Compilation of articles and lectures; chiefly on Hindu philosophy and Hindu rituals.

On the impact of Advaita Vedanta on the other schools of classical Indian philosophy.

Издание содержит: научное изучение времени и информации; философское изучение времени и информации; практическое применение знаний о времени и информации и др.

Subjects perceived touch sensations as arising from a table (or a rubber hand) when both the table (or the rubber hand) and their own real hand were repeatedly tapped and stroked in synchrony with the real hand hidden from view. If the table or rubber hand was then ‘injured’, subjects displayed a strong skin conductance response (SCR) even though nothing was done to the real hand. Sensations could even be projected to anatomically impossible locations. The illusion was much less vivid, (...) as indicated by subjective reports and SCR, if the real hand was simultaneously visible during stroking, or if the real hand was hidden but touched asynchronously. The fact that the illusion could be significantly diminished when the real hand was simultaneously visible suggests that the illusion and associated SCRs were due to perceptual assimilation of the table (or rubber hand) into one’s body image rather than associative conditioning. These experiments demonstrate the malleability of body image and the brain’s remarkable capacity for detecting statistical correlations in the sensory input. (shrink)

Summary Apotemnophilia, or body integrity image disorder (BIID), is characterised by a feeling of mismatch between the internal feeling of how one’s body should be and the physical reality of how it actually is. Patients with this condition have an often overwhelming desire for an amputation- of a specific limb at a specific level. Such patients are not psychotic or delusional, however, they do express an inexplicable emotional abhorrence to the limb they wish removed. It is also known that such (...) patients show a left-sided preponderance for their desired amputation. Often they take drastic action to be rid of the offending limb. Given the left-sided bias, emotional rejection and specificity of desired amputation, we suggest that there are clear similarities to be drawn between BIID and somatoparaphrenia. In this rare condition, which follows a right parietal stroke, the patient rejects (usually) his left arm as ‘‘alien’’. We go on to hypothesis that a dysfunction of the right parietal lobe is also the cause of BIID. We suggest that this leads to an uncoupling of the construct of one’s body image in the right parietal lobe from how one’s body physically is. This hypothesis would be amenable to testing by response to cold-water vestibular caloric stimulation, which is known to temporarily treat somatoparaphrenia. It could also be investigated using functional brain imaging and skin conductance response. If correct our hypothesis not only suggests why BIID arises, but also, in caloric stimulation a therapeutic avenue for this chronic and essentially untreatable condition. (shrink)

This paper aims to make an anti-canonical reading of the avivakṣitavācya-variety of dhvani conceptualized by the ninth century Sanskrit literary critic Ānandavardhana in his seminal work Dhvanyāloka. In this paper, I argue that avivakṣitavācya-dhvani opens up a signifier to new significations that are not conventionally associated with it through a process of deterritorialization. In any language, convention functions as a structuring mechanism upon a signifier by clearly demarcating a rigid semantic ambit for it. By the term ‘conventional semantic ambit’, I (...) mean the boundary of signification set by convention for each signifier. The primary problem associated with the imposition of a definite territory upon a signifier is that it prevents an individual signifier from representing any new significations that are not conventionally attached to it. For example, in the conventional semantic ambit, the word ‘cat’ cannot represent the idea of a ‘dog’. In the act of mapping a fixed territory for each signifier, convention also structures the individual-user of the language by forcing him or her to confine to a specific plan of dealing with signifiers. Thus, the individual user of language within a conventional semantic ambit is rendered absolutely passive, as s/he has nothing new to contribute or create, other than reproducing an always-already existing plan of functioning. It is precisely this structuring tendency of convention that gets challenged in Ānanda’s avivakṣitavācya-dhvani. Such a mechanism is definitely a liberating experience for both the signifier and the individual-users of the language who are forced to accept the signifiers in a specific fashion. Along with the exposition of avivakṣitavācya-dhvani’s resistance to a signifier’s conventional semantic ambit, this paper also aims to conceptualize the figure of the reader that avivakṣitavācya-dhvani anticipates for itself. (shrink)

Clarification of the essence of the mental reflection of reality means to reveal its most general and yet most specific characteristics, distinguishing it from all other phenomena and properties. It will be helpful to approach the solution of this problem from two sides. In the first place, this task calls for a consideration of the initial, elementary and genetically earliest form of the reflection of reality and the circumstances under which it arises. This elementary and lowest form may be understood (...) if, pursuing the method of Marx, we regard the lowest as a "hint" of the highest, when the highest is known . In the given instance, the developed forms of the mental reflection of reality are better known to us than their initial phases. In the second place, the question of the most general features of the property of reflection is closely related to a consideration of motion as the fundamental property of matter. Only a combination of these two lines of analysis will, in our opinion, make it possible, on the one hand, to keep in view the specific features of the process of reflecting reality in cognition and, on the other, to liberate us from anthropomorphic preconceptions ascribing to the elementary form of reflection of reality the characteristics of its highest form-conscious reflection. (shrink)

The interaction of the organism with the environment requires not only reactive, but also active behavior (i.e., search activity) which helps subject to meet the challenge of the uncertainty of the environment. A positive feedback between active behavior and immune system makes the selection process effective.

In my opinion, the so-called revolution in science and technology has virtually no influence on art.

[Note by Editors of Voprosy filosofii. A plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held on June 23, 1980. The plenum adopted a resolution to convene the next regular Twenty-sixth Congress of the CPSU on February 23, 1981. The congresses have always opened new horizons for our Party and our country. The congresses of the CPSU, embodying the collective intelligence of the Party, draw conclusions, on the basis of thoroughgoing Marxist- Leninist analysis, respect (...) what has been accomplished, creatively interpret problems of social development ripe for solution, and illuminate with the bright light of their decisions the perspectives of further movement along the road of communist creativity. The preparations for the forthcoming Twenty-sixth Congress, which is called upon to define the strategy and tactics of struggle during the next stage of the building of communism, have from their first days embraced the people as a whole, and are marked by a growth in the creative initiative and energy of the masses. (shrink)

As we know, the activity approach to understanding man and his world became widespread in Russian philosophy in the 1960s-70s. At the time, it was, I should emphasize, one of the most significant manifestations of progressive trends in Soviet philosophical thought, which strived to overcome the stagnation and dogmatism of official Marxism. However, as it happens whenever the authority of an intellectual current is established, the activity approach and the category of activity were used frequently in a superficial way, simply (...) because they were fashionable at the time. This gave me occasion to announce, in a collection of articles on the problems of the a tivity approach published in 1976, that a sort of magical word "activity," unsupported by responsible conceptual analysis, was widely used.1 There is no doubt, however, that the development of the activity approach by serious theoreticians was backed up by sufficiently deep conceptual analysis, which advanced our philosophical culture of the time. (shrink)

It is a characteristic of neopositivism that the pursuit of its effort in theoretical cognition, the attempt to discover the "given" content of knowledge, the "empirical significance" of its elements — concepts and assertions — is associated, with the employment of the method of logical analysis of knowledge. On the one hand, this gives logical analysis a distinctly philosophical, epistemological emphasis, while on the other it converts the theory of knowledge of neopositivism into "applied logic," engaged in establishing the relations (...) between the elements of knowledge by means of the procedures of contemporary formal logic — mathematical or symbolic logic. (shrink)

Издание адресовано научным работникам, преподавателям, студентам и аспирантам, а также практикам, интересующимся вопросами философии.

Hegel's teachings on the state, law, and society constitute a philosophy of law and were developed by him as the philosophy of the objective spirit. In addition to providing a basis for historically concrete views on political matters, the Hegelian philosophy of law, as an application of dialectics to a specific realm of subject matter in societal, governmental, and political-legal phenomena, contains the logic of that realm of subject matter. The independent meaning of this domain of research transforms logic and (...) gives it politically significant features despite the conscious Hegelian attitude of "logicizing" politics. This is clearly manifested in the political and legal results of Hegel's employment of a conceptual apparatus and theoretical constructs in the dialectical investigation of the objective spirit. Therefore, it is valid to single out two aspects of the political content of Hegel's philosophy of law: the historically concrete political views developed by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right; and the totality of politically meaningful propositions deriving from his application of dialectics to the sphere of politics — which we here call Hegel's dialectics of politics. (shrink)