The debates between various Buddhist and Hindu philosophical systems about the existence, definition and nature of self, occupy a central place in the history of Indian philosophy and religion.

One of the iconographic trends that became especially articulated in the XII century is the strengthening of the role of typological logic in the selection and organization of subjects within the iconographic program of monuments of decorative and applied art, book illumination and stained glass. Interest in this kind of visual exegesis, based on the symbolic parallelism of the Old and New Testaments, generates experiments in the field of iconographic programs, which leads to the appearance in the late XII – (...) early XIII centuries a number of monuments in which detailed typological cycles are used (the Klosterneuburg altar, typological stained glass windows of French and English cathedrals). The subject of the research in this article is the connection of the described iconographic trend with texts of a theological, theosophical and liturgical nature. Despite the fact that some of the mentioned texts have already been involved by researchers of Christian iconography for the interpretation of pictorial programs, a special study of the sources of "typological iconography" in the XII century has not been implemented yet. Based on the analysis of a number of texts and iconographic analysis of fine art monuments, an attempt is made to identify a group of sources that could be familiar to the compilers of iconographic programs. Among the monuments of fine art, works created in the Rheno-mosan region (as well as derivatives of this tradition) are of particular interest in the XII century. In this group of works of art (including processional and altar crosses, phylacteries, portable altars, works of stained glass and book illumination), searches in the field of typological iconography are consistently realized. (shrink)

Online courses attract thousands, even millions of students from all corners of the Earth. As such, they have the potential to educate many people. Education, however, is not neutral. Knowledge is embedded in contexts and perspectives, carrying ideological baggage, and so is teaching and learning. Teaching can no longer be the mere provision of content. The knowledge explosion implies that the ability to master content should become part and parcel of the course curriculum. In the same vein, the fact that (...) online courses attract students from many different contexts necessitates that lecturer and student alike should be aware of the underlying ideologies in the course content. To this end, in this conceptual article it is argued that discourse analysis of not only the written course content but also of images used to illustrate the content can be helpful; these are often not scrutinised for ideological baggage. If not, the online educated human might become the online indoctrinated human, to the detriment of all. (shrink)

In contrast to interreligious dialogue, which has been the subject of careful scrutiny by both Ukrainian and foreign researchers of religion, attention to interreligious organizations remains disproportionately lower than their role in public life and in the international arena. This article aims to present a systematic review of the main directions of current researches on interreligious organizations. It consistently covers four aspects: (1) the possible reasons for the previous low research attention to interfaith organizations (in particular, the impact of the (...) secularization theory and the relative "youth" of the majority of interfaith organizations); (2) the problem of interpretation the term "interreligious organizations" (e.g., expansion of the range of actors who can act on behalf of religious organizations; correlation of approaches to interreligious organizations in religious studies with the UN criteria for defining international organizations); (3) current approaches to the classification of interreligious organizations based on the pool of participants and difficulties of adapting these classifications to the Ukrainian context – untranslatabilities, changes of emphasis, national preferences and connotations; (4) functions of interfaith organizations on international arena and its challenges: threats of political instrumentalization of religion, problem of representativeness and inclusion of all actors, which is especially relevant for Ukrainian religious organizations, most of which do not have independent representation in international interfaith organizations. The conclusions outline the prospects for further study of the topic in the context of growing diversity of interreligious organizations and of the entry of Ukrainian religious organizations in the international religious field. (shrink)

This paper empirically examines how consumers react when a company marks a product with a gay label. The company under scrutiny is one of the largest video game developers in the world, and the labeled product is a popular video game character. We use a regression discontinuity design to exploit the quasi-experimental setting. The main finding was significant drop in demand for this character and a return to previous levels after approximately 3 months. Possible mechanisms and dynamics were explored by (...) analyzing demand for other characters and by surveying consumers. The results are consistent after performing robustness checks based on grid search, subsampling, and placebo tests. (shrink)

It is argued that the legacy of the Vienna Circle played a very important role in the intellectual quest of modern philosophy. No matter how the concept of logical positivism is buried by “continental philosophy”, or ideologically motivated philosophers, or even the latest initiatives of the contemporary philosophy of science, the scientific worldview remains invariant. The traditions of the work of logical positivists remain relevant both for the development of modern philosophy of science and as guidelines indicating the way to (...) get rid of the idle talk (“meaninglessness”) of political slogans and manifestos. (shrink)

This essay examines the unique conception of self (atman) developed by Utpaladeva, one of the greatest philosophers of the Kashmir Saiva Recognition (Pratyabhijña) school, in polemics with Buddhist no-self theorists and rival Hindu schools. The central question that fueled philosophical debate between Hinduism and Buddhism for centuries is whether a continuous stable entity, which is either consciousness itself or serves as the ground of consciousness, is required to sustain all the experienced features of embodied physical and mental activity, and, in (...) the context of the conceptualization of the world as saṃsara, whether such a self persists between rebirths and in liberation. Utpaladeva argues contra Buddhists and contra other atmavadins not only that differentiation and unity or change and continuity are compatible, but that a coherent account of our experience requires a continuous dynamic substratum that accommodates both. The Pratyabhijña's atman is opposed to that of Nyaya, Vaiseṣika, and Mimaṣs;a insofar as it is de-individuated, which makes it close to Advaita's Brahman, also a universal consciousness, from which it differs, however, insofar as it is theological and acts as the contentbearer by taking on forms, as opposed to being impersonal and passive. When compared with theologies, both from within and outside the wider domain of Hindu thought, the Pratyabhijña proves to be unique in that it gives a philosophically nuanced account of God, who stands in a nondual relationship to the individual self. This essay also compares the Pratyabhijña's theological account of self with the theological idealism of Berkeley and Bradley, finding it closer to the latter. Comparing the Pratyabhijña with its nearest Western philosophical counterparts should make it more accessible and intelligible from the standpoint of the Western academy and pave the way for involving its rich and distinctive conception of self in the fledgling cross-cultural philosophical dialogue on questions concerning self and consciousness. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to describe secularism, secularization and secularity in their relationship with the metaphysical and post-metaphysical philosophizing. The objective of the research is to analyze and compare the sense of the term secularism, secularization and secularity in metaphysical and post-metaphysical philosophizing. The scientific novelty of the research is that secularism is seen as an ideology derived from secularization and inextricably linked with the metaphysical constructions of modernism and secularity as a natural consequence of the ongoing process (...) of secularization in the post-metaphysical paradigm of thinking. Post-secular philosophy is philosophy after secular ontology and epistemology have been criticized; after we have been aware of the secular as a framework that relentlessly dictates the specific outlines of our experience, but which we are free to deploy in any way that impresses us; after we have taken in quotation marks all the usual secular divisions and wondered whether it is possible to live, feel and think differently. Speaking of post-secular philosophy, it is impossible to avoid the question of what is meant by secular, which in this post-secular seems to be overcome. To answer this question, it is necessary to distinguish between secularism, secularization and secularity, because these concepts are not equivalent. The author understands secularism as an ideology that presupposes the disappearance of religion, the “disenchantment” of the world, the liberation of man and humanity from all sorts of charms, especially religious. Secularization is the positive way in which society responds to the call of its own religious tradition. Secularization does not eliminate religion as such, but only some forms of religiosity that are incompatible with the new vision of reality. Thus, by secularization the author means a certain process of changing the status of religious faith in the public consciousness. Secularism is an ideology according to which a person criticizes everything religious, including religious institutions, and also believes that non-religious and anti-religious principles should be the basis of human morality. The term secularity refers either to the state of consciousness of a modern subject who has ceased to be religious or for whom religious faith has been replaced by modern experience; or the state of modern institutions and practices that operate outside any connection with religion. Completion of metaphysics means loss of confidence in any metanarratives, including secularism. The prefix “post” applies to the present era, when we speak of the end of secularism, and by no means the end of secularity. (shrink)

The citation index of Thomas Kuhn’s work may strike any imagination. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is undoubtedly a twentieth-century record-breaker in the field of philosophy of science in terms of such a scientometric parameter. But such fame has been bitter in many ways and placed a heavy burden on the author. For several decades he has been the target of the harshest and most severe criticism. Often the concept of “normal science” and the “scientific revolution” as a “Gestalt switch” (...) was declared ridiculous and absurd. The paper analyses three lines of criticism of Kuhn’s concept: the first came from practicing scientists, the second from specialists in the philosophy of science, and the third from the field of social epistemology. Reproaches about the political bias of Kuhn’s concept were taken to extremes, since his views were widely popular. In our opinion, Kuhn should be called a victim of spontaneous hypercriticism. This circumstance did not allow him to improve the original model of scientific revolutions. In this respect, replacing the concept of “paradigm” with the concept of “disciplinary matrix” was a step backwards, not forwards. However, it is impossible to deny that in the field of the historiography of science, he acted as a real reformer. With the courage of Don Quixote, he defended the rights of historical reconstruction, the preservation of the historical past of science, which should not be completely assimilated within the framework of the modern system of knowledge. His motto was – “penetrate the minds of other people who lived in the past.” He boldly argued that in the process of historical development, science changes not only ideas about the object of knowledge, but also the reference of its ideas and concepts. Such a formulation of the question has not yet been fully reflected in modern epistemological concepts. (shrink)

Author argues that the social relay theory by Mikhail Rozov is the result of the deep analysis of the number of empirical facts and of the facts from the history of science. “Relay” is the core notion of this theory that was used by Quine for the clarification of the connection between the word and denotatum in the “Word and Object”. The author enumerates the other philosophers who have explained this connection the same way. It’s claimed that the theory of (...) social relay is close to Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory in the problem definition. (shrink)

The article discusses the methodology for studying reflective systems, which are very specific objects of study. However, such objects include almost all phenomena of the socio-humanitarian sciences, including scientific knowledge. It is noted that in the era of the “sixties” original concepts of reflexive analysis arose in Russian philosophy, among which the three most striking ones, associated with the names of V.A. Lefebvre (1936-2020), G.P. Shchedrovitsky (1929-1994), M.A. Rozova (1930-2011). The main attention is paid to the methodology that was built (...) within the framework of the theory of social relay races by M.A. Rosova. It is shown how systems with reflection function and why they are able to rebuild, changing the order of sociality. (shrink)

У статті розглядається когнітивний компонент ідентичності та професійної ідентичності, пов’язаний із зростанням ролі науки й наукових досліджень у формуванні майбутнього фахівця. Виявляються основні напрями впливу науки й наукових досліджень на формування професійної ідентичності у закладах вищої освіти. Розкривається зв’язок між професійною ідентичністю та ідентичністю. Здійснюється філософський аналіз досліджень ідентичності у національному та глобальному вимірах. З’ясовується роль ідентичності у становленні еталону майбутнього фахівця. Розглядається роль освітнього середовища, навчальних і виховних практик у створенні позитивного образу науки при підготовці майбутніх фахівців. З’ясовується значення (...) пізнання та самопізнання у становленні професійної ідентичності. Підкреслюється значення особистісного виміру професійної ідентифікації. Розкривається зв’язок особистісного виміру з етичними та феноменологічними вимірами самопроєктування особистої та професійної самореалізації. (shrink)

This article, for which the focus is an intellectual autobiography, examines the development of worldview of a young person who graduated from the Moscow University Faculty of Philosophy in 1970. I...

The article examines the philosophy of Henri Bergson and William James as independent doctrines aimed at rational comprehension of spiritual reality. The doctrines imply the paramount importance of consciousness, the need for continuous spiritual development, the expansion of experience and perception. The study highlights the fundamental role of spiritual energy for individual and universal evolution, which likens these doctrines to the ancient Eastern teaching as well as to Platonism in Western philosophy. The term “spiritual energy” is used by Bergson and (...) James all the way through their creative career, and therefore this concept should considered in the examination of their solution to the most important philosophical and scientific issues, such as the relationship of matter and spirit, consciousness and brain, cognition, free will, etc. The “radical empiricism” of William James and the “creative evolution” of Henry Bergson should be viewed as conceptions that based on peacemaking goals, because they are aimed at reconciling faith and facts, science and religion through the organic synthesis of sensory and spiritual levels of experience. Although there is a number of modern scientific discoveries that were foreseen by philosophical ideas of Bergson and James, both philosophers advocate for the artificial limitation of the sphere of experimental methods in science. They call not to limit ourselves to the usual intellectual schemes of reality comprehension, but attempt to touch the “living” reality, which presupposes an increase in the intensity of attention and will, but finally brings us closer to freedom. (shrink)

Author argues that the social relay theory by Mikhail Rozov is the result of the deep analysis of the number of empirical facts and of the facts from the history of science. “Relay” is the core notion of this theory that was used by Quine for the clarification of the connection between the word and denotatum in the “Word and Object”. The author enumerates the other philosophers who have explained this connection the same way. It’s claimed that the theory of (...) social relay is close to Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory in the problem definition. (shrink)

The short exposition of the triplet model of concepts and some definitions connected with it are given. In this model any concept may be depicted as having three characteristics: a base, a representing part and the linkage between them. The paper introduces the fuzzification of concepts in terms of the triplet model.

The article considers the features of ensuring the economic security of enterprises in the conditions of intensive introduction of information technologies in their activities in the process of forming the digital economy. It is determined that digitalization creates important advantages for enterprises in terms of implementing a long-term strategy for their development, strengthening economic security, and achieving significant competitive advantages in doing business. It is studied that the system of economic security of the enterprise is an organized set of elements (...) of the management infrastructure of the enterprise, which are focused on ensuring stable and effective development of the business entity, neutralization, and elimination of internal and external threats. (shrink)

BackgroundCollecting post-mortem brain tissue is essential, especially from healthy “control” individuals, to advance knowledge on increasingly common neurological and mental disorders. Yet, healthy individuals, on which this study is focused, are still understudied. The aim of the study was to explore, among healthy potential brain donors and/or donors’ relatives, attitude, concerns and opinion about post-mortem brain donation (PMBD).MethodsA convenience sampling of the general population (twins and their non-twin contacts) was adopted. From June 2018 to February 2019, 12 focus groups were (...) conducted in four Italian cities: Milan, Turin, Rome and Naples, stratified according to twin and non-twin status. A qualitative content analysis was performed with both deductive and inductive approaches. Emotional interactions analysis corroborated results.ResultsOne hundred and three individuals (49–91 yrs of age) participated. Female were 60%. Participants had scarse knowledge regarding PMBD. Factors affecting attitude towards donation were: concerns, emotions, and misconceptions about donation and research. Religion, spirituality and secular attitude were implied, as well as trust towards research and medical institutions and a high degree of uncertainty about brain death ascertainment. Family had a very multifaceted central role in decision making. A previous experience with neurodegenerative diseases seems among factors able to favour brain donation.ConclusionsThe study sheds light on healthy individuals’ attitudes about PMBD. Brain had a special significance for participants, and the ascertainment of brain death was a source of debate and doubt. Our findings emphasise the importance of targeted communication and thorough information to promote this kind of donation, within an ethical framework of conduct. Trust in research and health professionals emerged as an essential factor for a collaborative attitude towards donation and informed decision making in PMBD. (shrink)

The importance of the adolescence in the value orientations formation as a stable personality trait associated with the shaping of worldview has always been a matter of special research attention. This article seeks to investigate the formation of teenagers’ value orientations through creolized texts. The creolized text is a text in which verbal and nonverbal components form a visual, structural, semantic and functional wholeness, aimed at a complex impact on the recipient. The authors cleared out cognitive, emotional, and behavioural criteria (...) for the formation of students’ value orientations. To determine students’ instrumental and terminal values, M. Rokeach’s method of value orientation diagnostics was used. Educational workshops aimed at altering teenagers’ values with the use of creolized texts were arranged. Examples of motivational posters and comics created by students in the process of these extracurricular activities are provided. The reflexive component is presented through students’ impressions of working with creolized texts. (shrink)

Significant transformations in postmodern society determine the need to form a space of digital communications and the involvement of information and communication technologies. Such trends make significant demands on various categories of professionals, including managers in the field of tourism. The aim of this research is to study the psychological peculiarities of morality in the representatives of digital Generations Y and Z in the field of tourism. In accordance with the aim, we paid attention to the study of such components (...) of moral regulation as ethics attitude, moral foundations, justice sensitivity and moral disengagement. The research involved 200 participants being represented by volunteers from five regions of Ukraine, including 100 respondents in the age of 25-30 who formed part of the Generation Y group; the other 100 participants in the age of 18-23 formed the Generation Z group. The results show that millennials are more idealistic. The intercrossing of the factors of idealism and relativism allows us to characterize millennials as situationalists, and centennials as subjectivists. It is ascertained that millennials are characterised by such important moral foundations for judgments as “Faithfulness”, “Purity”, which is reflected in the greater importance of “Ethics of community”. At the same time, it was found that centennials place more emphasis on the moral foundations of care and justice, and as a result, they are more committed to the “Ethics of autonomy” and “Progressivism”. The research confirmed the uniqueness and specificity of the moral regulation of different digital generations of representatives of the tourism industry. (shrink)

This essay serves as an intellectual biographical introduction to the special issue devoted to one of the leading Russian contemporary philosophers, Vyacheclav S. Stepin. The essay discusses Stepin's philosophical works and his chief contributions to such fields as philosophy and methodology of science, epistemology, and philosophical ontology among others. The authors also reflect on Stepin's academic leadership and his role as an organizer of research in philosophy in the contemporary Russia.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“We all love with the same part of the body, don’t we?”Iuliia Voznesenskaia’s Zhenskii Dekameron, New Women’s Prose, and French Feminist TheoryYelena Furman (bio)Starting out as a poet who eventually turned to fiction, Iuliia Voznesenskaia was also one of the main figures of the Soviet feminist movement, a fact that makes her biography both unusual and courageous. In the 1970s, Voznesenskaia’s involvement with the dissident movement in (...) Leningrad resulted in several arrests, imprisonment, and time in the camps.1 Although she was not initially interested in women’s issues, her incarceration in all-women’s camps and prisons convinced her that “the situation of women in our country demands special attention” (“Zhenskoe dvizhenie v Rossii” [“The Women’s Movement in Russia”] 41). Along with several other women dissidents, she founded the Soviet feminist movement, putting out the samizdat women’s journal Zhenshchina i Rossiia (Woman and Russia), which precipitated immediate reprisals from the KGB. A women’s club, Mariia, and a journal by the same name followed, as did more KGB reprisals. For her feminist activity, Voznesenskaia was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1980, settling in West Germany.2In 1985, in West Germany, Voznesenskaia wrote her first and best-known novel, Zhenskii Dekameron (The Women’s Decameron). The novel is set in a Leningrad maternity ward containing ten new mothers from different backgrounds with different life experiences: Larisa, Emma, Natasha, Nelia, Galina, and Valentina are educated and all have careers except Galina, whose occupation, admittedly strange for a feminist novel, seems to be a dissident’s wife; Ol’ga works in a shipyard; Irishka is a secretary; Al’bina is an Aeroflot flight attendant doubling as an escort on the KGB’s payroll; Zina is homeless and has served time in the camps; Valentina is a Party worker, whereas Galina is part of the dissident community. Quarantined together for ten days because of a spreading infection and inspired by Emma’s reading of Boccaccio’s Decameron, the women begin to tell each other stories to pass the time. As its title makes clear, Voznesenskaia’s novel is heavily indebted to Boccaccio’s, borrowing its structure and many of its themes, such as an emphasis on storytelling and sexual explicitness. The humor and poignancy of the women’s stories make it a highly enjoyable read, and the focus on female sexuality and the author’s play with the narrative set this novel apart from other Soviet writers’ works.3 The novel also features what is surely a unique occurrence in Russian and Soviet literature: an openly feminist character (Larisa), referred to by the authornarrator as “zhenshchinoi vpolne emansipirovannoi, mogushchei ukrasit’ soboi liuboe zapadnoe feministicheskoe obshchestvo” [“a completely emancipated woman, capable [End Page 95] of adorning any Western feminist group”] (13), who is moreover depicted in a wholly positive light.4Yet despite enjoying a modicum of success, including being translated into several languages and staged as a play, Zhenskii Dekameron remains an under-read and underrated work.5 The reasons for its relative obscurity are closely allied with Voznesenskaia’s political activities in the 1980s. Exiled abroad for being politically undesirable to Soviet authorities, she could not have her work published in the Soviet Union; rather, the novel came out in Russian in Israel in 1987 (Curtis 186n2).6 The lack of visibility from which she suffered in her native country changed only in the (post)glasnost’ period: in 1991, the novel was published in Russian in Tallinn, and in 1992, in Moscow.7 Despite being able to be published, however, Zhenskii Dekameron seems not to have made a strong impact on either readers or critics, and there does not appear to be any discussion of it in Soviet/ Russian literary journals.The novel likewise suffers from a lack of familiarity in the West. The interest Voznesenskaia generated among Western European and American feminists in the early 1980s was for her feminist activism in the Soviet Union, which preceded her novel writing. Zhenskii Dekameron seems to have made a modest impact on readers; scholars, too, discuss it only occasionally. The most comprehensive treatment of the work to date has been Jerzy Kolodziej... (shrink)

In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors—some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work—consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which (...) one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. -/- Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-model theory of subjectivity; schizophrenia and the vehicle theory of consciousness; and a shift in emphasis away from an internal (or brainbound) approach to psychopathology to an interactive one. Each essay offers a distinctive perspective from the intersection of philosophy, consciousness research, and psychiatry. -/- Contributors Alexandre Billon, Andrew Brook, Paula Droege, Rocco J. Gennaro, Philip Gerrans, William Hirstein, Jakob Hohwy, Uriah Kriegel, Timothy Lane, Thomas Metzinger, Erik Myin, Inez Myin-Germeys, Myrto Mylopoulos, Gerard O’Brien, Jon Opie, J. Kevin O’Regan, Iuliia Pliushch, Robert Van Gulick . (shrink)

The article attempts to develop the “oxymoron formula” proposed by N.I. Kuznetsova to interpret the ideas and fate of the representatives of the Vienna Circle. The combination of incompatible reveals the content of this formula. The author of the article proposes to see a combination of incompatible, firstly, in the temporal nature of the work of the Vienna Circle, which unites, on the one hand, the desire for finality in solving problems and, on the other, openness to development. Secondly, (...) she describes the combination of incompatible through the relation and difference of the positions of M. Schlick and O. Neurath in the discussion about protocol sentences. The author defines Schlick’s position as a philosophical desire to combine incompatible and offer a translation of affirmations as expressions describing subjective immediate experience into the intersubjective language of science, the meaning of which is emphasized by Neurath. (shrink)

The proposed text develops a number of provisions of N.I. Kuznetsova’s article “Oxymoron of the Vienna Circle”. Special attention is paid to the intellectual heritage of the Vienna Circle, which is in many ways paradoxical – rejected and simultaneously operational.