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1. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 60 > Issue: 4
К юбилею Владимира Натановича Поруса
Jubilee of Vladimir N. Porus

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editorial
2. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Petr S. Kusliy, Ivan B. Mikirtumov Петр Сергеевич Куслий
Perception, Knowledge, and Natural Language
Восприятие, знание и естественный язык

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In this paper, we would like to argue in support of the productiveness of epistemological investigations at the interface of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language and the analysis of perception. We begin with a short overview the history of convergence of these two areas of research. Leibniz is the center of this historical discussion. We identify the general problems that arise when language meets perception and discuss some recent research in the semantics of pictures. We arrive at the following conclusions. First, the reference of a singular term and the perception of its denotation involve the same relation between the conceptual and what is immediately given in perception. The specifics of perception make up a part of a singular term’s pragmatics determining the conditions of a semantic interpretation. Secondly, phenomena with minimal conceptual content arise whenever the update of the conceptual content of linguistic expressions (or the update of their theoretical component) is faster than the update of the sensory material of perception. In the realm of language, these phenomena are related to the appearance of singular terms that become the result of acts of naming singular objects. The semantic and the pragmatic analysis of language identifies the relevant phenomena by revealing the universal formal structures and mechanism within language and its use. The result is an isolation of sensory data from conceptual schemes. Their place is taken by the empirical conditions of perception.
panel discussion
3. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Emar Maier Эмар Майер
Unreliability and Point of View in Filmic Narration
Ненадежность и точка зрения в киноповествовании

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Novels like Fight Club or American Psycho are said to be instances of unreliable narration: the first person narrator presents an evidently distorted picture of the fictional world. The film adaptations of these novels are likewise said to involve unreliable narration. I resist this extension of the term ‘unreliable narration’ to film. My argument for this rests on the observation that unreliable narration requires a personal narrator while film typically involves an impersonal narrator (corresponding to the camera viewpoint). The kind of ambiguous story-telling that we find in literary fiction with unreliable narrators, where for certain descriptions it is unclear whether what we’re told is an accurate account of what’s happening in the story world or not, can instead be achieved by conventionalized filmmaking techniques for reporting the contents of mental states, like the point of view shot, but especially the more ambiguous blended perspective shot.
4. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Dorit Abusch Дорит Абуш
A Possible-Worlds Construal of Unreliability in Film
Возможные миры истолкования ненадежности фильмов

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This paper comments on Emar Maier’s “Unreliability and point of view in filmic narration”. It is suggested that, without having discourse representations that include embedding operators, films can be unreliable in the broad sense of having propositional contents that depart from inferable, realistic scenarios. Second, films and embedded shots in film can convey agent-centered information without being composed of point-of-view shots. The reason is that the discourse representation can include information about discourse referents that identifies a depicted individual as a counterpart of the experiencer.
5. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Marc Champagne Марк Шэмпейн
Why Philosophy of Language is Unreliable for Understanding Unreliable Filmic Narration
Почему философия языка ненадежна для понимания ненадежного киноповествования

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A typical device in film is to have a character narrating what is going on (sometimes by voice-over), but this narration is not always a reliable guide to the events. According to Maier, distortions may be caused by the narrator’s intent, naivety, use of drugs, and/or cognitive disorder/illness. What is common to these various causes, he argues, is the presence of a point of view, which appears in a movie as shots. While this perspective-based account of unreliability covers most cases, I unpack its methodological consequences and gesture at a possibility that Maier’s analysis overlooks. A narration, I suggest, can be unreliable simply because it is ill-timed with the events shown on screen. In such a case, the distortion is not due to any character’s point of view; rather, it comes from the film medium’s ability to divorce what is seen and what is heard. As a consequence of this mismatch, it is possible to have a reliable narrator but an unreliable narration. Since voice and context of utterance usually match in ordinary speech, I conclude that philosophy of language may be ill-suited to properly understand this particular phenomenon.
6. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Elena G. Dragalina-Chernaya Елена Григорьевна Драгалина-Черная
The Unreliable Narrator’s “Paper Eyes” in Visual Storytelling: Inference and Performance
«Бумажные глаза» ненадежного рассказчика в визуальном повествовании

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Highlighting the, as called by Emar Maier, blended perspective shots in cinematic narrative with an unreliable narrator allows us to escape the dilemma of the omniscient cinema-eye (Kino-Glaz, 1924) and of the false narrator’s paper eyes (Бумажные глаза Пришвина / Prishvin’s Paper Eyes, 1989). The following commentary on Maier’s paper detects the performative nature of the contradictions generated by using blended perspective in cinema narration with an unreliable storyteller. It also demonstrates the heuristicity of the concept of blended perspective to Cartesian philosophical narrative analysis.
7. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Kristina Liefke Кристина Лифке
The Filmic Representation of ‘Relived’ Experiences
Кинорепрезентация «оживленного» опыта

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This comment discusses Emar Maier’s argument against the characterization of unreliable filmic narration as (first-)personal narration. My comment focuses on two assumptions of Maier’s argument, viz. that the narrating character’s mental states can be described independently of other mental states/experiences and that personal filmic narration can only proceed from a de se perspective (as captured by first-person shots). I contend that the majority of movies with unreliable narration represents an experientially parasitic mental state (typically, the character’s remembering – or ‘reliving’ – a defining personally experienced event). Since these states are well-known to involve perspective-shifting and various kinds of semantic enrichment, unreliable filmic representation is perfectly compatible with the presence of a personal narrator.
8. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Julian J. Schloder Юлиан Шлёдер
Unreliable Narration and Dual Perspective: Comments on Emar Maier
Ненадежное повествование и двойственная перспектива

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In Unreliability and Point of View in Filmic Narration, Emar Maier makes a distinction between reliable and unreliable narrators. The latter, Maier claims, must be a first-person narrator, as an impersonal, third-person narrator lacks an individual perspective that can be unreliable (with some exceptions he sets aside). He concludes that most film adaptations of unreliably narrated novels are not themselves unreliably narrated, for they feature third person perspectives (not through the novel’s narrator’s eyes). I take Maier’s major claims to be (1) that there is a strict distinction between reliable and unreliable narration; and (2) that film shots displaying both a character and that character's hallucinations are not unreliable narration. I will challenge both.
9. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Daniel B. Tiskin Даниил Борисович Тискин
Convention, Coherence and Control
Конвенция, связность и контроль

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As Maier’s aim is to extend the notion of unreliable narration onto film, this reply focuses on the consequences of the difference between textual and filmic narration. Textual fiction imitates, or at least uses the resources typical of, a true textual description of events, which is itself highly conventional in that it uses arbitrary linguistic signs and chooses to describe those properties of objects and events that matter to the author, leaving the remainder unspecified. On the contrary, filmic narration imitates the perception of real events of which the watcher is supposed to be witness. Even if the arrangement of frames is conventional (as Maier insists), the content of a particular frame is presented to the observer as if the latter happened to be at the scene, thus in the totality of its detail; and the connection between the object filmed and its depiction in film is causal rather than conventional. Moreover, it is natural even for non-fictional texts to describe the scene in some rhetorically plausible order, whereas a real-life scene presented to our sight by pure chance need not follow any coherent plot.
10. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Suren Zolyan Сурен Тигранович Золян
What Is Unreliable in Fiction and Where It Comes From
Что есть «ненадежное» в вымысле и откуда оно?

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Maier’s article recalls the idea of finding common ground between different points of view on the truth in fiction and the problem of reliability that it generates. However, the criteria by which it is possible to determine the characteristics of the reliability or unreliability in the artistic narrative are unclear. A naive-realistic approach leads to contradictions. We propose to proceed from the already established approaches to the problem of “truth in fiction”, and consider as determining for the modal pragmasemantics of narrative the concept of narrator bifurcated between the actual and fictional worlds.
11. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Emar Maier Эмар Майер
Other Points of View: Replies to Comments
Другие точки зрения: ответ оппонентам

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epistemology & cognition
12. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Keith Begley Кит Бигли
Knowing Opposites and Formalising Antonymy
Знание о противоположностях и формализация антонимии

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This paper discusses knowledge of opposites. In particular, attention is given to the linguistic notion of antonymy and how it represents oppositional relations that are commonly found in perception. The paper draws upon the long history of work on the formalisation of antonymy in linguistics and formal semantics, and also upon work on the perception of opposites in psychology, and an assessment is made of the main approaches. Treatments of these phenomena in linguistics and psychology posit that the principles of minimal difference and invariance are centrally important. It will be suggested that the standard approach employing meaning postulates fails to capture the relevant notion of antonymy, in part because it is not informed by these principles, and in part due to a number of other problems with this kind of approach, many of which may be overcome by building in the central principles from the beginning. The paper also discusses the issue of whether we can know that opposites necessarily exclude each other and, if so, how. This issue is intertwined with what is known as the colour incompatibility problem that Wittgenstein wrangled with at various times during his life. The paper assesses various solutions to these problems including an approach that was first put forward by Jerrold J. Katz. The relation between this approach and the theory of determinables and determinates is also examined. A further development upon this approach is proposed and then applied to the case of the formalisation of antonymy. It is argued that this approach avoids the problems suffered by the main approaches discussed earlier in the paper.
13. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Oksana I. Nevdobenko Оксана Ивановна Невдобенко
Cogito’s Hidden Premises Found through Two Aspects of a Sign: Meaning and Sense-Data
Неявные допущения декартовского сogito. Обоснование через двуприродность знака

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In the article we argue that Descartes while considering sign version of cogito does use some hidden premises in spite of well-known declaration there are none. They are:1) there’s such a length of time Δt over which I cannot be wrong on the matter of what happened over Δt (infallible time); 2) there’s such time extent Δt upon which I cannot be wrong (say, if an event happened quickly from I-viewpoint then while being measured in some standard units, one will appraise it as“quickly” as well). We investigate the advantages the evil demon can take from that. This is a sign manipulation we propose. Cogito as a sign object has to have a) a sense-data component and b) can be built only through time by consecutive generation one elementary sign after another. Then an (elementary) sign manipulation is the following: (1) I is [not am] building the sign si(or some part of it, which is not a sign any longer), (2) I thinks wrongly that the previous signs just built are s1, …, si-1 (the evil demon’s work), (3) I is [not am] going to built signs si+1, …, sn. For example, one thinks of self as thinking cogito, while in fact the real event is building “t” (the part “cogi” being prior to “t” is in the past and as such can be manipulatively substituted instead of what really happened in the life of I before building the sign “t” (whatever it is; probably, nothing; probably, I didn’t exist before generating “t”)). We investigate the source which makes the manipulation possible and the gravity of the destruction of such sort. The crucial reason for the possibility of such misconception turns out to be the sense-data component in any linguistic (being sign) constructions.
language & mind
14. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Alexey Z. Chernyak Алексей Зиновьевич Черняк
On Semantic Reference and Speaker’s Reference
О семантической референции и референции говорящего

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Theory of reference is a mainstream theory of meanings of certain types of linguistic expressions (primarily proper names, indexicals, demonstratives, and definite descriptions) in contemporary philosophy of language. It assigns corresponding expressions capability to refer to what people are talking or thinking about by using them. Meanwhile it is widely recognized that there are two kinds of reference. One is conceived as a relation between an agent and an entity which he or she applies the term to in particular communicative act (or act of thought); this is roughly called “speaker’s reference”. Another one characterizes linguistic terms as referring to particular entities relative to particular languages. This is normally identified as semantic reference. The popular hypothesis based on this distinction assumes that if a name is used in communication (or thought) in a right way (i.e. in accord with particular set of conventions) then it refers to its semantic referent even when the speaker uses it to refer to something else. On the other hand, some belief that the reference of a particular use of a proper name (its token) is fully determined by the speaker’s communicative intentions. In the proposed study both these hypotheses are criticized. Different senses of such words as “designate” or “refer to” in their application to the functioning of linguistic expressions in communication are analyzed, and it is shown that linguistic conventions allegedly responsible for names’ semantic references cannot make names refer to their semantic referents independently on what particular participants of communication are believing or doing. On the other hand, the reduction of the reference of a token of a proper name to its speaker’s reference fails to explain this phenomenon as well. Neither theory explains how tokens of proper names (and supposedly other types of designators) could refer to particular entities (have referents). From this at least two conclusions may be made: the radical one would claim that any talk about tokens’ references is most likely meaningless. And the moderate one is that explanations of this phenomenon based on the distinction between semantic and speaker’s references don’t work. The author favors the first conclusion, but does not insist on it.
vista
15. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Konstantin G. Frolov, Andrei I. Ponomarev Константин Геннадьевич Фролов
Color Concepts as a Factor of Cognitive Penetration of Perception
Цветовые концепты как фактор когнитивного проникновения в восприятие

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The aim of the paper is to analyse the influence of linguistic concepts of an agent on the qualitative aspects of her perception. We examine conceptualist and non-conceptualist approaches to the problem of what the content of perceptions is. The conceptualist approach asserts that the content of perception is similar to the content of beliefs: both types of content are assumed to be expressible in language. The non-conceptualist approach to the content of perception assumes that the content of perception cannot be conceptualized due to too much information available to the agent through visual perception. However, the assumption about non-conceptual content of perception leads to some serious difficulties with explaining the phenomenon of cognitive penetration of perception. This is an empirically established fact that some cognitive states may influence on the qualitative aspects of agent’s perception. We show that cognitive penetration of perception implies that perception and those cognitive states which affect it should have comparable content and this mechanism is based on the influence of expectations on perception.
case-studies – science studies
16. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Joan Gimeno-Simó Жоан Химено-Симо
When that F is not F. Interpretability, Deixis and Complex Demonstratives
Когда «это F» не является F. Интерпретируемость, дейксис и сложные демонстративы

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In this paper I defend two claims regarding complex demonstratives (noun phrases of the form “that F”). On the one hand I argue that, when one of these expressions misdescribes the referred object (i.e., when such object is not F), the right semantic analysis is to treat the expression as uninterpretable. On the other, I claim that the uninterpretability thesis finds itself in trouble when it comes to dealing with non-deictic uses of complex demonstratives, i.e., uses of “that F” in which the speaker has no acquaintance or direct perception of any object that could satisfy the predicative material. In order to make these two claims compatible, I set out to modify the way the uninterpretability thesis has been traditionally formulated.
17. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Jorge Luis Méndez-Martínez Хорхе Луис Мендес-Мартинес
Knowing Through Hearing, Towards an Epistemology of Auditory Perception
Знание через слушание: на пути к эпистемологии аудиального восприятия

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This paper proposes some guidelines for the undeveloped discussion of auditory epistemology. Auditory epistemology is an approach concerned with the perceptual basis for knowledge and belief, specifically around audition. The article pursues two goals. Firstly, it claims that addressing auditory perception from the viewpoint of epistemology is more fruitful than the discussion on phenomenology which has thus far dominated the debates in the literature on sound. Secondly, it elaborates a concrete proposal pertaining to the cooperation of sense-modalities. In so doing, a model for “Perceptual Coherence” is suggested. The first section of the paper critically reviews the problem of perception as it is usually understood in traditional epistemology. An ensuing section outlines the model of perceptual coherence.
interdisciplinary studies
18. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Andrei G. Kuznetsov Андрей Геннадиевич Кузнецов
Perception and Observation in the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Sociologism, Psychologism, Interdisciplinarity
Восприятие и наблюдение в сильной программе социологии научного знания

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The article analyzes a connection between empiricism and the Strong Program in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (D. Bloor, B. Barnes, J. Henry). I use Strong Program’s theories of perception and observation in science as cases to demonstrate this link. The main points of my argument are the following. First, characteristic problems of the empiricist tradition are at the focus of the Strong Program. Second, relations between the Strong Program and empiricist tradition are complex. While proponents of the Strong Program criticize classical empiricism of Bacon and logical empiricism, they employ new empiricism of Mary Hesse’s network model as a crucial theoretical resource for their social theory of knowledge. Third, The Strong Program uses Hesse’s theory as a model for the renewal of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. A key point of the analysis is that it is reasonable to add to the Mannheimian and Wittgensteinian traditions in the sociology of knowledge another empiricist one as exemplified in the Strong Program. I conclude the article by stressing interdisciplinary tendencies in this empiricist sociology of scientific knowledge.
archive
19. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Dimitry A. Bayuk, Olga B. Fedorova Дмитрий Александрович Баюк
G.W. Leibniz: From the “Symbolic Revolution” in Mathematics to the Concept of Suppositive Cognition
Г.Ф. Лейбниц: от «символьной революции» в математике к концепции замещающего знания

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The transition from the exclusive use of words to the predominant use of symbols in mathematics continued for centuries, but by the seventeenth century it turned out to be explosive. This phenomenon became known as the “symbolic revolution” in mathematics. One of its main outcomes was the discovery of mathematical analysis almost simultaneously and independently by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. To both scientists their discovery served as the basis for far-reaching philosophical generalizations. For Leibniz, it led to the concept of suppositive cognition, the opposite of the prevailing notions at that time. He was the first to argue that the criterion of clarity and distinctness in cognition is impossible, because it relies on intuition about primary concepts, but these are in fact confuse and undistinct, and the foundation of such cognition is shaky. Using the successful use of symbols in mathematics as a model, Leibniz arrives at the concept of blind or symbolic cognition, cognitio caeca, which makes it possible to achieve validity and verifiability of results without reliance on intuition or primary concepts. The truthfulness of the result is found to depend more on grammar, which determines the substitution rules of some signs, or characters, for others, than on the connection between signs and the signified. Leibniz’s opening debate served as a prologue to the fundamental modernization of scientific discourse in the early Modern Time. Although he failed to achieve entirely his philosophical goals, the concept itself turned out to be extremely productive and modern, effectively decoupling the progress of natural science from its philosophical foundations. This innovative cognitive ideology opened up enormous prospects for the formation and accumulation of new knowledge, closed by the rigid requirements of the Cartesian paradigm of science still dominant in Leibniz’s time.
new trends
20. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 59 > Issue: 2
Pavel N. Baryshnikov, Magomet N. Atakuev Павел Николаевич Барышников
Semantics of Judgments about Interoceptive Experience: From Norm to Anomalies
Семантика суждений о внутрителесном опыте

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The linguistic representation of interoceptive sensations is valuable not only for the study of cognitive processes, but also for conceptual analysis within the framework of the phenomenal approach in the philosophy of mind. This article focuses on the deep linguistic mechanisms of metaphorical conceptualization of corporeality and their relationship with various classes of judgments expressing awareness of internal bodily experience. Interoceptive sensations are associated with the representation of the image of the inner-body space and the processes occurring in it. The content of these representations is extracted simultaneously from mental beliefs about the properties of one's own physicality and, at the same time, from both real (physical) and imaginary causes of internal states. The main purpose of the article is to reveal the relationship of the semantics of these judgments with the principles of forming a conceptual dictionary of interoceptive sensations coming from a variety of pragmatic contexts. Some results of clinical and semantic studies of psychopathology deserve special attention. Semantic intersections of metaphors in idiomatic expressions of emotional states and judgments describing an abnormal inner-body experience are found. The paper substantiates the thesis that body, in addition to the functions of the organismic “interface” device, also has deep representative properties. While attempting to formulate utterances expressing abnormal inner-body experience, a conceptually conditioned metaphorical dictionary is automatically used. Along with the formation of conceptual schemes, the formation of judgments of awareness about the qualities of one's own conscious experience takes place.