This article reevaluates the mystical techniques and experiences peculiar to Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah and attempts to offer an alternative approach to their dominant understanding, which largely depends on Moshe Idel’s work. Current scholars of Jewish mysticism have a habit of highlighting the “unique character” of Abulafia’s mystical practices while asserting that they cannot be compared with the induction techniques and the psychophysical phenomena typical of hypnosis. While generally agreeing with the scholars discussed that the hyperactivation of the mind found in (...) Abulafian Kabbalah contrasts sharply with the mental relaxation attained through the mystical practices of other religious traditions, the present study takes issue with the current view of Abulafian Kabbalah’s relation to hypnotic procedures, processes, and states. This work addresses the issues present with the current view and offers a more inclusive model for interpreting Abulafia’s Kabbalah, drawing from psychiatrist Roland Fischer. (shrink)

The main aspect of the intuitionist ontology of mathematicsis the conception of mathematical objects as products of the human mind. This paper argues that so long as the existence of mathematical objects is made dependent on thehuman mind , the intuitionist ontology is refutable in that it is inconsistent with our well-confirmed beliefs about what is physically possible. At the same time, it is also argued that the intuitionistś attempt to remove this inconsistency by endowing the mind with various highly (...) idealized features and capacities will erase any significant ontological difference between Intuitionism and Platonism. (shrink)

In today's philosophy of science, scientific theories are construed as abstract mathematical objects: formal axiomatic systems or classes of set-theoretic models. By focusing exclusively on the logico-mathematical structure of theories, however, this approach ignores their essentially cognitive nature: that theories are conceptualizations of the world produced by some cognitive agents. As a result, traditional philosophical analyses of scientific theories are incapable of coherently accounting for the relevant relations between highly abstract and idealized models in science and concrete empirical phenomena in (...) the world. ;As a more accurate and comprehensive alternative to traditional analyses of scientific theorizing, the dissertation proposes and develops a conception of scientific theories which makes explicit the essential role of cognitive agents--theorizers--in generating abstract scientific models and systematically relating such models to experimentally controlled parts of the world. ;Specifically, by utilizing the conceptually powerful formal framework of the Theory of Categories, the new approach clarifies and makes formally precise the cognitive status of several important aspects of scientific theorizing, including the notion of a scientific model as theorizers' mathematical conceptualization of the world jointly determined by theorizers' physical interactions with the world and their cognitive access to mathematical objects, the distinction between models in science and models in pure mathematics, the distinction between provisional and successful scientific models, the notion of a systematic correspondence between successful scientific models and the world which does not impose upon the world the mathematical structure of scientific models, and the way in which theorizers' modeling strategy determines the general structure of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

In the decision of modern problems of education and, first of all, removal of extreme measures of unification and autonomic of its development the significant role is got with strategy of optimum forming of a harmonious parity of sensual and rational approaches in the organization and conducting educational processes in preparation of youth for a life. Educational process is indissoluble unity sensual and rational as preparation of the person for a life it is necessary includes as purchase versatile and a (...) profound knowledge and skills, and the certain personal attitude (feelings, behaviors) it to the world, other people and to itself. If sensual approaches are characterized mainly by problems of formation of practical knowledge of the person about the validity, progresses of its first-hand experience and the attitude to a life within the limits of culture of the nearest environment rational approaches at the most are focused on progress of intelligence of the person, on formation of its capacity completely to capture and interpret great volume of the information. Both that, and another approaches contain the dignity and the lacks. Therefore, in rational strategy of education scholastic theoretical speculations quite often replaces everyday, practical knowledge. As a result, the person not always correctly understands and estimates the importance of the decision of those or other problems in sphere of the activity and development of the country.Rational approaches dominate over modern education systems. Rational domination in educational processes shows that there is a gap between scientific and personal models of an image of the world of the modern person. All this considerably affects moral consciousness of modern youth and its civil socialization. For this reason, it is important to lead at reforming education systems to conformity (harmony) of sensual and rational approaches. (shrink)

In the Club of Rome report Come on! Capitalism, Short-Termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet (2018) Kant, along with other “old” Enlighteners, is presented as the father of a world-view which led to the destabilisation of the environment in which humanity exists. The authors of the report argue that the “old Enlightenment” with its individualism, faith in the market and a consumerist attitude to nature should be scrapped. I maintain that this assessment of Kant’s philosophy is groundless and (...) that his ideas allow us both to conduct a more profound diagnosis of the crisis and to propose a more solidly founded strategy of overcoming it. First, I sum up the position of the authors concerning the loss of sustainability of development which they attribute to the philosophy of Enlightenment. Next, I outline the history and content of the notion of “sustainable development” and offer an analysis of the sources of progressivist commitment to the conquest of nature which lie outside Modern Times in the idea of the “cultural mandate”. Then I present the Kantian diagnosis of the causes of the crisis which attributes it to humankind’s failure to “mature”. I compare the idea of “the full world” formulated by the authors of the report with the idea of the “the world come of age” and their diagnosis of “capitalism — short-termism — depletion of resources” with the Kantian assessment of the attempts to escape from the predicaments of the present into the past or the future. I draw attention to Kant’s solutions to some of the specific problems indicated in the report. Instead of the strategy of “return of the cultural mandate”, proposed at this time by the authors of the report, the Kant­ian answer to the crisis is a “Copernican turn” and re-direction of the cultivating effort to the inner moral development of the human being. (shrink)

This paper deals with an analysis of philosophy as intellectual therapeutics for educational (pedagogical) activity. Two interrelated issues are examined: (1) philosophy's role in the construction of cognitive attitudes to all systems of education; (2) philosophy's role in the formation of a definite value attitude to education. A great deal of attention is devoted to the problem of educational goals. It is argued that the assumed dichotomy of the social and the individual (which still occurs in our teaching practice and (...) in some philosophical doctrines) in defining educational goals, is itself mistaken. It is shown that pedagogical activity must be based on a general concept of man as a whole substance who organically includes qualities in himself. Our pressing concern with education in the twenty-first century promotes a new subject for pedagogical activity. This presupposes a modern philosophical mind capable of creating an individual with a broad worldview and with pragmatic capabilities. (shrink)

An online game of chess against a human opponent appears to be indistinguishable from a game against a machine: both happen on the screen. Yet, people prefer to play chess against other people despite the fact that machines surpass people in skill. When the philosophers of 1970’s and 1980’s argued that computers will never surpass us in chess, perhaps their intuitions were rather saying “Computers will never be favored as opponents”? In this paper we analyse through the introduced concepts of (...) psychological affordances and psychological interplay, what are the mechanisms that make a human-human interaction more meaningful than a human-computer interaction. We claim that an HH chess game consists of two intertwined, but independent simultaneous games—only one of which is retained in the HC game. To help with the analysis we introduce the thought experiment of a Preferential Engagement Test which is inspired by, but non-equivalent to, the Standard Turing Test. We also explore how the PET can illuminate, and be illuminated by, various philosophies of mind reading: Theory Theory, Simulation Theory and Mind Minding. We propose that our analysis along with the concept of PET could illuminate in a new way the conditions and challenges a machine must face before it can replace humans in a given occupation. (shrink)

This paper restates and subjects to analysis the polemics in Russian pre-revolutionary Populist and Marxist thought that concerned Kant’s practical philosophy. In these polemics Kantian ideas influence and reinforce the Populist personalism and idealism, as well as Marxist revisionist reformism and moral universalism. Plekhanov, Lenin, and other Russian “orthodox Marxists” heavily criticize both trends. In addition, they generally view Kantianism as a “spiritual weapon” of the reactionary bourgeois thought. This results in a starkly anti-Kantian position of Soviet Marxism. In view (...) of this the 1947 Communist Party decision to preserve Kant’s tomb in Soviet Kaliningrad becomes something of an experimentum crucis that challenges the soundness of the theory. (shrink)

The article aims at clarifying the historical status and cognitive potentials of such a genre of contemporary historiography of philosophy as biographical encyclopedia (dictionary). Based on extensive bibliographic material, the author demonstrates that in the late XX – early XXI centuries in the English-speaking countries there was a real outbreak of interest in encyclopedias and dictionaries, compiled from personalized articles about the life and works of philosophers of certain epochs, countries, trends, etc. According to the author, the increasing popularity of (...) this genre can be considered as a logical continuation of the historical and biographical turns that took place in the Anglo-American (analytic) philosophy in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. The author specifically emphasizes that it caused the appearance of a significant number of encyclopedias and dictionaries, which contain the well-known facts as well as the significant elements of scholar novelty. The article also shows that similar tendencies have taken place in the contemporary Ukrainian historiography of philosophy. It is shown that Ukrainian experts also made their own significant contribution to the development of this genre. They have successfully developed a special approach, which presupposes the focus on life and works of the representatives of a particular academic institution. The intellectual value of this approach is demonstrated by the example of the recently published two-volume encyclopedia “Kyiv Theological Academy in Names: 1819-1924”. It contains a systematic and very informative presentation of the biographies of many representatives of the national philosophy, whose activities were associated with this institution. The author also shows that from the perspective of the historiography of philosophy, the general methodological foundations of this encyclopedic research is a matter of special interest. (shrink)

In experimental settings, scientists often “make” new things, in which case the aim is to intervene in order to produce experimental objects and processes—characterized as ‘effects’. In this discussion, I illuminate an important performative function in measurement and experimentation in general: intervention-based experimental production (IEP). I argue that even though the goal of IEP is the production of new effects, it can be informative for causal details in scientific representations. Specifically, IEP can be informative about causal relations in: regularities under (...) study; ‘intervention systems’, which are measurement/experimental systems; and new technological systems. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to clarify the meaning and extent of Kant's liberalism by contrasting some of his key ideas to those of Burke, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Nozick, Rawls, and Schmitt. My claim is that Kant's political philosophy navigates the path between the extremes of liberalism and conservatism, just as his theoretical philosophy tries to navigate between dogmatism and skepticism, and that current liberal claim on Kant has important limitations in Kant's letter, as well as in spirit.

This research is devoted to the study of scientific and methodological aspects of providing students with physical education. The research is based on the works of Russian teachers who have adopted the experience of the new higher education program for bachelor's degree. The starting point for the development of new concepts is the latest edition of the Federal State Educational Standard for Higher Education. The purpose of the study is to analysis of the scientific and methodological support of physical education (...) of students under the Federal State Educational Standard program. In the course of the research, we study the most important aspects of the formation of physical skills with the help of basic and additional types of interaction between a teacher and students. Scientific novelty lies new look at complex education, which includes an expanded set of methods, technologies for the development of cognitive interest, activity, physical skills and motivation for active recreation, a healthy lifestyle. The design technology of 2021, based on the method of new generation projects by Evgenia Semyonovna Polat, is a separate factor. The result of the study was the definition of the scientific and methodological aspects of providing physical education in the main and additional types of interaction between the teacher and students, including physical culture, sports, elite sports, competitive tests, project technology and distance learning format. (shrink)

This article attempts two things. First, it aims to reassess the literary criticism that Georg Lukács produced in the 1930s while he was living in the Soviet Union in light of his earlier, and much-esteemed, The theory of the novel. Second, in order to carry out this reassessment, it examines the place of Hegelian aesthetics in Lukács’s theorization of realism in the 1930s criticism, in relation both to contemporary Soviet writings on the subject and to his own earlier, ostensibly Hegelian (...) work. I argue that, at least in terms of the place of art in the historical dialectic, the later work is more consistent with Hegelian philosophy than The theory of the novel. (shrink)

The impact of Hegelian philosophy on Belinskij’s thinking and especially on his self-understanding did not end with his well-known and ostentatious anti-Hegelian tirades. By focusing on Belinskij’s tormented early years in Petersburg, after he had supposedly reneged on his “reconciliation with reality,” this paper will attempt to show how the continued conceptual evolution of Belinskij’s Hegelian thinking was intimately interrelated with his personal striving for self-realization. Ultimately, Hegelian ideas not only allowed Belinskij to affirm a unique sense of self as (...) the subject of a not-yet-world-historical nation, they also served as the crucial theoretical framework that would finally allow Belinskij to conceptualize the essential, organic connection between Russian literature and Russian life, as evidenced in his monumental eleven-part study on Pushkin. (shrink)

It is shown that the power set of $\kappa$ ordered by the subset relation modulo various versions of the non-stationary ideal can be embedded into the partial order of Borel equivalence relations on $2^\kappa$ under Borel reducibility. Here $\kappa$ is an uncountable regular cardinal with $\kappa^{<\kappa}=\kappa$.

A murder of an Afro-American detainee by a policeman at the end of May 2020 caused a public outrage in the United States, which led to a campaign against the monuments to historical figures whose reputation, according to the protesters, was marred by racism. Some German publicists, impressed by the campaign, initiated an analogous search for racists among the national thinkers and politicians of the past. Suddenly Kant emerged as a ‘scapegoat’. This statement is an attempt to assess such reactions (...) from the perspective of Russia’s experience. (shrink)