bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Pendulum of Philosophical Understanding of the “Architecture of the World”: from Earthly Reality to Heavenly (Spiritual) and Back
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Rosin Vadim M.
Published: November 2023

The article analyzes the turns of philosophical comprehension, which, figuratively speaking, can be likened to a pendulum, namely from understanding being as an earthly reality to interpreting it as a spiritual and heavenly reality, but also a re­verse turn. We consider the turn made by Plato, who opposed the world of things and ideas, placing ideas in the sky among the gods and goodness, then Aristotle’s reaction to this move, which, on the contrary, endows the ordinary world with be­ing (its first essence coincides with single things). The turn that was outlined by St. Augustine: if initially he thought of God within the framework of earthly exis­tence, then he realized that this is the Spirit, the creation according to the Word, the way and the truth. The next turn takes place in the Renaissance, it is prepared by Nicholas of Cusa, who removes the opposition of earthly and heavenly, natural and artificial. Francis Bacon completes this turn to earthly reality and nature. The author tries to understand the pendulum described by him not just as the oppo­sition “earth – sky”, “real and sacred”, but as a difference between two methodolo­gies of historical understanding and study of the world. At the end of the article, a possible turn is discussed, which is outlined in our time, associated with the cri­sis of modern civilization. This is not about the rejection of earthly reality and the pragmatics of life, but about the effort and will to live, about faith in the possi­bility of continuing life on earth, but different, rethought, rebuilt. The question is raised: are not such a turn, efforts and faith – the movement of the pendulum in the other direction? This, of course, is not the sky of Plato, and not the sky of the Lord, and not even the cosmos in which humanity could find a more perfect life. Most likely it will be the sky of our real life, but a life thought out, trans­formed, having a real chance for continuation and development.
Evolution of Anthropological Profiles, Risks and Scenarios of Civilizational Transit
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Budanov Vladimir G.
Published: November 2023

The article presents the author’s approach to constructing a methodology for fore­casting and evaluating the development of anthropological profiles, human consti­tutions depending on changes in the complex living environment of a person (nature, society, technology, virtual reality). The proposed methodology is based on the concepts of quantum-synergetic anthropology and the author’s method of civilizational umwelt analysis. The processes of transferring human intellectual competencies using AI to various umvelts through a network digital matrix of cy­ber-umvelts, primarily umvelts of technology and virtual reality, are discussed. In the new cyber society, man is already becoming only one of the “intelligent” actors, new forms of hybrid culture and anthropological profiles of generalized physicality are emerging. So, digital painting of neural networks is being sold at expensive auctions, and autonomous intelligent assistants or a unique ChatGPT project are already able to create scientific reviews and even theses of quite satis­factory quality, although not shining with originality. The fundamental question is the prospects for the development of generalized physicality in hybrid systems, from digital drug addiction in virtual worlds of pleasure, to synergistic coopera­tion between humans and AI in scientific creativity. Turning to the near-term per­spective of digital societies, three clusters of their development are identified: the path of China’s social rating, inclusive capitalism of the West, and the project of a harmonious multipolar world. The latter project is just being formed and has a culturocentric nature of the ethics of cooperation, and not a crowd-elitist techno­cratic one. Today, the problem of choosing between the prospects of network di­gital democracy, digital totalitarianism, alarmism, digital religion or the harmo­nization of hybrid digital reality is in full growth.
Perspectives of Anthropocentrism in the Optics of the Digital Age
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Arshinov Vladimir I.
Published: November 2023

The article discusses the prospects for using the concept of “thinking together-with-complexity” as a tool for forming the prerequisites for a critical dialogue with the post-anthropocentric philosophy of post-humanism of the digital age. This is the central problem of philosophical understanding of the phenomenon of man in the era of the Anthropocene, which is becoming artificial intelligence, the world of co-evolving neuromorphic networks. One of the “entry points” to the understanding of thinking-together-with-complexity is the concept of E. Moren’s complexity paradigm, as well as focusing on Deleuze’s key idea; The idea of the need to “think in the between”. Another entry point is Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form. And, finally, the third entry point is the philosophy of G. Simondon, which focuses on the principle of individuation of beings, overcoming the binary hyleomorphism of matter and form of Aristotle and interpreting individuation as an ontogenetic, form-creating process of becoming unfolding between pre-individual and transindividual. It is emphasized that thinking together-with-complexity is a procedural, non-reductionist, recursive-temporal thinking “between” order and chaos, subject and object, mechanical and organic, system and its surroundings (environment), between network and hierarchy, between being and becoming, conscious and unconscious, observer and observed, as well as between simplification and complication. This is thinking of open post-classical rationality (Vyacheslav S. Stepin): it is focused on abductive search, thought experiment, contact with the Other, construction of means of dialogical connection between different conceptual perspectives and it is important to emphasize, connection as a process of unlimited semiosis according to Peirce.
Rhizome: Beyond Networks and Hierarchies
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Belonogov Ivan N.
Published: November 2023

This work is the final one in a series of articles on possible types of organiza­tion of global and possible measures to counteract the loss of autonomy by particular individuals – turning them into Homo Cells – human cells of a more global organism. The task set before it and solved in it is to demonstrate the differences between the concept of “Rhizome” from the other two types of organization – hierarchy and network – and its heuristic potential for solving the issue of individual autonomy. In previous works, it was shown that this question was posed by Kant as the main task of the Enlightenment. Subse­quently, this problematic field inherited the current of post-anarchism, which takes its conceptual apparatus from the philosophical system of G. Deleuze and, moreover, is the ideological heir to the Kantian project. In the discourse of Russian academic philosophy, “Rhizome” was likened to the concept of “Network” (in the form in which it was developed within the framework of the Actor-Network theory), known in Russian literature on organization the­ory as a decentralized structure, traditionally opposed to a centralized struc­ture, i.e. “hierarchical”. The consequence of such inattention, or the habit of thinking through analogies, was the complete absence at the moment of qualified research devoted to one of the main motives of the philosophy of Deleuze – the search for new thinking. This text is intended to show the possi­bility of a different understanding of the concept of “Rhizome”, which opens up the possibility of solving a more important task at the present time – the discovery of a new thinking capable of asserting its autonomy in a society riddled with networked and hierarchized control structures.
Metaphorical Сorrelation as a Mechanism of Thinking
Authors:   Moscow Pedagogical State University, Kozlova Natalya Yu. ,   Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
Published: November 2023

This article proposes an interpretation of the metaphorical correlation (MC) as a mechanism of thinking aimed at the search for, and development of, a thinking strategy, set down and conveyed by language, that will be most ef­fective in the given cultural and historical context. The MC mechanism is de­fined as a process by which some characteristics of an object (those selected by thinking) interact and some others are suppressed, with a chance at later actualisation. As a result, awareness of the self as an existentially non-static system bearing with it ‘the world as an accepted sense’ makes it possible to re­think the connection between language, thinking and perception. Here, a prob­lem assuming a special prominence is attaining the obviousness and veracity (a primary cohesion of experience) by possessing which cognising agents con­struct a reality for themselves. The article considers Gustav Gerber’s ideas and Hermann von Helmholtz’s definition of perception as ‘unconscious inference’, as well as Immanuel Kant’s assertion about the ‘logical tact’ lying ‘in the ob­scurity of the mind’. Metaphorical correlation is shown to be able to act as a mechanism of a sui generis intuitive logic, which marks the starting point of cognitive reflection and paves the way for linguistic reality. Metaphorical correlation is a mechanism of abstraction and conceptualisation that deter­mines the angles of cognitive reflection. The author concludes that if thinking is to be viewed as a calculus of the best possible strategy for interpreting expe­rience (this vision is reflected in language, ever illuminating the substantive aspects of an object that are existentially important for a native speaker), the MC mechanism, which is immanently intrinsic to thinking processes, makes it possible to ‘calculate’ a thinking strategy whose adaptive value lies in the pos­sibility of explicating the elements of experience for which there is a com­pelling existential need and inhibition of those whose explication is not requi­site at the moment.
Kūkai on the Light Pūjā Ritual. Kūkai. Takano no yama mantōe no ganmon, Trans. by Maksim V. Os’kin
Authors:   HSE University, Os’kin Maksim V.
Published: November 2023

Among the works of the Japanese Buddhist teacher Kūkai (774–835), not only treatises deserve attention, but also small works written on the occasion of vari­ous rites. In them, the basic provisions of Tantrism (mikkyō) are applied to ex­plain the meaning of the ritual and its significance for the community. The article considers one of such works: Ganmon at the offering-pūjā of ten thousand lamps on Mount Takano (Takano no yama mantōe no ganmon, 832). At the beginning, Kukai speaks here about the universal law of causality, arguing that both suffer­ing and liberation have a cause, after which he praises the Buddha Mahā­vairochana, whose light is able to dispel all obstacles on the path to enlighten­ment. Then the ritual itself is described – the offering of ten thousand lamps and flowers. Kūkai also talks about plans for the future: to regularly perform the cer­emony once a year and follow their vows until all living beings are freed from the cycle of rebirth. This is followed by a good wish – Kūkai hopes for the effec­tiveness of the rite and wishes all living things to achieve liberation, after which he says that his benefactors are all living beings. Thus, he performs parinama (“direction of merit”), turning the beneficial effects of the ritual to the benefit of all living things.
The Idea of Monogamy and Family Relations in Meiji Japan
Authors:   HSE University, Meshcheryakov Alexander N.
Published: November 2023

During the Meiji period, the family came to be seen as the basis of a new type of centralized state. Such a state needed a new family of increased strength. A great innovation in the family discourse of the Meiji period was the focus on the monogamous family. The idea of monogamy as a moral imperative was introduced into public discourse by Mori Arinori. In the ruling house, the idea of monogamy found strong support. During the Tokugawa period, divorce was commonplace, but as a result of persistent propaganda, the number of divorces in Japan dropped dramatically: in 1889 it was 3.39 per thousand, but after only ten years it fell to 1.53 and tended to decrease. If earlier a third of marriages ended in divorce, now this figure has dropped to one eighth. The Civil Code of 1898 defined the basic characteristics of the Japanese family as a monoga­mous and patriarchal entity for many years to come. Those people who con­demned such family shape turned out to be in the desperate minority and were unable to give an adequate rebuff to the totalitarianism that was gaining strength, the grass roots of which was formed by a monogamous patriarchal family.
Nishida Kitarō’s An Inquiry into the Good: Modes of Overcoming the Empirical Oppositions
Authors:   Pushkin Leningrad State University, Romanenko Anton S.
Published: November 2023

The paper identifies and characterizes the main modes of overcoming the dual oppositions in the text of An Inquiry into the Good (Zen no kenkyū, 1911) by Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945). The author's attention is focused on the analysis of the first section of the work, devoted to the exposition of the doctrine of pure experience. One of the most notable features of the inner structure of the text is the presence of a wide range of opposing conceptual units between which a re­lation of equivalence is established: “subject/object”, “mind/will”, “thinking/​ experience”, “truth/falsehood”, etc. The author identifies two main modes of overcoming these oppositions in the text: 1) by means of a third concept, the neutralizing term, which mediates the establishment of equivalence relations; 2) without the mediation of the neutralizing term. The neutralizing terms form a nominative series: “pure experience”, “fact”, “intellectual intuition”, etc. Ac­cording to the character of the equivalence established between the concepts, the following modes of removing the oppositions are distinguished: 1) revealing the essential identity of the phenomena; 2) finding the attributive similarities; 3) reducing the opposition to a quantitative (relative) difference. Neutralization of oppositions in the text is characterized by: a) the tendency towards totality, universality (on the level of the inner structure of the whole text all the elements of oppositions become potentially equivalent to each other); b) the inclusion of neutralizing terms in opposition of a different order (the same conceptual unit can play the role of both a neutralizing term and an element of an opposition). Such structural features of the text are due to the content of Nishida's doctrine of pure experience, which implies a progression towards a unity of reality that excludes the possibility of conceptual description.
Human Being in Russia: Counterpoints of the Historical Voyage of the “Philosopher’s Ships”
Authors:   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Вulavka-Buzgalina Ludmila A.
Published: November 2023

The author shows the socio-philosophical context of the “Philosopher’s Ships” phenomenon and the contradictions of social existence that brought it to life. The dialectic of the struggle of ideas and socio-political confrontations is re­vealed; in particular, the contradiction between cultural and philosophical mean­ing of the “Philosopher’s Ships” and ideological and political confrontation be­tween religious Russian philosophy and Marxism. The intersection of the ideas of religious philosophy and humanistic Marxism within the framework of the central idea of personality development and their opposite in the socio-historical vision of the role of a human being is emphasized. The “Philosopher’s Ships” as a so­cio-cultural phenomenon today, in the XXIst century, despite the fact that it is an independent cultural space that does not directly intersect with the space of social relations, when turning to the study of the essence of social being and social consciousness, turns out to be closely interwoven into the fabric of social contradictions of the material world and the spiritual world. And the center of this “interweaving” there was and remains a person in his social being and spiritual (self)consciousness. For Russia of the last century, these problems have become especially significant: the historical “voyage” of our society has been and is taking place in the space-time of endless transformations, the philosoph­ical reflections of which are purely contradictory, which in a multifaceted refrac­tion reflected the fate of the “Philosopher’s Ships” in its unfinished voyage.
Pragmatics as a Self-Generation of a Subject-on-Its Own
Authors:   Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Zolyan Suren T.
Published: November 2023

The article suggests reconsidering the accepted understanding of pragmatics as a relationship between a sign (system) and an autonomous subject. The possibil­ity of this approach may be substantiated through Peirce’s ideas. In his concept, despite the presence of an interpretant and an interpretation, there is no room for an interpreter. Peirce’s understanding of sign as an algebraic relation did not require an appeal to thinking. However, the concept of interpretant should be as­sociated with interlocutors. In Peirce’s unfinished conception, quasi-subjects (quasi-speaker and quasi-interpreter) arise, which are “melded” into a sign and are quasi-personified of the stages of semiosis. Peirce’s chronologically last se­miotic conception demonstrates the possibility of semiotic operations, which does not imply an autonomous conscious subject. To develop this approach, we consider the processing of genetic information, where an interpreter and an inter­pretant are the same entity. Peirce’s method to derive communicants not from an external environment but from the sign itself can be extended to semiotic mega-systems (semiosphere, culture, language) when the semiotic structure acts, in the words of Yu. Lotman, as a subject and the object on its own. Thus, we suggest addressing pragmatics as the relationship between the sign object system and the meta-system that regulates its actualization. The meta-system appears as a semiotic self that controls the process of generation (quasi-speaker) and inter­pretation (quasi-interpreter).
Augmenting Our Reality: the Philosophical Foundations of AR-technology
Authors:   Lomonosov Moscow State University, Tanyushina Alexandra A.
Published: November 2023

The article presents an analysis of the key issues considered within the fra­mework of such a relative new trend in foreign philosophy as the philosophy of augmented reality. Augmented reality (AR) technology, which allows integrat­ing images of virtual objects into the surrounding physical environment, is be­coming increasingly popular today for solving a wide range of tasks related to the implementation of everyday digital communications. Nevertheless, rela­tively little attention is paid in modern philosophy to its conceptual understand­ing, since a significant proportion of philosophical research is still focused on the study of virtual reality technology, as well as on the analysis of various fantastic scenarios for the development of computer simulations. At the same time, many developers and media theorists claim that augmented reality will become the key technology on the basis of which most of our future digital practices will de­velop. For this reason, the author has attempted to analyze the main problems that foreign researchers pay attention to when analyzing this technology. These are, first of all, problems related to the conceptual explanation of the term “aug­mented reality” and the study of the metaphysical status of virtual objects gener­ated by the corresponding AR devices. In addition, the article briefly outlines the issues of epistemology and ethics of augmented reality. The author concludes that it is important to further develop philosophical studies of augmented reality, since, unlike virtual reality, the technology in question has long been actively implemented in almost all areas of our socio-cultural interactions and, as a result, has a significant impact on our daily lives.
Essentialism as Reductionism in A. Newberg’s Concept
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Samarina Tatiana S.
Published: November 2023

The article reconstructs Newberg’s concept of neuropsychological research. The common belief that Newberg is an essentialist is taken as a starting point, on this basis the system of studying religious practices and mysticism developed by Newberg is analyzed. In the course of the study, it was found that Newberg’s concept has distinct essentialist features and is rooted in the tradition of studying the mystical experience of Ing, James, Jung and Stace, but at the same time, the idea of secularization of religious practice, turning it into a mechanism for im­proving a person’s life, regardless of his religious beliefs, runs through all his work. Newberg is confident that neurological discoveries of the fundamental foundations of religious life and experience can transform modern disparate the­ological systems into a megatheology in which only the biologically and spiritu­ally significant basis of religion will remain, while the divisive particulars will have to be removed. In this context, Newberg’s concept can be regarded as a unique project to combine essentialism and reductionism in the study of reli­gious and mystical experience. At the same time, the article shows that the re­sults of Newberg’s discoveries should be considered in the light of the replication crisis, because his first study, which led to the development of the neurological study of religious practices and built around the idea of the identity of prayer and meditation, had a fundamental methodological flaw.
Space of culture in the mirror of the urban landscape
Authors:   Kuban State Technological University, Apollonov Ivan A. , Tarba Ivan D. ,   Abkhaz State University
Published: November 2023

The article investigates the main characteristics of the concept “space of culture” as one of the fundamental ontological characteristics of the “second nature” of human. It is proved that such space has a substantive integrity in the geo­graphical, speculative and metaphysical plans, that it carries coiled meanings and opportunities, which are realized in the construction of a system of relations be­tween objects of the urban environment. The city is a cultural landscape, formed by the superimposition of the sphere of meanings on a geographical place. In this context, the city itself and the objects filling it are considered in the opposition “artifact – counterfactual”, which is connected with the value and semantic con­tent of artificial objects. Through artifacts a metaphysical vertical of culture is built, in which the recognition of ideas and their material embodiment take place. Such an embodiment has an immanent expressiveness, which determines the visual side of the city’s cultural space. Here a special place is occupied by monuments, which, on the one hand, organize the space, acting as its aesthetic and semantic dominant, and, on the other hand, carry the pathos of the highest meaning of human existence. The semantic side of the space of urban culture determines its semiotic landscape, which is filled with narratives that form the city’s landmarks. These, in turn, are fleshed out with art objects that are part of the physical flesh of urban space. The semantic component implies the subjec­tive dimension of cultural space. It represents the mental constructs structuring the citizen’s life experience, in the space of which he/she experiences their pres­ence in the city. The authors show that such constructs are not hermetic subjec­tive formation. They are formed in the context of interpretation of the meanings of urban artifacts in the horizon of spiritual values of culture.
Yuri Lotman and Henri Bergson (Semiotics of Art – Philosophy of Life)
Authors:   HSE University, Parsamov Vadim V.
Published: November 2023

In 1980–90s. Lotman’s scientific interests were mainly focused on discovering the processes taking place in the semiosphere. He was interested in the relation of space and time as two semiotic languages irreducible to each other, the prob­lem of emptiness as an object and language of description, the role of explosions and unpredictable processes in the dynamics of culture, the function of historical memory in culture, etc. Many of these ideas turn out to be consonant with Berg­son’s intuitive metaphysics with its concept of duration as the basis of creative evolution. At the same time, the name of Bergson is not mentioned in the works of Lotman. We can only speak of the intermediary channels through which Berg­son’s ideas reached Lotman. He was greatly influenced by V.I. Vernadsky’s doc­trine of the biosphere and I. Prigogine’s theory of dissipative structures. Each of these scientists was influenced by Bergson. For Vernadsky, the idea of irre­versibility of time and duration as a creative process of life was important. Prigozhin, developing Bergson’s ideas about the unpredictability, made the pro­cesses of irreversibility and instability an object of study. But his research was mostly on the chemical and biological level. Lotman extended the study of ran­dom processes to the level of cultural history. A comparison of Lotman’s theoret­ical approaches to understanding the nature and function of art with Bergson’s intuitive philosophy reveals an undeniable similarity, which allows the late Lot­man’s scientific ideas to be considered within the philosophical paradigm origi­nating from Bergson.
Social and Cultural in the Pedagogy of Sergey Gessen
Authors:   Non-profit Scientific Foundation “G.P. Shchedrovitskiy Development Institute”, Shchedrovitskiy Petr G.
Published: November 2023

The article presents an analysis of philosophical ideas of Sergey Iosiphovich Hessen, that set the framework for his anthropological pedagogy and pedagogy of culture. According to Sergey I. Hessen, pedagogy cannot be reduced to a de­scription of teaching techniques and methods. It should be considered as an ap­plied science, the most important section of which is the typology of possible and necessary goals of educational activity. In turn, the definition of goals of pedagogical practice should be based on a complex of representations of hu­man, a certain philosophical and pedagogical anthropology. The being of a hu­man, according to Sergey I. Hessen, can be likened to the geological structure of the Earth’s crust: ontologically, “human” is not only natural (the first level) and social (the second level), but also a cultural being. The laws of cultural and intellectual existence of a human are fundamentally different from biological and social laws. Therefore, the main goal of pedagogical practice is the inclusion of an empirical individual into the processes of transmission and deployment of cultural values. At the same time, culture should be understood as an activity aimed at achieving ultimate, inexhaustible goals, objectives that stand before hu­manity in various fields of practice. In his book The Foundations of Pedagogy, published in 1923, Sergey I. Hessen identifies three types of cultural values: civ­ilization, citizenship, and education. Opposing the cultural level of human exis­tence to the biological and social ones, Sergey I. Hessen formulates a number of cultural tasks for the spheres of economy, politics and education.
On the Academician Abdusalam A. Guseinov’s “Negative Ethics” and Its Borders
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yinmao Ma
Published: November 2023

Abdusalam A. Guseynov is an outstanding modern Russian philosopher, a recog­nized authority in the field of ethics. His systematic development of the concept of “negative ethics” is an important contribution to our understanding of modern moral philosophy. This concept is about a negative act: that is not done, although a person has a desire to commit it, but the person does not do it because and only because it is morally unacceptable. An act becomes negative only when we do not do what we want to do; accordingly, the main maxim becomes “what I should not do”. This concept, which explains a lot in the philosophy of the act, is original, at the same time, similar ideas were expressed in the theoretical con­structions of such philosophers as Kant, Schelling, Adorno and Bernard Williams. “Negative ethics”, according to Guseinov, allows resolving two para­doxes: 1) the more a person is morally perfect, the more imperfect he consid­ers himself to be; 2) good deeds should be done in secret, they should not be flaunted. However, the concept of “negative ethics” cannot be considered per­fect, completely self-sufficient in the theoretical sense of the word. Despite its merits, it can complement, but not replace, traditional normative ethics, and it also contains a number of theoretical difficulties that cannot be overcome within its own framework.
Aesthetics in Education as Aesthetics of Life (Nikolai I. Kiyashchenko)
Authors:   Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky, Zlotnikova Tatyana S.
Published: November 2023

The article conceptualizes the ideas about the aesthetic dominant of humanitar­ian knowledge and the importance of the works and scientific and educational activities of Nikolai I. Kiyashchenko for the consolidation of this dominance. The special importance of aesthetics as a science and practice of forming ideas about the harmony of personality and harmonious worldview is emphasized. Special attention is paid not only to the training course called “Aesthetics”, but to all training sessions where aesthetic knowledge is in demand. The understand­ing inherent in the works of Nikolai I. Kiyashchenko and important for scientific research devoted not only to art as a well-known sphere of aesthetic activity, but also to research devoted to man, his moral sphere and socio-cultural activity is noted. It is emphasized that aesthetics is of crucial importance for modern educa­tional process at all its levels, from school to higher education, from postgradu­ate studies to scientific studies of experienced scientists. This follows from the idea that aesthetics is a broad field of human intellectual activity. We present the efforts of Nikolai I. Kiyashchenko to unite researchers (at the level of con­ferences, joint scientific publications, work on grants). The attention of Niko­lai I. Kiyashchenko, teacher, mentor in a broad sense, to young researchers and their works is particularly noted. The fact that Kiyashchenko, an aesthetician, was also an educator is specifically evaluated, in connection with which the unique publication “Aesthetics of Life” is analyzed. It was intended for school­children and teachers who can work with teenagers. Problematization of aes­thetic knowledge and educational pathos turn the works of Nikolai I. Kiya­shchenko into a solid corpus, aesthetically significant and relevant.
Types of Virtual Objects
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Levin Georgy D.
Published: November 2023

The term “virtual” was used by the ancient Romans. Medieval scholastics also used it. It entered the everyday and scientific language only in the second half of the XXth century with the emergence of digital technologies. Today, even children use it, and lawyers are discussing the issue of recognizing virtual objects as objects of ownership. But to include the term “virtual object” in the system of modern sci­entific categories, it must be strictly defined, as well as a classification of vir­tual objects must be done. The first of these two tasks is being actively solved. In the article “What is a virtual object?” I took part in this work. I intend to make progress in solving the second task: to identify the types of virtual objects, to con­sider their subordination. Virtual objects are understood in the article as sensual and rational knowledge about objects that arise in the absence of these objects, as a result of the autonomous activity of the subject’s brain, and are experienced by the latter in a strictly fixed interval as these objects themselves. This is exactly what happens, for example, in a dream. The thesis that all virtual objects are lo­cated in the phenomenal world of the subject is substantiated. The critique of Plato’s and Popper’s theories of the third world as a container of virtual objects is given. The virtual objects arising within the boundaries of sensual and rational cognition are distinguished. It is shown that the first ones include virtual objects that arise in dreams, hallucinations, perceptions and illusions. The role of illusory virtual objects in modern computer games is analyzed. Virtual objects generated by rational knowledge are divided into empirical and theoretical. It is shown that theo­retical (abstract) objects have all the attributes of virtual ones.
Ontology and Schematism of the Philosophy of History
Authors:   Department of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Levytskyy Victor S.
Published: November 2023

The subject of the article is the ontology of the philosophy of history. The study begins with the genealogy of ontology, which makes it possible to thematize two well-established understandings of ontology in the philosophical discourse. The first one, which is called classical and associated with the name of Jacob Lorhard, calls the doctrine of being an onthology. The second one is transcen­dentalistic, which is going back to the philosophy of Kant and by ontology it un­derstands the system of a priori principles and forms of thinking, as well as the image of the reality revealed to man determined by them. Such an under­standing of ontology allows us to raise the question of the fundamental structures of the historical narrative, i.e. to explicate the axiomatic levels of the philosophy of history. An analysis of the philosophy of history's ontology shows that the phi­losophy of history cannot be recognized as a cultural invariant, and its origin cannot be associated with antiquity. At the same time, it is not difficult to dis­cover a genealogical connection between Christian historiosophy and the secular philosophy of history. The philosophical and historical systems of the Enlighten­ment and the XIXth century (Kant, Herder, Comte, Hegel, Marx) largely inher­ited the schematism of Christian historiosophy. An analysis of their ontological structures allows us to say that: 1) the emergence of the transcendental meaning of ontology symbolizes the “ontological revolution”, as a result of which the phi­losophizing mind has lost the possibility of appealing to transcendental scopes of reality; 2) the connection between the secular philosophy of history and Chris­tian historiosophy is found at the level of fundamental ontological structures. The philosophy of history is a secularized twin of Christian historiosophy, in which the scope of the transcendent is “intervened”; 3) the philosophy of his­tory comes to replace the religious ways of interpreting the world and society, that is, it becomes the theory of Modernity’s society.
A.F. Losev on the Classification of Arts in the German Aesthetics: Theses of 1933, Losev, Aleksei F., “Classification of Arts in the German Aesthetics”, ed. by Rezvykh
Authors:   National Research University Higher School of Economics,, Rezvykh Petr V.
Published: November 2023

The article delivers a preface to and a commented publication of theses by the famous russian philosopher and classical philologist Alexey Losev (1893–1988) written as he was no more a prisoner of the White Sea – Baltic Canal concentra­tion camp but still lived and worked there. The author puts forward a hypothesis that the text was a preparation for a lecture delivered by Losev in the camp. He shows that Losev continues and elaborates in the manuscript the main ideas of his studies on the history of aesthetics from 1920s, first of all of his GAKHN lectures as well as his book “Dialectics of the artistic form” (1927). At the same time the author demonstrates that Losevs conclusions about the contemporary evolution of art in it’s connection with production correspond to some key the­mes of his prosaic fiction from 1930s, particularly of his novels “Meteor” and “Encounter”, both written about 1933. In the context of Losevs fiction his theses of 1933 can be read not only as an important source for reconstruction of his aes­thetic theory but also as a document humain that reveals an existential dimension of his philosophy.
The Return to Apophaticism: Neo-Platonism of Alexey Losev and Jacques Derrida
Authors:   National Research University Higher School of Economics, Gravina Irina V.
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this article is to initiate a virtual dialogue between the ideas of two twentieth-century philosophers who turned their interest to the concept of the apophatic unity – A.F. Losev and Jacques Derrida. This thopic, as well as the interest in the concepts of Neo-Platonism in general, one of the basic ones in the works of Losev, turns out to be in the focus of modern European philoso­phy, generating an independent intellectual current – Henology. As Losev re­marked, European scholarship for a long time have been ignored the Neoplaton­ists’ interpretations of Plato, while his philosophical system is based precisely on the Christian version of Neoplatonism. It will be noted that both thinkers draw the idea of apophaticism from the texts of the Corpus Dionysiacum Areopagiticum, but have understood it differently. Losev’s system implies that the one is expressed symbolically and in name, suggesting Christian overtones, while Jacques Derrida has a radical apophatic, an unattainable supersubstantial reality, designated by him as negative theology. But his deconstruction project, however, is not Christian. It will be concluded that the topic requires a compara­tive analysis of the ideas of the neo-platonist Losev with his variant of apophatic henology, which he presents as onomatology and symbolism (the expressed unity) and a completely different variant of the topic in Jacques Derrida’s works, who deconstructaed antique-medieval term of the one and looked for ways to “avoid talking” about it.
P.P. Gaidenko’s Concept of Types of Rationality in the Context of Modern Problems of the Development of Environmental Consciousness
Authors:   State Academic University for the Humanities, Shchedrina Irina O.
Published: November 2023

“What is the meaning of a rational relationship to the nature”? This ecologically based and at the same time philosophical question is of particular importance to­day. After all, the future of mankind depends on the answer to it. The trajectories of our reasoning on this topic are determined by how we interpret the concept of “rational” and what characteristics we fill its content with. In the 1990s, in the Russian philosophy of science, it was precisely the concept of “rational­ity” that turned out to be at the forefront of discussion (some philosophers fo­cused on its logical components, others on historical ones). P.P. Gaidenko tried to find her own way. She proposed to look at rationality through the prism of a person’s historically changing attitude to the world as to his immediate, and therefore concrete, environment (“life world”), the sphere of semantic certainty and symbolic comfort. From the point of view of P.P. Gaidenko, the types of sci­entific rationality change historically precisely because a person not only “cog­nizes” the world as something external, opposing him (as an object of consump­tion), he actually creates the surrounding “life” world and himself in it, and, what is especially important, does it conscious, i.e. expresses in the narration (telling, narrative) his attitude towards it. P.P. Gaidenko immerses the con­cept of “rationality” in the history of philosophy in order to show its specific nature, on the one hand, and to update the phenomenological interpretations of “rationality” in science, on the other. In this regard, the conceptual analysis of E. Husserl’s ideas, undertaken in Gaidenko’s works, is especially important. Such approach reveals the ecological potential of the very idea of distinction of types of rationality. The author believes that such a turn of the relevant topic is defiantly presented precisely in the epistemological narrative. The article notes that the current task of forming environmental consciousness in society thus ac­quires a theoretical personal dimension.
Philosophy and Ideology (To the Centenary of the Philosophers’ Ship)
Authors:   Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Gyseynov Abdusalam A.
Published: November 2023

The article is an extended version of the introductory speech to the international conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the “Philosophers’ Ship”. It contains an event that began with the expulsion (forced sending abroad on steamboats) by decision of the top political leadership in 1922 from Soviet Russia of a large group of intelligentsia, including a number of prominent philosophers, and ended with the actual recognition by the same political autho­rity of the fallacy of this act. The author proposes to consider this event, which received the symbolic name of the “Philosophers’ Ship”, as a single (integral) process and at the same time as a historical experiment in elevating a certain philosophy (dialectical materialism) to the rank of state ideology. It is shown that the negative result of this experiment is important for understanding the na­ture of the interaction between philosophy and ideology as different forms of so­cial consciousness. They have a common area of intersection, but an attempt to merge them completely inevitably leads to mutual collapse, the most impor­tant consequence of which the author considers is the revival of the pluralism of philosophical teachings in the country. The symmetry between the expulsion of the “Philosophical Ship” and its return is emphasized. The most important outcome and socially significant lesson of this epoch-making event is the need for such an organization of the space of spiritual life, which by its very nature opposes the elevation of a certain philosophical doctrine, regardless of its qua­lity, to the rank of state ideology.
Learning for employability in contexts of economic despair: Empirical insight from the Gaza Strip
Authors: Almassri Anas N.
Published: November 2023

Literature on education for employment (EfE) predominantly focuses on the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in preparing students for the workforce. This focus covers links between employability, on one hand, and teaching, curriculum, assessment, and extracurricular activities, on the other. The role of independent learning, broadly understood as students’ individual effort to enhance their employability, remains masked and is assigned secondary importance in the relevant literature. This scholarship deficit is arguably more pronounced in contexts of economic despair. In such contexts, an EfE logic still supersedes any logic of learning for employability (LfE) in efforts to train a high-calibre workforce for economic recovery and development. Yet, this logic is often accompanied by decontextualized views of HEIs, which often lead to suboptimal problem formulations and unfeasible solution proposals. The study is an attempt at addressing this deficit. It proposes a parallel, not alternative, logic of LfE, which centralizes students’ independent learning engagements to examine and develop support for their own pursuits of employability development. The study draws on original empirical data collected, through a questionnaire and in-depth interviews, from new graduates in the Gaza Strip. Through interpretive phenomenological analysis, the study findings suggest that the participants exerted significant, independent, and strategic effort in seizing employability development opportunities. Based on the findings, I contend that a learner-centred logic of linking education and employability is of compelling significance to various stakeholders in the education and market spheres, especially in contexts of protracted hardship.
Visual Laboratory Tests: Effect of Operational Parameters on Proppant Transport in a 3D Printed Vertical Hydraulic Fracture with Two-Sided Rough Surfaces
Authors: Li Jun , Han Xu , He Siyuan , Wu Mingyi , Lu Xinqian
Published: November 2023

Hydraulic fracturing technology is an effective measure that can improve oil and gas production and achieve enormous economic benefits owing to it phenomenally increasing the oil recovery from the low intrinsic permeability of the compact rock. Good placement and distribution of the proppant in the hydraulic fractures can provide successful stimulation for a well, which is essential for applying the hydraulic fracturing process. Previous studies extensively explored proppant placement, distribution, and operational factors in simplified smooth surface fracture models. However, the operational factors such as pump rate, proppant concentration, proppant size, fluid viscosity, and inlet condition (pulse time) involved in proppant placement and distribution in realistic rough surfaces of fractures are not clearly understood. In particular, the law of proppant transport in a two-sided rough surface of fracture with changes in the aforementioned operational factors was unclear. Hence, in this study, we investigated the effect of these operational factors on proppant placement and transport in both the smooth surface fracture model and the two-sided rough surface fracture model. The results suggested that the traditional law of proppant transport drawn on the smooth surface fracture model did not apply to the two-sided rough surface model. It is suggested that selecting corresponding variables was needed to reduce the risk of proppant bridging and offer a better channel ratio.
Lactate/GPR81 recruits regulatory T cells by modulating CX3CL1 to promote immune resistance in a highly glycolytic gastric cancer
Authors: Hu Yanfeng , Su Jin , Mao Xinyuan , Wang Lingzhi , Chen Zhian , Wang Weisheng , Zhao Cuiyin , Li Guoxin , Guo Weihong
Published: November 2023

Lactate plays an important role in shaping immune tolerance in tumor microenvironment (TME) and correlates with poor prognosis in various solid tumors. Overcoming the immune resistance in an acidic TME may improve the anti-tumor immunity. Here, this study elucidated that via G-protein-coupled receptor 81 (GPR81), lactate could modulate immune tolerance in TME by recruiting regulatory T cells (Tregs) in vitro and in vivo. A high concentration of lactate was detected in cell supernatant and tissues of gastric cancer (GC), which was modulated by lactic dehydrogenase A (LDHA). GPR81 was the natural receptor of lactate and was overexpressed in different GC cell lines and samples, which correlated with poor outcomes of GC patients. Lactate/GPR81 signaling could promote the infiltration of Tregs into TME by inducing the expression of chemokine CX3CL1. While GPR81-deficiency could decrease the infiltration of Tregs into TME, thereby inhibiting GC progression by weakening the inhibition of CD8+T cell function in a humanized mouse model. In conclusion, targeting the lactate/GPR81 signaling may potentially serve as a critical process to overcome immune resistance in a highly glycolytic GC