The author proves that, despite the opinion prevalent among historians of psychology, the concept of “practical, sensuous activity” was present in Vygotsky’s work from the very beginning of his stu...

The study presents the Russian historical-philosophical process in the context of the discovery of a new object, themes, personae, set of reactions and formation of a product for the intellectual community. The author's reliance on philosophical empirical material and appropriate hermeneutics in its processing allows the author to highlight those factors that influenced individual and collective reception. The author sees as a convenient case study the “discovery” by the Russian philosophical community of the early 20th century of both American philosophy (...) in general and C.S. Peirce in particular. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Russian thinkers have turned their attention to American philosophy in all the diversity of its manifestations. Russian intellectuals paid special attention to American pragmatism and everything associated with it. In Russia, in addition to translations, numerous reviews of foreign publications on this topic are appearing. Of particular interest to us in the Russian “collective reflection” of American ideas is the system of preferences for ideas, texts, events, and names. The point is that what might have been a priority for a European thinker, for a Russian one turned out to be on the “periphery” of his consciousness, as well as vice versa. While James appeared among the priority figures for Russian thinkers, Peirce was in his “shadow”. Using rich empirical material, the author shows all the stages of Peirce’s image formation in the Russian intellectual community. The research shows that “image” of Peirce, which represents not so much the thinker himself, but characterizes the intellectual community that turned to him. The results of the study may be useful both for contemporary foreign and Russian interpreters of Peirce and for historians of philosophy who are rethinking the past and forming in the present new objects of reception and reflection. (shrink)

This study examined the impact of gender on perceptions of various business practices by male and female Russian managers. Female managers considered various activities such as doing personal business on company time, falsifying time/quality/quantity reports, padding an expense account more than 10 percent, calling in sick to take a day off, and pilfering organization materials and supplies more unethical than male managers. Female managers also perceived the acceptance of gifts and favors in exchange for preferential treatment more unethical than male (...) managers. (shrink)

The concept of activity focuses on the uniqueness of human social life, which consists of the fact that men purposively transform objective nature and social reality. The characteristic feature of the social life of human beings is that it is manifested only through their activity, which has various aspects and forms.

This is a transcription of a debate on the concept of a person conducted in Moscow in 1983. David Bakhurst argues that Evald Ilyenkov's social constructivist conception of personhood, founded on Marx's thesis that the human essence is 'the ensemble of social relations', is either false or trivially true. F. T. Mikhailov, V. S. Bibler, V. A. Lektorsky and V. V. Davydov critically assess Bakhurst's arguments, elucidate and contextualize Ilyenkov's views, and defend, in contrasting ways, the claim that human (...) individuals are socially constituted beings. Issues discussed include: the concepts of activity and community and their relevance to the notions of mind and personhood; self-consciousness and its relation to personal identity; naturalism in Soviet thought. Translated from the Russian. (shrink)

Ideas of activity are widely used in the contemporary literature on psychology and methodology. It seems that everyone understands well what is being said. Nevertheless, one can claim that there is a methodological problem in connection with the idea of activity. Various researchers not only interpret activity differently but, what is more important, assess of the place of this category in knowledge differently. From the perspective of some researchers, activity is one way of describing and explaining reality. Others believe that (...) the category of activity presents reality itself, that there is nothing but activity. If we adhere to the former point of view, we can raise the question, for example, of studying certain types of activity, as V.V. Davydov does. (shrink)

Although the concept of “pure knowledge” is one of the most interesting and singular concepts in the philosophical work of Vasily Seseman, it can only be presented after a comprehensive analysis of the philosopher’s numerous works devoted to ontological, epistemological and logical problems. Seseman believes that the main philosophical trends at the beginning of the twentieth century, namely neo-Kantianism, intuitionism and phenomenology, could not present this concept, although they did try. According to the philosopher, the main reason for the (...) inability of neo-Kantianism, intuitionism and phenomenology to start talking about pure knowledge is their inability to assert the essential difference between objective and non-objective knowledge. Sesemann pays special attention when substantiating his concept of “pure knowledge” to the difference between his approach and that of the founder of modern phenomenology. The philosopher points out that even Husserl, who concentrated attention on the specifics of inner experience, puts this specific, in the end, in dependence on the process of cognition and reflection, completely ignoring its ontological foundations. While pure knowledge, according to Seseman, is neither non-objective, nor objective knowledge, nor non-objective, nor objective being, it, in fact, is non-knowledge and non-being. It is precisely this understanding by the philosopher of this phenomenon that allows him to characterize pure knowledge as premiseless and limitless and, in general, as free from any ontological or epistemological determinations. However, on the other hand, Sesemann insists that the phenomenon of pure knowledge has the meaning of not just a regulatory idea, an infinitely distant ideal, but also a real constitutive meaning, as a principle that reveals and determines the human striving for knowledge as an interconnected and necessary process that ascends from the onto-gnoseological stage of non-objective knowledge to the epistemological, and then the logical stage of objective knowledge. (shrink)

This book has been ably reviewed by others. I am taking a second look at it now on the occasion of the publication of its sequel, a review of which I also provide in this volume. I have had the distinct pleasure of being a student and colleague of Vasilis Politis (VP) since the initiation of the project that led to these monographs, and the great privilege of witnessing the development of the project for more than a decade. VP’s Plato (...) is in a way the only one I have known. When I hear the terms ‘aporia’, ‘whether-or-not’, and ‘ti esti’, they ring in my ears like bells. In this double review, I hope to impress upon the reader the unique importance of this interpretation of Plato, both for the history of philosophy and philosophy more broadly, and thereby to give a sense of its melody and resonance. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the reflective analysis of one of the most powerful philosophical and methodological programs for the development of reflective thinking in Russia. This is the “Program for the Development of Regional Social Systems by Means of Education”, developed in the 90s of the last century by a team of young scientists on the basis of the theory of developing education of V.V. Davydov. The author studies the problems to be solved by the program as well as (...) the main stages of its implementation. Such projects as “Metropolitan Education”, “Updating the content of education: meta-subjects, meta-subject technologies”, “Education of design activities: School of General Designers”, – are in the centre of analysis. The author discusses also the structures of solutions that have been aimed at the developing educational practices (experimental sites, innovative networks) and reflective thinking in the metropolitan education system (Expert Council). The results of the implementation of the program at each stage are summed up. The limitations in the application of the reflection method are analyzed and the path of further research is outlined. (shrink)

Russian Marxism was fairly late to address building its own understandings of the Russian historical process. Moreover, the Bolsheviks did not have their own historiography of “Russian history” despite the fact that, beginning in 1918, they began more and more vehemently claiming not just total ideological control but also intellectual hegemony. A confrontation between “Marxist” and “non-Marxist” understandings arose. At the same time, the real disputes within the camp of Marxist historians came down to a confrontation between the versions of (...) the historical process proposed by Georgi V. Plekhanov and Mikhail N. Pokrovskii back in the 1910s. This article broadly analyzes the disputes in the Marxist camp, from pressing political implications such as attitudes toward the state to the definition of the place of “historical facts” in theory and interpretation. We also demonstrate that it was, in fact, the understandings of Plekhanov, Leon D. Trotsky, and Pokrovskii that continue, both explicitly and implicitly, the legacy of Vasily O. Klyuchevsky’s historical schema and his understanding of the “state school,” a legacy that has remained unstudied until now. (shrink)

This is a transcription of a debate on the concept of a person conducted in Moscow in 1983. David Bakhurst argues that Evald Ilyenkov's social constructivist conception of personhood, founded on Marx's thesis that the human essence is the ensemble of social relations, is either false or trivially true. F. T. Mikhailov, V. S. Bibler, V. A. Lektorsky and V. V. Davydov critically assess Bakhurst's arguments, elucidate and contextualize Ilyenkov's views, and defend, in contrasting ways, the claim that human (...) individuals are socially constituted beings. Issues discussed include: the concepts of activity (dejatel'nost') and community (obenija) and their relevance to the notions of mind and personhood; self-consciousness and its relation to personal identity; naturalism in Soviet thought. Translated from the Russian. (shrink)

As it happened, I became acquainted with E.V. Il'enkov quite late, in the mid- or even the late 1960s. It was only a bit more than ten years before his death that I began to feel at home in his house, was able to visit without calling ahead, and was able to call him by his first name and the familiar "you"—that is, like many, many of not only his true friends but also like-minded thinkers, who became his close acquaintances, (...) most of whom justly considered themselves his pupils … The door would open wide, and Olia, Professor K.I. Salimova, Eval'd's wife and most devoted friend, not at all surprised by the unexpected guest and seemingly even quite happy at his arrival , would try first to draw him into the kitchen and feed him … which she more often than not succeeded in doing. I am not talking about myself: there were always many guests, and this is precisely how they arrived at the Il'enkovs' apartment. Recently, a critic in Literaturnaia gazeta recalled those whom he met in Eval'd's apartment in the 1960s: "This was a tight circle of like-minded thinkers," wrote the critic. "But some of them are no longer with us, while most are far away, beyond our borders." Obviously, he had not been in the house often or had forgotten things over the distance of years. There was no "circle," nor could there have been one—not with this host, not with his lifestyle and way of relating to people. I met a good hundred fine and various people in Eval'd's home: I.N. Korzhavin, V. Davydov, A. Meshcheriakov, S. Vinogradova, N. Dubinin, V. Zinchenko, A. Zinov'ev, Iu. Kamiakin, and … indeed, five pages would not be enough to list the quite famous and the not-quite-so-famous, simply ordinary people with no claim to fame. Nazym Khikmet, A.N. Leont'ev, and B.M. Kedrov were friends of the house … Ever new faces, figures, and words come to mind. I cannot forgive myself: once Eval'd Vasil'evich wanted to take me along to Iurii Liubimov's to read his play Neither God nor Tsar nor Hero … [Ni bog, ni tsar' i ni geroi], but I had some other business, something so important that I do not even remember now what it was, and it is probably not worth remembering. But most likely I was too timid to appear uninvited at the house of a person burning with creativity. The same thing happened with Galich … Eval'd liked especially his song about Zoshchenko. He did not sing it; he narrated it, but in such a way that tears always came to one's eyes. (shrink)

The relevance of the research. The various approaches are analyzed on the essence of nostalgia, ranging from psychological understanding of this phenomenon as emigrant`s neurosis and mental illness to a more profound comprehension of it as a cultural and philosophical “universalia” that concerns complicated mechanisms of historical memory, identity, time and eternity. Analysis of research and publications. Among contemporary researchers investigating the ethical, religious and cultural-historical dimensions of nostalgia, there should be mentioned S. Boim, F. Davis, S. Merzlyakov, V. Nurkov, (...) Y. Davydov, E. Loftus, O. Fedkov, M. Rewakowicz, M. Shkandrij, M. Boichenko, O. Yakovleva, V. Liakh, E. Novikov and many others researchers. The purpose of the paper is to examine the ethical and religious dimensions of nostalgia, to figure out the connection of nostalgia with the problems of memory, time and eternity. Presentation of the main research material. The article deals with the cultural phenomenon of nostalgia, its religious, ethical and general philosophical aspects. It is shown that nostalgia is based on memory value selectivity, due to which a moral tradition, social and individual identity, and the continuity of generations are established. Modern man rebels against the actual state of being as untrue and non-authentic. He feels nostalgia for the past as something right and proper. A person not only mythologizes, but also seeks to resurrect the past in a symbolic way. In this almost religious faith in the resurrection of what is gone there is an existential certainty for the final cancellation of time and triumph of eternity, within which everything is preserved and nothing is forgotten. Nostalgic lust for the past is inherent to humanity throughout its history and is especially actualized in the culture of postmodernism. Conclusion. Nostalgia is a kind of personal and social myth creation, the construction of the historical identity. It reconstructs the past, which appears not only valuable and significant for the present, but also proper. Nostalgia is a moral phenomenon based on a morally healthy memory, capable of forgiveness, reconciliation and love for one's own destiny. The attention is stressed on metaphysical, political and aesthetic forms of nostalgia that oppose destructive force of nihilism. (shrink)

In terms of validity in Kripke frames, a modal formula expresses a universal monadic second-order condition. Those modal formulae which are equivalent to first-order conditions are called elementary. Modal formulae which have a certain persistence property which implies their validity in all canonical frames of modal logics axiomatized with them, and therefore their completeness, are called canonical. This is a survey of a recent and ongoing study of the class of elementary and canonical modal formulae. We summarize main ideas and (...) results, and outline further research perspectives. (shrink)

With his customary incisiveness, W. V. Quine presents logic as the product of two factors, truth and grammar--but argues against the doctrine that the logical truths are true because of grammar or language. Rather, in presenting a general theory of grammar and discussing the boundaries and possible extensions of logic, Quine argues that logic is not a mere matter of words.

The insight phenomenon is thought to comprise two components: cognitive and affective. The exact nature of the Aha! experience remains unclear; however, several explanations have been put forward. Based on the processing fluency account, the source of the Aha! experience is a sudden increase in processing fluency, associated with emerging of a solution. We hypothesized that in a situation which the Aha! experience accompanies the solution in, the problem would be judged as less difficult, regardless of the objective difficulty. We (...) also planned to confirm previously discovered associations between the Aha! experience and accuracy, confidence, and pleasure. To test the proposed hypothesis, during the preliminary stage of the study, we developed a set of 100 remote associate problems in Russian and asked 125 participants to solve problems and indicate the Aha! moment, confidence, difficulty, and likability of each problem. As expected, the Aha! experience often accompanied correct solutions and correlated with confidence judgments. We also found a positive correlation between the Aha! experience and problem likability. As for the main hypothesis, we confirmed that the Aha! experience after the presentation of the solution was associated with a decrease in subjective difficulty. When participants could not solve a problem but experienced the Aha! moment after the solution was presented to them, the problem was perceived as easier than one without the Aha! experience. We didn’t find the same effect for the Aha! after solution generation. Thus, our study partially supports the processing fluency account and demonstrates the association between the Aha! experience and metacognitive judgments about the accuracy and difficulty of problems. (shrink)

Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectful are best understood as illustrating exactly this tension. Elaborating on this conflict, (...) we argue that it should lead us to modify how luck and choice are used in theories of justice. (shrink)

Many policies hinge on determining whether someone’s situation is due to luck or choice. In political philosophy, this prevalence is mirrored by luck egalitarian theories. But overemphasizing the distinction between luck and choice will lead to tensions with the value of moral agency, on which the distinction is grounded. Here, we argue that the two most common contemporary critiques of luck egalitarianism, holding it to be harsh and disrespectful are best understood as illustrating exactly this tension. Elaborating on this conflict, (...) we argue that it should lead us to modify how luck and choice are used in theories of justice. (shrink)

The article examines the views of the prominent Russian politician and publicist Vasily Vitalyevich Shulgin, whom the author considers to be the largest ideologist of the “chieftain” political subculture in Russian political culture. Following Shulgin, the author distinguishes two fundamentally different models of power: “monarchical” type of power and “chieftain” type of power. V.V. Shulgin was one of the first Russian thinkers who, after Alexander Pushkin and Sergei Solovyov, considered the “golden age” of the Russian society to be under (...) the rule of “leaders-heroes”. Shulgin explained many of the problems of Russian statehood revealed in the early 20th century by the degradation of the Russian ruling class and specifically the Romanov dynasty. Under these conditions, the national leader P.A. Stolypin, able to bring the country out of crisis by evolution, had appeared “next to the monarch,” but he has not been appreciated by Russian society and it has caused a national catastrophe. The First World War has accelerated the degradation of the Russian government. The “democratic forces” that came to power in Russia for a short time could not nominate a new “leader” from their ranks. Shulgin foresaw that “intermediate figures” like the White generals or the Red diarchy of Lenin and Trotsky would eventually give way to the autocratic rule of an all-Russian “Chief,” who would combine the ideology of the Whites and the will of the Reds. (shrink)

As concern over the use of questionable research practices in academic science has increased over the last couple of decades, some reforms have been implemented and many others have been debated and recommended. While many of these proposals have merit, efforts to improve scientific practices are more likely to succeed when they are responsive to the prevailing views and concerns of scientists themselves. To date, there have been few efforts to solicit wide-ranging input from researchers on the topic of needed (...) reforms. This article is a qualitative report of responses from federally funded scientists to the question of what should be done to address the problem of QRPs in their disciplines. Overall, participants were concerned about how institutional and career-oriented incentives encourage the use of QRPs. Compared to previous recommendations, participants had surprisingly little confidence in the ability of ethics training to improve research integrity. (shrink)

With increasing influence of illiberalism, freedom should not be considered or interpreted lightly. Post-truth contexts provide grounds for alt-right movements to capture and pervert notions of freedom of speech, making universities battlefields of politicised emotions and expressions. In societies facing these pressures around the world, academic freedom has never been challenged as much as it is today. As Peters and colleagues note, conceptualisations of ‘facts’ and ‘evidences’ are politically, socially, and epistemically reconstructed in post-truth contexts. At the same time, with (...) intelligence commodified, reified or marginalised, freedom of speech and of mobility can entail fights for entitlements, or escapes from local responsibilities. The decline and corruptions of democratic free speech and academic freedom, or the absence of forces to defend them, are thus serious challenges. These challenges grow as the competition of ideas, sometimes under the rubric of academic freedom, often implies the power struggle and questioning of statuses in the so-called ‘marketplace of ideas’. Competition as a value invoked in some conceptualisations of freedom, becomes more important than human dignity, which was originally supposed to expand and strengthen under democratic conceptions of freedom in higher education. What had been happening to freedoms, of speech, teaching, and learning, across different subject positions and cultures of higher education, remains largely underexplored, as alt-right movements, neoliberalism and illiberalism, and post-truthism values and orientations expand. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are the situations which emerge as a response to deal with conflicting obligations or duties. An interesting case arises when an agent thinks that two obligations A and B are equally important, but yet fails to choose one obligation over the other. Despite the fact that the systematic study and the resolution of moral conflicts finds prominence in our linguistic discourse, standard deontic logic when used to represent moral conflicts, implies the impossibility of moral conflicts. This presents a (...) conundrum for appropriate logic to address these moral conflicts. We frequently believe that there is a close connection between tolerating inconsistencies and conflicting moral obligations. In paraconsistent logics, we tolerate inconsistencies by treating them to be both true and false. In this paper, we analyze Graham Priest’s paraconsistent logic LP, and extend our examination to the deontic extension of LP known as DLP. We illustrate our work, with a classic example from the famous Indian epic Mahabharata, where the protagonist Arjuna faces a moral conflict in the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The paper aims to avoid deontic explosion and allows to accommodate Arjuna’s moral conflict in paraconsistent deontic logics. Our analysis is expected to provide novel tools towards the logical representation of moral conflicts and to shed some light on the context-sensitive paraconsistent deontic logic. (shrink)

In the paper we analyse the problem of axiomatizing the minimal variant of discussive logic denoted as $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {0}}$$ D 0. Our aim is to give its axiomatization that would correspond to a known axiomatization of the original discussive logic $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {2}}$$ D 2. The considered system is minimal in a class of discussive logics. It is defined similarly, as Jaśkowski’s logic $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {2}}$$ D 2 but with the help of the deontic normal logic (...) $$\textbf{D}$$ D. Although we focus on the smallest discussive logic and its correspondence to $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {2}}$$ D 2, we analyse to some extent also its formal aspects, in particular its behaviour with respect to rules that hold for classical logic. In the paper we propose a deductive system for the above recalled discussive logic. While formulating this system, we apply a method of Newton da Costa and Lech Dubikajtis—a modified version of Jerzy Kotas’s method used to axiomatize $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {2}}$$ D 2. Basically the difference manifests in the result—in the case of da Costa and Dubikajtis, the resulting axiomatization is pure modus ponens-style. In the case of $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {0}}$$ D 0, we have to use some rules, but they are mostly needed to express some aspects of positive logic. $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {0}}$$ D 0 understood as a set of theses is contained in $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {2}}$$ D 2. Additionally, any non-trivial discussive logic expressed by means of Jaśkowski’s model of discussion, applied to any regular modal logic of discussion, contains $$ {\textsf {D}}_{\textsf {0}}$$ D 0. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to propose a method for analyzing the ideo­logical content of video games while taking into account the agency of the players. The interactivity of video games as a medium has been attracting the attention of researchers for many years, raising, in particular, the ques­tion of how this unique property serves to broadcast certain ideologies. The ability of games to make ideological statements was discussed by Bogost, Frasca, Aarseth, and many other pioneers of game studies. (...) Video games were analyzed both in the context of older media forms that promoted certain ideas through plots, visuals, and other traditional means, and as unique types of objects that can make statements through rules. I aim to introduce the player — as a subject who is able to transform and conceptual­ize the game based on their own cultural background — to this discussion. Using James Gibson’s theory of affordances, I want to acknowledge the player’s freedom of interpretation, the potential to assign one or another ideology to the game in each playthrough. On the one hand, the player acts as a consumer of content; on the other hand, they are a co-author who will use the tools offered by the video game to produce their own state­ments, to be interpreted independently. This leaves the final decision about the ideology of the game to the consumer; thus, game studies need an ap­proach that allows the analysis of the ideological content of specific games. It is especially important in the light of more and more games prioritizing player freedom and not providing any clear plot or even victory conditions. Of course, research can still proclaim, and rightfully so, that the specific rules in such games bear traces of certain ideological systems — capitalism or secularism, for example. But individual players could undermine such interpretations both at the level of reading the game as a “text”, and at the level of interactive actions inspired by those readings. (shrink)

The article considers Max Weber’s model of plebiscitary leadership and historical examples of plebiscitary democracy. It is argued that there is no clear distinction between plebiscitary democracy and dictatorship inWeber’s writings. As Stefan Breuer demonstrates, such a distinction allows us to broaden the application of Weberian concepts. Plebiscitary elements can be seen in the political life of non-Western states, which have been discussed from the multiple modernities perspective. However, while that perspective develops the Weberian sociological tradition, its representatives mostly do (...) not use the concept of plebiscitary leadership. Thus, Shmuel Eisenstadt draws primarily on Weber’s sociology of religion in his analysis of different types of modernity. Specifically, Eisenstadt considers the impact of civilizational legacies on political processes in India and Latin America. Peter Wagner discusses the relevance of Weber’s rationalization thesis and theory of capitalism rather than the concepts of Weberian political sociology. In his study of democratization in Brazil and South Africa, Wagner emphasizes the progressive character of political changes but does not consider the possibility of a reversal of these processes. The article argues that the contemporary reconstruction of Weber’s model of plebiscitary leadership can complement the analyses of democratization in non-Western societies from the multiple modernities perspective. (shrink)