Michail Bakhtin’s philosophy of act is considered as a metaphysical project. Bakhtin’s conception is explored in a wider context of the metaphysical project of Russian existentialism. Interpretations of the term “truth”, which correspond to different versions of existentialism, are compared. Shestov’s existentialist particularism, Berdiaev’s actualistic personalism, Bakhtin’s ethical existentialism are analysed. Existentialist implications of Gregory Palama’s metaphysics of light are considered.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the theory of simple apprehension held in the Kiev-Mohyla Academy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We start from Aristotle’s idea of two kinds of knowing and from the Thomist theory of the two operations of the intellect in view of the ontological distinction between essence and actuality. In dealing with the theory of the activities of the intellect in the Kiev-MohylaAcademy, we consider simple apprehension as a form of Aristotle’s immediate knowledge. (...) We conclude by introducing the notion of non-representational simple apprehension. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the theory of simple apprehension held in the Kiev-Mohyla Academy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We start from Aristotle’s idea of two kinds of knowing and from the Thomist theory of the two operations of the intellect in view of the ontological distinction between essence and actuality. In dealing with the theory of the activities of the intellect in the Kiev-MohylaAcademy, we consider simple apprehension as a form of Aristotle’s immediate knowledge. (...) We conclude by introducing the notion of non-representational simple apprehension. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce a logically grounded approach to action semantics and action interpretation. The main idea is to present the context of action as a set of questions demanding an action to answer. I introduce (a) a basic procedure of action interpretation, which is a reformulation of Hilpinen's semantical procedure for imperatives; (b) a procedure of what-interpretation; (c) a procedure of why-interpretation. The conditions of mutual reducibility of interpretation procedures are explicated. The paper concludes by (...) putting forth the problem of interpretive bounds of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Intentionality — the orientation of mental states to objects (things, properties, states of things, events) — has been considered a hallmark of the psyche since Brentano’s time. In this article, we consider the problem of intentionality from the second-person approach, or the standpoint of intersubjectivity. Our analysis shows that intentionality is intrinsically projective. The projective nature of intentionality is related to internal objects that play a crucial role in fixing the person’s subjective experience and serve as a fulcrum in the (...) development of the person. The internal object can be treated as a set of properties and tropes. The logic of intentionality proposed by Graham Priest and the theory of primary (that is, belonging to the Freudian system «unconscious») psychological attitudes developed by Linda Brakel created the preconditions for seman- tical analysis of projective intentionality. In the article, we rely on the logic of projective intentionality that reorients the resources of modal logics and semantics of possible worlds to the investigation and formalization of primary thinking. Considering the problem of mental existence within the framework of the second-person approach, we show that Wittgenstein’s reasoning about the «beetle in a box» does not refute the thesis of the privacy of mental meanings. Finally, involving the possible world semantics, we develop a neo-Aristotelian approach to the ontology of mental objects. (shrink)

This article is a critical review of Cocchiarella’s theory of reference. In conceptual realism, there are two central distinctions regarding reference: first, between active and deactivated use of referential expressions, and, second, between using referential expressions with and without existential presupposition. Cocchiarella’s normative restrictions on the existential presuppositions of reference lead to postulating two fundamentally different kinds of objects in conceptual realism: realia or concrete objects, on the one hand, and abstract intensional objects or nonexistents, on the other. According to (...) Cocchiarella, nonexistents can be referred to only without existential presuppositions. However, referring to nonexistents with existential presuppositions is an ordinary human practice. To account for this fact, Cocchiarella’s normative theory of reference should be supplemented by a descriptive account of referring. (shrink)