The paper is dedicated to the reconstruction of Alexander Piatigorsky’s observational philosophy within the context of the confrontation between two versions of the transcendental project of man-in-the-world. The first project accentuates the invariant functional organization of cognitive systems by abstracting from bodily, affective and phenomenological realization of this organization. On the contrary, the second project emphasizes the phenomenological perspective of the experience of givenness, always already dependent on whose experience this is and how the cognitive system living this experience is (...) organized. The first project can be called functionalist, and the second – phenomenological. Ontological and epistemological positions of these projects are specified in the problem of the observer, its status in the world and cognitive practice. The observational philosophy possesses an intermediate position between these two programs since, aiming to disclose the invariant structure of observation, it proceeds from the factual experience of the embodied subject placed into the situation of self-observation and observation of the other subject. It is concluded that Piatigorsky’s philosophy borrows from the functionalist project the commitment to self-objectivation and rejection from the spatiotemporal localization of cognitive activity. With the phenomenological project of enactivism Piatigorsky shares the aspiration to disclose the invariant cognitive structures during the empirical observation of the real enactment of cognitive agency, abandonment of substantialization of the self as well as the refusal from theoretical formulation of the problem of consciousness. (shrink)

The review analyzes the book The Conscience’s Double by Georgy Chernavin. I focus on the concepts of false twins of conscience, guilt, and duty in the extended context of philosophical and artistic discourse. The problem of the difference between conscience and its ersatz forms, which give rise to a distorted ethical consciousness, is considered. The main emphasis is opportunistic conscience, neurotic guilt, and false debt. The review suggests that Chernavin’s book studies the “sad theory” of moral disorientation and requires the (...) supplementation with a hypothetical “cringe theory.” In this case, the “sad theory” makes it possible to expand the phenomenological discourse by including a discussion of conscience, illustrating the uncertainty of the boundaries between the phenomenological and the symbolic, and highlighting the subject’s dependence on what they are not. In this work, there is a potential for developing an original ontology of the relationship between conscience and its evil counterpart, especially between a “spiritually sighted” and a “blindly corporeal” person. The scrutinized guilt for the lost absence of guilt is an experience that, although not lived, is important for the subject’s self-constitution. This experience, like the inner side of the subject, determines its conscious functioning and forms something like a Mobius strip. An Evil Genius makes this bond, and I am trying to conceptualize their “weakened” being. (shrink)