodox circles and their leaders have long hoped for the invaders' good will to solve Ukrainian problems and, for the most part, tried to act on the basis of their own concepts of governance of church life. All of them, as time showed, were, to a greater or lesser extent, peculiar "ideas - fixed", since they contradicted the principled vision of the solution of the church issue in Ukraine by the German invaders. (shrink)

Until recently, the name of Metropolitan Alexy was mentioned by researchers, mainly historians and religious scholars, mostly in the context of the problem of the split of the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian lands during the years of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1943 as the head of the Autonomous Church. At the same time, he remains almost unknown as a religious thinker, and meanwhile, in his numerous theological-philosophical and historical-religious studies works, the bishop raised the most devastating religious (...) and spiritual problems of society and person, many of which have not lost their relevance to this day. Since Ukraine began to realize itself as a democratic country, the process of revising the relations of our state with various social institutions, including the Church, began to find a model that would ensure the harmonious development of both the state and the Church. In this context, the study of the views of one of the prominent hierarchs of intellectuals Metropolitan Alexy on church-state relations is very important and relevant. (shrink)

The paper explicates the stages of the author’s philosophical evolution in the light of Kopnin’s ideas and heritage. Starting from Kopnin’s understanding of dialectical materialism, the author has stated that category transformations of physics has opened from conceptualization of immutability to mutability and then to interaction, evolvement and emergence. He has connected the problem of physical cognition universals with an elaboration of the specific system of tools and methods of identifying, individuating and distinguishing objects from a scientific theory domain. The (...) role of vacuum conception and the idea of existence (actual and potential, observable and nonobservable, virtual and hidden) types were analyzed. In collaboration with S.Crymski heuristic and regulative functions of categories of substance, world as a whole as well as postulates of relativity and absoluteness, and anthropic and self-development principles were singled out. Elaborating Kopnin’s view of scientific theories as a practically effective and relatively true mapping of their domains, the author in collaboration with M. Burgin have originated the unified structure-nominative reconstruction (model) of scientific theory as a knowledge system. According to it, every scientific knowledge system includes hierarchically organized and complex subsystems that partially and separately have been studied by standard, structuralist, operationalist, problem-solving, axiological and other directions of the current philosophy of science. 1) The logico-linguistic subsystem represents and normalizes by means of different, including mathematical, languages and normalizes and logical calculi the knowledge available on objects under study. 2) The model-representing subsystem comprises peculiar to the knowledge system ways of their modeling and understanding. 3) The pragmatic-procedural subsystem contains general and unique to the knowledge system operations, methods, procedures, algorithms and programs. 4) From the viewpoint of the problem-heuristic subsystem, the knowledge system is a unique way of setting and resolving questions, problems, puzzles and tasks of cognition of objects into question. It also includes various heuristics and estimations (truth, consistency, beauty, efficacy, adequacy, heuristicity etc) of components and structures of the knowledge system. 5) The subsystem of links fixes interrelations between above-mentioned components, structures and subsystems of the knowledge system. The structure-nominative reconstruction has been used in the philosophical and comparative case-studies of mathematical, physical, economic, legal, political, pedagogical, social, and sociological theories. It has enlarged the collection of knowledge structures, connected, for instance, with a multitude of theoreticity levels and with an application of numerous mathematical languages. It has deepened the comprehension of relations between the main directions of current philosophy of science. They are interpreted as dealing mainly with isolated subsystems of scientific theory. This reconstruction has disclosed a variety of undetected knowledge structures, associated also, for instance, with principles of symmetry and supersymmetry and with laws of various levels and degrees. In cooperation with the physicist Olexander Gabovich the modified structure-nominative reconstruction is in the processes of development and justification. Ideas and concepts were also in the center of Kopnin’s cognitive activity. The author has suggested and elaborated the triplet model of concepts. According to it, any scientific concept is a dependent on cognitive situation, dynamical, multifunctional state of scientist’s thinking, and available knowledge system. A concept is modeled as being consisted from three interrelated structures. 1) The concept base characterizes objects falling under a concept as well as their properties and relations. In terms of volume and content the logical modeling reveals partially only the concept base. 2) The concept representing part includes structures and means (names, statements, abstract properties, quantitative values of object properties and relations, mathematical equations and their systems, theoretical models etc.) of object representation in the appropriate knowledge system. 3) The linkage unites a structures and procedures that connect components from the abovementioned structures. The partial cases of the triplet model are logical, information, two-tired, standard, exemplar, prototype, knowledge-dependent and other concept models. It has introduced the triplet classification that comprises several hundreds of concept types. Different kinds of fuzziness are distinguished. Even the most precise and exact concepts are fuzzy in some triplet aspect. The notions of relations between real scientific concepts are essentially extended. For example, the definition and strict analysis of such relations between concepts as formalization, quantification, mathematization, generalization, fuzzification, and various kinds of identity are proposed. The concepts «PLANET» and «ELEMENTARY PARTICLE» and some of their metamorphoses were analyzed in triplet terms. The Kopnin’s methodology and epistemology of cognition was being used for creating conception of the philosophy of law as elaborating of understanding, justification, estimating and criticizing legal system. The basic information on the major directions in current Western philosophy of law (legal realism, feminism, criticism, postmodernism, economical analysis of law etc.) is firstly introduced to the Ukrainian audience. The classification of more than fifty directions in modern legal philosophy is suggested. Some results of historical, linguistic, scientometric and philosophic-legal studies of the present state of Ukrainian academic science are given. (shrink)

The article explores the semantic potential of social narratives associated with the creation and constitution of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which caused a interpretations conflict, marked by conflicting interpretations and differences in meanings that are applied in different contexts. The narrative arranges events in a certain time sequence, accumulates and translates meanings, individual and social experience. The presence of meanings in the interpretation of the narrative depends on the perspective, interpretation horizons and the subject's ability to analyze information and (...) its correct application. The social narrative accumulates a set of stories and messages that are fragmentary and disordered, constructs a coherent plot aimed at finding and defining meanings, and forming social discourse. Social narratives materialized in social structures, orientations, expectations, and stereotypes of their bearers due to everyday modification in the form of simple images, attitudes, and principles. Since each social narrative claims to be exclusive and correct in its own way of understanding events, a clash of narratives and their interpretations is inevitable. A large-scale event determines the modification of social structures, standards, and evaluation criteria, is accompanied by the transformation of everyday life, reveals deep mental layers, and opens up new perspectives. The extraordinary event that was marked by the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is accompanied by diametrically opposite assessments from the clergy, believers, politicians, experts – from the statement about autocephaly as the only opportunity to achieve unity and recognition of Ukrainian Orthodoxy to the political subtext justification of the new religious organization creation. Church circles represented by representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate claim that the state interferes in the internal Affairs of the Church. The Constitution of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine takes place in the context of the confrontation of two social narratives – the «ukrainian world» and the «russian world». The social narrative «ukrainian world» is based on values rooted in the national soil, but the social narrative «russian world» denies the existence of the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian state. Under the patronage of the Russian Orthodox Church, the expression of the ideas of the «russian world» is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which enshrines in the minds of believers ideologies about «the common origin of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples», «the common baptismal font», «the unity of the historical space of Holy Rus», «the identity of the East Slavic Orthodox civilization». The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate did not support the decision of patriarch Bartholomew to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Metropolitan Onufriy did not give his blessing to the hierarchs to participate in the Unification Council, which is called «a non-canonical assembly of schismatic groups». The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, according to its primate, has de facto autocephaly, so it is the only canonical local Orthodox Church in Ukraine. In the face of the conflict of public narratives, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, along with meeting the spiritual needs of believers, contributes to the formation of national identity, the formation of a worldview matrix that will determine the vision of the future development of the country. (shrink)

Objective. Study of the Covid-19 related quarantine concept as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. -/- Materials & Methods. The strategy of the study is based on the logical and methodological concept of inductivism. Respondents were asked to write down their own understanding of the quarantine, formulate an appropriate definition and describe the situation, which in their opinion is the exact opposite to quarantine. Respondents also assessed how much their psychological well-being, their daily lifestyle during quarantine had changed, (...) and ranked their preferences for the quarantine strategies proposed to them. A discursive analysis was applied to the obtained texts, as a result of which nine discourses were identified. These data, along with some socio-demographic characteristics were subjected to multidimensional mathematical and statistical processing. -/- Results. Covid-19 related quarantine is represented in the linguistic consciousness of Russian-speaking Ukrainians by a discursive field, which includes at least nine recognizable, semantically autonomous discourses. Empirically discovered such phenomenon as – inter-discourse semantic dissociation. Its essence is a statistically significant reduction in the probability of some discourses appearing in the texts when others are being actualized there. This feature is associated with the innate negativity of the language and determines the semantic biasing of the quarantine concept. Inter-discourse semantic dissociation, as well as the influence of non-discursive factors constitute the discursive formation of the quarantine concept, which is qualitatively characterized by the hierarchical relationship of its components. At the same time, it was revealed that part of the discourses interacting “horizontally” are indirectly associated “vertically”, which forms the stable semantic core of the quarantine concept. Partial empirical confirmation has been found of the previously put forward assumptions about: a) the existence of such a relationship between discourses and psychological defense mechanisms (as character-forming factors) that contributes to the hierarchical structure construction of discursive formations; b) the differential nature of discourses and mechanisms of psychological defenses interaction, which makes it possible to single out the discursive aspect in a characterological profile and consider a discourse as an operator of characterological semantics. -/- Conclusions. An empirical study made it possible to form a primary idea of the substantive and structural semantic features of the quarantine concept, as an emerging category of linguistic consciousness of Ukrainians. The results obtained have a potentially useful application perspective. Thus, when implementing anti-epidemiological measures, it is important to consider the studied features of the discursive formation hierarchical structure of the quarantine concept, since discursive semantics are associated with cognitive focusing, which, in turn, affects the behavior direction and its upshots. (shrink)

The April 1991 Law of Ukraine "On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations" fell on the hard part, which its creators did not guess, to be the regulator of relations in the religious sphere during the period of radical socio-political, economic and spiritual changes in the Ukrainian society, the permanent religious- church differentiation of churches and religious organizations, separation of previously almost unipolar composition of hierarchs, clergy, believers according to the criteria of national orientation, canonicality.

In this article, I develop a novel version of the multiverse theory of sets called hierarchical pluralism by introducing the notion of “degrees of intentionality” of theories. The presented view is articulated for the purpose of reconciling epistemological realism and the multiverse theory of sets so as to preserve a considerable amount of epistemic objectivity when working with the multiverse theory. I give some arguments in favor of a hierarchical picture of the multiverse in which theories or models are thought (...) to be ordered with respect to their plausibility as a manifestation of endorsing the idea that some set theories are more plausible than others. The proposed multiverse account settles the pluralist’s dilemma, the dichotomy that there is a trade-off between the richness of mathematical ontology and the objectivity of mathematical truth. The view also extends and serves as an alternative position to Balaguer’s intention-based Platonism, from which he claims that a certain version of mathematical pluralism follows. (shrink)

Memory can be selective and Ukrainian people are no exception. This paper examines the victimhood narrative of Ukrainians following the Second World War. Although they suffered greatly, through the war, the victimhood narrative denies their actions during the war. One component of this narrative involves ignoring Ukrainian involvement with Nazis in order to preserve their memory of their Great Heroes of WWII. Other aspects will also be considered.

Ukrainian lands in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been in proximity of great geopolitical changes several times. During that time the Ukrainian nation – due to various factors – encountered a number of “windows of opportunity” for achieving the realization of dreams about independence and national sovereignty. The author identified in the period considered four “general moments,” of which two have been completed successfully. The first of these occurred in 1990–1991, when for the first time in modern (...) history, Ukrainians managed to achieve a lasting and relatively stable independence. The second of the “moments” – still unresolved – are events that began in the late autumn of 2013. The process, called “Revolution of Dignity”, represents a new quality in the history of the Ukrainian nation, therefore, that the Ukrainians have to defend the status quo but not to seek to achieve an independent being. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the ability of Ukrainians to achieve and maintain independence is largely a function of the relative power of the Russian state as measured with respect to the shape and quality of international relations. (shrink)

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

The article analyzes the main preconditions for the formation of pro-Ukrainian views among students of the Kyiv Theological Academy and determines their percentages among the graduates from the 1890s to 1907. When in the late 1850s and the early 1860s the Ukrainian intelligentsia carried out semi-legal cultural and educational work within Ukrainophile communities, few students of the Academy took part in their activities, with only 4 participants being active members in the Kyiv Hromada. Later, when students from the (...) 1890s to 1907 at the Kyiv Theological Academy joined the national movement, pro-Ukrainian activities became more popular with the clergy. According to statistical and biographical data gathered by the author, the percentage of nationally-minded graduates among Ukrainian-born students at the Academy varied from 5 to 38% depending on the year of graduation. They engaged in educational work in schools, popularized Ukrainian-language literature, collected ethnographic materials, studied the history of their native land, and translated religious literature. Moreover, 11 students left their mark in the history of the hromada movement. Such well-known public figures as Oleksandr Lototskyi, Volodymyr Durdukivskyi, Serhii Lypkivskyi, and Volodymyr Chekhivskyi, who all played a significant role in the events of the national revolution and the struggle for the independence of Ukraine, deserve special mention. Active participation of Academy graduates in Ukrainian public life challenges the general view of the Kyiv Theological Academy as a highly reactionary educational institution that trained cadres who served only the interests of the Russian Empire. (shrink)

Recent research in cognitive and computational neuroscience portrays the neocortex as a hierarchically structured prediction machine. Several theorists have drawn on this research to challenge the traditional distinction between perception and cognition – specifically, to challenge the very idea that perception and cognition constitute useful kinds from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience. In place of this traditional taxonomy, such theorists advocate a unified inferential hierarchy subject to substantial bi-directional message passing. I outline the nature of this challenge and then raise (...) two objections to the cognitive architecture it proposes as a replacement: first, standard ways of characterising this inferential hierarchy are in tension with the representational reach of conceptual thought; second, there is compelling evidence that commonsense reasoning is structured around highly domain-specific intuitive theories that are difficult to situate within a single hierarchy. (shrink)

Interview with Yaroslava Stratii, dedicated to the history of studies of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s manuscript inheritance (17-18th century) in Kiyv and Lviv from 1968. The interview was prepared by the activists of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy, organized at the Department of the History of Philosophy (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv).

We consider human performance on an optimal stopping problem where people are presented with a list of numbers independently chosen from a uniform distribution. People are told how many numbers are in the list, and how they were chosen. People are then shown the numbers one at a time, and are instructed to choose the maximum, subject to the constraint that they must choose a number at the time it is presented, and any choice below the maximum is incorrect. We (...) present empirical evidence that suggests people use threshold-based models to make decisions, choosing the first currently maximal number that exceeds a fixed threshold for that position in the list. We then develop a hierarchical generative account of this model family, and use Bayesian methods to learn about the parameters of the generative process, making inferences about the threshold decision models people use. We discuss the interesting aspects of human performance on the task, including the lack of learning, and the presence of large individual differences, and consider the possibility of extending the modeling framework to account for individual differences. We also use the modeling results to discuss the merits of hierarchical, generative and Bayesian models of cognitive processes more generally. (shrink)

Ukrainian Protestantism characterized by an eastern and western traditions that allows to recover cultural and theological relationship with European Protestantism and Catholicism in the context of interfaith dialogue. Dialogue has an ecumenical potential which was found by Ukrainian Maidan of dignity.

There is extensive evidence that adults, children, and some non-human species, represent routine events in the form of hierarchically structured 'action scripts,' and show superior recall and imitation of information at relatively high-levels of this hierarchy. Here we investigate the hypothesis that a 'hierarchical bias' operates in human cultural transmission, acting to impose a hierarchical structure onto descriptions of everyday events, and to increasingly describe those events in terms of higher hierarchical levels. Descriptions of three everyday events expressed entirely in (...) terms of basic low-level actions were transmitted along ten chains each containing four adult human participants. It was found that the proportion of low-level information showed a significant linear decrease with transmission generation, while the proportions of medium- and high-level information showed significant linear increases, consistent with the operation of a hierarchical bias. The findings additionally provide support for script theory in general, and are discussed in relation to hierarchical imitation in non-human primates. (shrink)

Leader-managers face a myriad of competing values when they engage in ethical decision-making. Few studies help us understand why certain reasons for action are justified, taking precedence over others when people choose to respond to an ethical dilemma. To help address this matter we began with a qualitative approach to disclose leader-managers' moral motives when they decide to address a work-related ethical dilemma. One hundred and nine military officers were asked to provide their reasons for taking action, justifications of their (...) reasons, and to explain these justifications. We used network analysis techniques to identify a hierarchical motive structure. The motive structure is a cognitive map that identifies ethical motives and perceptions of how these ethical motives relate to each other. The motives identified represent classic conceptualizations of moral behavior; namely, virtue theories, consequentialism, and deontological theories, along with another category that expressed the emotional significance of the moral judgment, which we refer to as emotional empiricism. (shrink)

There is a fundamental tension in business ethics between the apparent need to ensure ethical conduct through hierarchical control, and the encouragement of individuals' potential for autonomous moral judgement. In philosophical terms, these positions are consequentialist and Kantian, respectively. This paper assumes the former to be the dominant position in practice, and probably in theory also, but regards it as a misplaced extension of the more general managerial tendency to seek and maintain control over employees. While the functions of such (...) control are recognized, the arguments in favour of individuals' moral autonomy are pursued from both a Kantian and a social–theoretic perspective. Reference is made to Kohlberg's research on moral development that provides an insight into how individuals, through participation in debate with colleagues, might become more effective moral agents within organizational settings. This is contrasted with a managerial perspective, which pays lip service to individuals' right to such genuine involvement. The paper considers psychological manipulation and the legitimacy of managerial authority on matters of ethics, as opposed to in the purely technical context. The wider societal significance of such hierarchical power in organizations constitutes an important background to the paper. It is concluded that genuine, non‐manipulative, participation by employees is the way forward for the ethical management of business ethics. (shrink)

The notion of a proposition is central to philosophy. But it is subject to paradoxes. A natural response is a hierarchical account and, ever since Russell proposed his theory of types in 1908, this has been the strategy of choice. But in this paper I raise a problem for such accounts. While this does not seem to have been recognized before, it would seem to render existing such accounts inadequate. The main purpose of the paper, however, is to provide a (...) new hierarchical account that solves the problem. (shrink)

This article considers categorical perception (CP) as a crucial process involved in all sort of communication throughout the biological hierarchy, i.e. in all of biosemiosis. Until now, there has been consideration of CP exclusively within the functional cycle of perception–cognition–action and it has not been considered the possibility to extend this kind of phenomena to the mere physiological level. To generalise the notion of CP in this sense, I have proposed to distinguish between categorical perception (CP) and categorical sensing (CS) (...) in order to extend the CP framework to all communication processes in living systems, including intracellular, intercellular, metabolic, physiological, cognitive and ecological levels. The main idea is to provide an account that considers the heterarchical embeddedness of many instances of CP and CS. This will take me to relate the hierarchical nature of categorical sensing and perception with the equally hierarchical issues of the “binding problem”, “triadic causality”, the “emergent interpretant” and the increasing semiotic freedom observed in biological and cognitive systems. (shrink)

We present a hierarchical integrated model of self-regulation in which executive function is the cognitive component of the model, together with emotional, behavioral, physiological, and genetic components. These five components in the model are reciprocally and recursively related. The model is supported by empirical evidence, primarily from a single longitudinal study with good measurement at each level of the model. We also find that the model is consistent with current thinking on related topics such as cybernetic theory, the theory of (...) allostasis and allostatic load, and the theory of skill development in harsh and unpredictable environments, referred to as “hidden talents.” Next, we present literature that the integrative processes are susceptible to environmental adversity, poverty-related risk in particular, while positive social interactions with caregivers would promote self-regulatory processes or mitigate the adverse effect of early risk on the processes. A hierarchical integrative model of self-regulation advances our understanding of self-regulatory processes. Future research may consider broader social contexts of the integrative self-regulation system, such as neighborhood/community contexts and structural racism. This can be an integral step to provide children with equitable opportunities to thrive, even among children living in socioeconomically and psychosocially disadvantaged environments. (shrink)

There is a fundamental tension in business ethics between the apparent need to ensure ethical conduct through hierarchical control, and the encouragement of individuals' potential for autonomous moral judgement. In philosophical terms, these positions are consequentialist and Kantian, respectively. This paper assumes the former to be the dominant position in practice, and probably in theory also, but regards it as a misplaced extension of the more general managerial tendency to seek and maintain control over employees. While the functions of such (...) control are recognized, the arguments in favour of individuals' moral autonomy are pursued from both a Kantian and a social–theoretic perspective. Reference is made to Kohlberg's research on moral development that provides an insight into how individuals, through participation in debate with colleagues, might become more effective moral agents within organizational settings. This is contrasted with a managerial perspective, which pays lip service to individuals' right to such genuine involvement. The paper considers psychological manipulation and the legitimacy of managerial authority on matters of ethics, as opposed to in the purely technical context. The wider societal significance of such hierarchical power in organizations constitutes an important background to the paper. It is concluded that genuine, non‐manipulative, participation by employees (and others) is the way forward for the ethical management of business ethics. (shrink)

On the basis of substantial sociological material, the author analyzes the political and social consequences of the Maidan protests and shows that they constitute a revolutionary movement that led to regime change. Although the negative side of these protests manifested itself much more than the positive, the protests nonetheless embodied the popular demand for a new socio-political system and a radical change in the existing system of public life; this was the cause of both the Maidan protests and the subsequent (...) wave of political and social processes that took place in Ukraine. In light of the many unresolved problems and significant contradictions facing the country today, the author expresses the hope that the Ukrainian people will be able to adequately respond to the challenges of the day in order to bring about the propitious outcome well within their reach. (shrink)

Causal decision theory produces decision instability in cases such as Death in Damascus where a decision itself provides evidence concerning the utility of options. Several authors have proposed ways of handling this instability. William Harper (1985 and 1986) advances one of the most elegant proposals. He recommends maximizing causal expected utility among the options that are causally ratifiable. Unfortunately, Harper's proposal imposes certain restrictions; for instance, the restriction that mixed strategies are freely available. To obtain a completely general method of (...) handling decision instability, I step outside the confines of pure causal decision theory. I introduce a new kind of backtracking expected utility and propose maximizing it among the options that are causally ratifiable. In other words, I propose a hierarchical maximization of (1) conditional causal expected utility and (2) the new backtracking expected utility. I support this proposal with some intuitive considerations concerning the distinction between optimality and conditional optimality. And I prove that the proposal yields a solution in every finite decision problem. (shrink)

The Ukrainian–Russian conflict of 2013–2017 is characterized as ‘hybrid’ warfare, with a crucial role of informational component. Using ideological discourse analytic tools, this article demonstrates how two prominent Russian TV channels shaped the persuasive message, creating strong unity and mobilizing a high level of support among the national audience. Based on legitimation and de-legitimation patterns, Channel One and Russia-1 built ideologically polarized opposition between ‘Our’ and ‘Their’ sides of the conflict. The wide range of editorializing tools, socio-cultural and historical (...) Soviet-time constructs, and references to gay culture served to promote one group and to debase the opposition. Close institutional ties between government and media in Russia sustain multiplicity and intertextuality of ‘general line’, thus eliminating discordant interpretations. The article shows strong evidence that the analyzed TV news programs present a typical illustration of ideological discourse, exploited by the Russian government in order to achieve its political goals. (shrink)

Hohwy et al.’s (2008) model of binocular rivalry (BR) is taken as a classic illustration of predictive coding’s explanatory power. I revisit the account and show that it cannot explain the role of reward in BR. I then consider a more recent version of Bayesian model averaging, which recasts the role of reward in (BR) in terms of optimism bias. If we accept this account, however, then we must reconsider our conception of perception. On this latter view, I argue, organisms (...) engage in what amounts to policy-driven, motivated perception. (shrink)

In this paper we shall introduce two types of contextual-hierarchical approaches to the strengthened liar problem. These approaches, which we call the ‘standard’ and the ‘alternative’ ch-reconstructions of the strengthened liar problem, differ in their philosophical view regarding the nature of truth and the relation between the truth predicates T r n and T r n+1 of different hierarchy-levels. The basic idea of the standard ch-reconstruction is that the T r n+1-schema should hold for all sentences of \. In contrast, (...) the alternative ch-reconstruction, for which we shall argue in section four, is motivated by the idea that T r n and T r n+1 are coherent in the sense that the same sentences of \ should be true according to T r n and T r n+1. We show that instances of the standard ch-reconstruction can be obtained by iterating Kripke’s strong Kleene jump operator. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how instances of the alternative ch-reconstruction can be obtained by a slight modification of the iterated axiom system KF and of the iterated strong Kleene jump operator. (shrink)

George O. Liber _Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film_ London: British Film Institute, 2002 ISBN 0-85170-927-3 309 pp.

The formation mechanism of innovation networks is one of the core issues in the current research of innovation networks, and proximity plays an important role in the formation and development of innovation networks; however, which proximity is more important and how different proximities interact remain to be further researched. This study conducts a social network analysis and adopts a spatial interaction model to examine innovation networks among 290 Chinese cities. The results reveal that, first, the hierarchical characteristics of Chinese cities’ (...) innovation networks reflect a core periphery structure and the spatial patterns of large dispersion and small agglomeration. Further, bound by the Hu line, the hierarchy is high in the east and low in the west. Second, geographical, institutional, and cognitive proximities positively affect Chinese cities’ innovation networking. Cognitive proximity, particularly, has the highest impact. Geographical proximity reinforces the effect of institutional proximity, and thus, their interactions are complementary. (shrink)

Metaphysicians, ethical theorists and philosophers of law squabble endlessly about what it is for a person to act — or perhaps even to ‘will’ — more or less freely. A vital issue in this controversy is how we should analyse two obvious but surprisingly problematical contrasts. The first antithesis is between things we do because we are forced, and deeds we perform because we want to — sometimes after having discovered preponderant reasons in their favour. The other polarity is more (...) general. In most situations, if I act on my desire, I act more freely than if I had not had the desire. But what if my attitude is the product of childhood conditioning — or later brainwashing, brain surgery, hypnosis, behaviour modification, alcoholisim, narcotics addiction, neurosis, psychosis or worse? Then isn't my autonomy diminished? What is it about these latter desires, or their origin, that differentiates them from their unthreatening congeners? (shrink)

Certain principle aspects of the fundamental science state in Ukraine as of 2014 were analyzed. It was shown that no awareness exists in the country that the main although not unique task of the science consists in the creation of new knowledge. The special attention was paid to state academies of science, in particular, to the National academy of science of Ukraine. It was demonstrated that the active law concerning science as well as the project of the new law have (...) substantial shortcomings from the judiciary viewpoint and inhibit a free progress of science in line with general trends of the developed countries. The existing status of the autonomous state academies, being a peculiar symbiosis the non-governmental organization and state institution, was criticized. The concept of a scientific elite was analyzed, which was used to determine its true level. Certain scientometric data on the Ukrainian science were presented. A very unsatisfactory situation with social sciences and humanities was shown. Criteria were discussed for the future audit of the Ukrainian science in order to reform it in the European style. (shrink)

Modern Ukrainian society is stratified not only economically, socially, professionally, informally, territorially, politically, historically, but ideologically and experiencedly. Is there something that unites Ukraine today? E. This - the present as a set of cultural and civilization factors and reality as a set of fateful events. The number and intensity of the fateful events for Ukraine in the last 3 years - from November 22, 2013, that is, the first protest against the non-signing of the association with the EU (...) - is abundant. It is not time to sum up, there is a permanent crisis, there is a war, we have a lot of losses, but we have already made our choice. (shrink)

The paper considers a hierarchical theory that combines concern for two values: individual well-being – as a fundamental, first-order value – and (distributive) fairness – as a high-order value that its exclusive function is to complete the value of individual well-being by resolving internal clashes within it that occur in interpersonal conflicts. The argument for this unique conception of high-order fairness is that fairness is morally significant in itself only regarding what matters – individual well-being – and when it matters (...) – in interpersonal conflicts in which constitutive aspects of individual well-being clash. Consequently, the proposed theory is not exposed to claim that fairness comes at the expense of welfare. This theory is considered within a consequential framework, based on the standard version and, alternatively, on a novel interpretation of consequentialism. Thus, it refutes the claim that consequentialism does not take the distinction between persons seriously. (shrink)

The article contributes to the debate on new materialism commenced by Sara Ahmed (2008). Taking up Lena Gunnarsson’s (2013) argument that erasing distinctions is no effective antidote to dualistic theorising, the article argues that Karen Barad’s (2003, 2007) theory is problematic on this count. Whereas Barad dilutes the theoretical distinction between mind and matter as well as that between the animate and the inanimate, the contention here is that it is ethically and politically vital to hold on to a notion (...) of subjectivity understood in terms of the capacity for experience, on account of which sentient being is exposed to suffering. This requires accentuating the passive dimension of subjectivity rather than merely the active dimension of matter. This article contests Barad’s reinscription of a masculinist devaluation of passivity on the grounds that only by moving beyond it can we overcome the hierarchical opposition of subject versus object and, in consequence, of mind versus matter. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the extraction of recursive nested structure in the processing of binary sequences. Our aim was to determine whether humans learn the higher-order regularities of a highly simplified input where only sequential-order information marks the hierarchical structure. To this end, we implemented a sequence generated by the Fibonacci grammar in a serial reaction time task. This deterministic grammar generates aperiodic but self-similar sequences. The combination of these two properties allowed us to evaluate hierarchical learning while controlling (...) for the use of low-level strategies like detecting recurring patterns. The deterministic aspect of the grammar allowed us to predict precisely which points in the sequence should be subject to anticipation. Results showed that participants’ pattern of anticipation could not be accounted for by “flat” statistical learning processes and was consistent with them anticipating upcoming points based on hierarchical assumptions. We also found that participants were sensitive to the structure constituency, suggesting that they organized the signal into embedded constituents. We hypothesized that the participants built this structure by merging recursively deterministic transitions. (shrink)

Akama et al. [1] introduced a hierarchical classification of first-order formulas for a hierarchical prenex normal form theorem in semi-classical arithmetic. In this paper, we give a justification for the hierarchical classification in a general context of first-order theories. To this end, we first formalize the standard transformation procedure for prenex normalization. Then we show that the classes $$\textrm{E}_k$$ and $$\textrm{U}_k$$ introduced in [1] are exactly the classes induced by $$\Sigma _k$$ and $$\Pi _k$$ respectively via the transformation procedure in (...) any first-order theory. (shrink)

Although much theoretical and empirical research has examined organizational power, virtually none has addressed the hierarchical abuse of power in organizations. Managers' incentives and discretion and subordinates' dependencies define the abuse of power as an important organizational issue. This paper offers a conceptualization and process model to help further theoretical and applied understanding, and it considers the ethical nature of power abuse. Two dimensions, disrespect for individual dignity and interference with job performance or deserved rewards, conceptualize the interpersonal abuse of (...) power. Behavioral examples of each dimension are provided.The process model delineates powerholders' motives to abuse power and indicates individual attributes that increase the probability of their pur-suing these motives. Organizational conditions that allow or encourage the abuse of power and managers' particular sources of power interact with these motives and attributes to define decisions about abusing power. Norms and considerations of risk influence these decisions. The decision to abuse power leads to the enactment of power strategies, and they generate intended and unintended outcomes. The process model presented here recognizes an emotional component of the hierarchical abuse of power. (shrink)