UMWELT-ANALYSIS OF A CYBORG: FROM BIOSEMIOTICS TO ACTANT SEMIOTICS AND BACK
E.M. Bykov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-144-157
Abstract:

The central idea of this article is that the problem of representation of cyborg experience for us, non-modified humans, becomes solvable by the composition of two semiotic approaches: biosemiotics and actant semiotics. First, since "cyborg" implies cybernetic organism, we may consider technomodified humans to the сertain extent equivalent with animals. Therefore we can use the method of Umwelt-analysis: it was created by J.von Uexkull to reconstruct how the world is given to a living organism with particular bodily structure in "action-perception" functional circles. Within Umwelt-analysis, biosemiotics exposes the way in which perceived world appears to an organism as consisting of "material signs" where an organism itself is a sort of "communicative structure". The very possibility to describe Umwelt obtains because an environment and an organism stand in sign-relations with each other (which is also true for cyborgs). On the next step, we use tools of actant semiotics from works of B. Latour to clarify how Umwelt-descriptions produce immersive effects upon us, representing the experience of an organism. Latour claims that, once the flow of transformations from material actants to textual ones is done, the realism of scientific texts comes from a composition of characters, or, in semiotician terms, "inner frame of reference". Revealing of semiotic operations (shifting out, shifting in and figuration) in Umwelt-descriptions then displays how viewpoint of an organism on the world appears inside world-text and takes readers attention. We test proposed the approach on the example of people with magnetic implants, concluding with further perspectives of its application.

ERIC HOBSBAWM’S HERITAGE
Madkhavan Palat
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-9-33
Abstract:

Hobsbawm’s modern world originated in the big bang of the eighteenth century, and it was extinguished in an implosion almost exactly two centuries later. To him these two hundred years were defined by the project of the Enlightenment which imagined a world that was equally good for all of humanity and not for just some part of it. More than revolution, the Enlightenment drove this world onward until it seems to have exhausted itself by the end of the twentieth century: the Marxist Hobsbawm is inspired more by the Enlightenment than by one of its consequences, the millenarian dream of revolution. Deriving from the Enlightenment, the conjoined industrial and French revolutions, known as the dual revolution in his work, generated all subsequent events. The industrial revolution assumed both capitalist and socialist forms, and the political revolution inaugurated by the French species spawned a series of bourgeois and socialist revolutions, attempts at revolution of both types, and revolutions against revolution, or counter-revolutions. They permeated not only the politics and the economy of the continent, but as much its social and cultural processes and the sciences and the arts. His magnificent oeuvre celebrates this universe bounded by the two revolutionary waves of the late eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries; but it is a celebration that broods on its dark side as much as on its stupendous achievements. His grand theme is the hope held out by the Enlightenment, the revolutions that sustained it, and the counter-revolutions that negated it. As this modern world drew to its close in the 1990s, a gloomy uncertainty hangs over the world, and his musings on the post-Cold War world reflect this unease.

"PUBLIC OPINION" IN THE FRENCH ENCYCLOPEDIAS OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE XVIII CENTURY: THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT
I.A. Valdman,  T.V. Anosova
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-54-62
Abstract:

 The work provides insight into the formation and development of the “public opinion” concept in the latter half of 18th century. A comparative analysis of the articles ‘opinion’ and ‘public opinion’ in the “Encyclopedia” of Diderot & d'Alembert and in the “Encyclopédie Méthodique” provides an opportunity to trace evolution and the distance between the perceptions of two notions during the various periods of time. The article considers ‘opinion’ as “doubtful and uncertain judgment” and ‘opinions’ as points of view of judges underlying the judgement, which the French Encyclopaedists referred to legal and logical spheres, and their impact on the formation of the “public opinion” concept. The work provides an analysis of ideas of public opinion as a mechanism of public control of social and political realm, which peculiarity is independence from the sphere of state regulation and the lack of institutionalized means of influencing the institutions.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNITY OF CULTURE
T.B. Lyubimova
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-63-76
Abstract:

  Philosophy in the traditional society was based on other principles than in the modern one. As a part of the traditional culture, it created unity, because it originated from the single principle. It was linked with traditional Sciences, among which there was alchemy. Alchemy became prosperous in the Alexandrian epoch, in Greco-Roman Egypt. It was synthetic metaphysical cognition and at the same time practice of a man and cosmos transformation. Its aim was "healing" the world; it had to deal with qualities, not quantities. With the advent of Christianity, alchemy became persecuted. As a result, it degenerated into the practice of “metals transformation”. Alchemists were rightfully called philosophers. The subject of our study, therefore, is to extend the understanding of philosophy. The applied method consists in the disclosure of the metaphysical status of alchemy as a different type of thinking, not reducible to the categories of modern science. The same analysis has been made in relation to contemporary philosophy. The modern state of humanity is anti-traditional. This is the realm of quantity. There is neither a tradition of initiation, nor the intellectual elite, which put it into practice. Therefore, philosophy ceases to follow its calling, becoming a shell of individual opinions and judgments of non-universal nature. The result of this research is different understanding of philosophy and its role in the unity of culture, it differs from the understanding widely spread today. Nowadays it is understood as generalization of scientific knowledge. But philosophy cannot be subordinated to science as it was once subordinated to religion. Its mission is to find the truth. Modern philosophy bears the imprint of all negative aspects of culture: individualism, “the realm of quantity", the lack of unity, crisis in every direction, anti-traditionalism. Alchemy was the historical experience of transforming knowledge. It sought to overcome the limitations of individual existence.

IN MEMORY OF BORIS GRIGORIEVICH YUDIN
Abstract:

On August 6, 2017 Boris G. Yudin (Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chief Research Fellow of the Humanitarian Expertise and Bioethics Sector of the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, editor-in-chief of the journal "Man", member of the “Ideas and Ideals” editorial board) died after a prolonged critical illness.

CONCEPTUAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GILBERT SIMONDON PHILOSOPHICAL STRATEGY
Yakov Svirskiy
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-111-125
Abstract:

This article discusses several key concepts of the research strategy of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, who put forward the concept of technical, biological, psychological and collective individuation, directly related to the problem of self-developing systems. This review is focused on finding the ways to understand the philosophy of Simondon and justification of its relevance today. The author proposes the interpretation of the origin of individualized sensible beings in the light of such important concepts for Simondon as the transduction and allagmatic, involving also other related presentation. The organization according to Simondon is neither a thing nor an object, nor a ready idea; its purpose is reconciliation of the different facilities in order to obtain sustainable effects. There are no constant organizations, but there are only processes of organization. Organization is the link between people and non-people, ideas and beliefs. It is of "pre-individuated" facilities that compiled assembly and action network. Organization is individuated and becomes metastable. But there are no established regimes of organization. Mechanisms of transduction permanently affect the organization and cause significant changes in it. The thinking about individuation by Simondon relating to organized structures (non-living, living and social) is very important and contemporary. The process of transduktivity suggests epistemology that Heidegger and Derrida, in different terms, called the metaphysics of presence. The author shows that the allagmatic project goes further than the cybernetic project in various philosophical strategies, as well as in the natural sciences and the humanities research, that again points to its interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character.

MORAL IDEAL FORMATION ON THE BASIS OF PHILOSOPHY OF PERSONALISM
A.S. Skosyreva
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-158-168
Abstract:

The article considers the problem of moral ideal formation in the philosophy of personalism. It shows the relationship of religious and social views on moral development. In modern society, due to the simplification of the social communication process, it is necessary to universalize the moral category in order to adopt the norms of behavior and ethical views of society, which, in fact, differ greatly from each other. The article considers the issue of moral self-development in the limelight of aspiration for inner freedom of an individual taking into consideration the growth of communication and travel freedom. The key thesis is the need for the moral ideal formation with setting of goals, values, paradigms, which will serve the aspirations of a modern, harmoniously developed person to the moral growth and the ideal, which embodies the best moral qualities and can become a model. The author compares religious and philosophical points of view on the formation of the moral ideal, which appear to be united in the philosophy of personalism. According to the author the existence of a moral ideal is a prerequisite of moral self-development of a person. The result of the analysis is the conclusion that the unity of goals, values and paradigms of moral self-development, in the context of religious and philosophical direction of personalism contributes to the moral ideal. Reaching the moral ideal requires setting goals in the moral education of the society.

ON THE WAY TO CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE INTEGRATION
S.V. Devyatova
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-169-177
Abstract:

During all their history people have always been striving for acquiring the integrated worldview. In the Christian part of the world theology and science have traditionally been of great importance in the formation of the worldview. First, theology dominated in gnoseological respect, but then, in the last half-thousand years the leading role was given to science. What is the relationship between Christianity and science nowadays? This article is devoted to consideration of positions of some well-known Christian thinkers specializing in this field. Rejecting the division of spheres of competence between Christianity and science, and their autonomous development, they consider an integrative approach as the most perspective, constructive and productive. The author analyses some flaws in attempts to integrate theology and science, which have been done within the frames of natural theology. Unlike natural theology, which stresses natural sciences component, the suggested approach highlights the idea, that in Christianity theories of creation and salvation are inseparable as well as spiritual life development. Modern integration stipulated by specific and similar features of Christianity and science suggests the formation of integrated worldview on the basis of common philosophical schemes and categories. As one of the most accurate philosophical basis for such integrated worldview the author puts forward «philosophy of process» which considers the world as the dynamic, complex but at the same time the interconnected single whole.

ON STRUCTURING THE SUBJECT AREA OF THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
E.V. Karmazina
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-137-143
Abstract:

The paper investigates contradictory character of the concept ‘freedom’ in the modern society. The author aims to create new principles of structure in this field. The essence of ‘freedom’ is defined by the notion ‘subject-ness’. The heuristic potential of this concept is determined by its capability of synthesizing ideas of self-causality and self-determination, which constitute essential semantic kernel of freedom. The author considers the main tendencies of personalization / depersonalization and subjectivation / objectivation in social-individual human life as the main aspects and contradictions of ‘freedom’. With respect to the understanding of freedom the objectified impersonal principles of social life are accentuated, which are usually referred to as social system. The problem concerning the relationship of an individual and a system is presented as one of the key socio-philosophical and humanitarian themes in discourses forming the basis of all modern philosophy of freedom. The main idea of the paper is to substantiate new structuring of freedom concept. In contemporary culture it includes three main elements: self-determination, self-identity and self-realization.

INTERCOURSE AS “DEATH CONFRONTATION” : THE EXPERIENCE OF EXISTENTIAL AND HERMENEUTICAL INTERPRETATION
A.Yu. Baiborodov
DOI: 10.17212/2075-0862-2017-3.1-126-136
Abstract:

The article in question deals with the problem of coexistential intercourse in close connection with the opportunity of death. The author defines coexistential intercourse as the universal mode of subjects’ coexistence in their fundamental existential opportunity. The subject of the author’s research is coexistential intercourse in relation with the opportunity of death. Death tends to be a negative opportunity of unique coexistential meaning and its positive opportunity either. The author of the article sets a goal to investigate the existential meaning of death as a fundamental opportunity of coexistence. According to the goal the author  puts the following problem: is it possible to express the irrational contents of coexistential experience by means of rational thinking? Thus, the unique coexistential experience may be expressed by logical means, but we cannot totally avoid contradiction and opposition between coexistential experience and theoretic discourse. Besides, the author of the article uses existential thinking in close connection with hermeneutical approach which makes possible more profound comprehension of the essence of death. Due to the author’s approach death utters itself through a solitary act of negation. The latter bears ultimate overmeaning of non-existence. Moreover, an act of negation represents a specific “challenge” proposed by death. The subject of coexistence is free to accept a challenge of death and to suggest his own response to the opportunity of negation. The subject of coexistential intercourse brings forward and “utters” his conscious and responsible position, opposed to total negation. This makes possible specific “communication” with death which becomes a “subject” of intercourse. Besides, death appears to be a positive opportunity of coexistential intercourse.