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case-studies – science studies
181. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Jeffrey Koperski Джеффри Коперски
Theism, naturalism, and scientific realism
Теизм, натурализм и научный реализм

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Scientific knowledge is not merely a matter of reconciling theories and laws with data and observations. Science presupposes a number of metatheoretic shaping principles in order to judge good methods and theories from bad. Some of these principles are metaphysical (e.g., the uniformity of nature) and some are methodological (e.g., the need for repeatable experiments). While many shaping principles have endured since the scientific revolution, others have changed in response to conceptual pressures both from within science and without. Many of them have theistic roots. For example, the notion that nature conforms to mathematical laws flows directly from the early modern presupposition that there is a divine Lawgiver. This interplay between theism and shaping principles is often unappreciated in discussions about the relation between science and religion. Today, of course, naturalists reject the influence of theism and prefer to do science on their terms. But as Robert Koons and Alvin Plantinga have argued, this is more difficult than is typically assumed. In particular, they argue, metaphysical naturalism is in conflict with several metatheoretic shaping principles, especially explanatory virtues such as simplicity and with scientific realism more broadly. These arguments will be discussed as well as possible responses. In the end, theism is able to provide justification for the philosophical foundations of science that naturalism cannot.
182. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Larisa Mikhaylova Лариса Борисовна Михайлова
Specifics of the religious consciousness in the Post-Soviet socio-cultural region
Специфика религиозного сознания в постсоветском социокультурном пространстве

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The author analyses the specifics of religious consciousness in the post-secular socio-cultural space. The main focus is the study of the nature and dynamics of spirituality in the Post-Soviet Russian society, clarifying the semantic contents of the dichotomous variables “believer - non-believer", “religious - non-religious", and explaining the functioning of these concepts in the mass religious consciousness. Based on the extensive material of sociological studies conducted in Russia over the past decades, the author attempts to identify covert processes that affect the results of religious identification. Among the main features of the modern religious mass consciousness are the following: external nature of spirituality, ethno-confessional reductionism, eclecticism of religious beliefs, magical perception of the sacred, virtualization of religion, religious intolerance, as a result of predominance of the first-generation believers.
interdisciplinary studies
183. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Alexander Khramov Александр Валерьевич Храмов
Warrant for belief in God: evolutionary approach
Обоснованность веры в Бога

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The author applies reformed epistemology supplemented by some ideas from evolutionary cognitive science to consider the problem of justification of belief in the God of revelation. He argues that since our cognitive faculties are the result of evolution by natural selection, we have strong reasons for supposing that those spheres of reality which bore neither direct nor indirect relations to the survival needs of our ancestors lie outside our natural knowledge. If there is a certain mighty and benevolent agent, that is, God, which belongs to this unknowable reality, we can expect that he would not leave us ignorant of his existence, even if we are not able to learn about him by ourselves. It could be supposed that God, in order to make us believe in Him, uses the conjunctions of natural circumstances foreseen by Him, in addition to the revelation given in a supernatural way. Therefore, if God exists and one believes in Him, one's religious belief is a product of reliable belief-forming processes installed by God. So, this belief could be regarded as warranted even without appropriate evidences.
archive
184. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Alexander Mishura Александр Сергеевич Мишура
J.H. Newman’s lecture “The Office of Justifying Faith”
Джон Генри Ньюмен и его лекция о предназначении оправдывающей веры

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This paper briefly surveys the intellectual context of the lecture “The Office of Justifying Faith" by John Henry Newman. Newman is an outstanding English theologian, writer and philosopher, who had a great influence on the development of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in the 19th and 20th centuries. Newman became one of the leaders of the so-called Tractarian Movement. Tractarians offered a radically new understanding of the relation between the Anglican Church and other ecumenical churches. The most famous expression of this rethinking was the branch theory. According to this theory, the Anglican Church is one of the three branches of a single universal Church alongside the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. According to the Newman's doctrine of via media, Anglican Church represents the middle way between Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Churches. In the “Lectures on Justification" published in 1838, Newman applies the doctrine of via media to the set of problems that concern the Christian idea of justification. The lecture “The Office of Justifying Faith" is in this sense a very characteristic example of the doctrine of via media. Here Newman demonstrates the difference between the doctrines of the Anglican Church about the relationship between justification and faith and the doctrine of the Protestants about justification by faith only.
185. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
John Henry Newman John Henry Newman
Lectures on justification: Part 10. The office of justifying faith
Лекции об оправдании

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“Lectures on Justification" were read by John Henry Newman, one of the leaders of the Tractarian movement, in 1837 in Oxford, and then published in 1838. This series of lectures exemplifies Newman's doctrine of the “via media" of the Anglican Church. According to this doctrine, Anglican Church is supposed to pass between the extremes of papism and popular Protestantism. The tenth lecture examines the relationship between faith and justification. The author criticizes the popular Protestant doctrine of justification by faith only that neglects the office of sacraments in salvation. He suggests the interpretation of faith as one of the instruments of justification, which justifies only after and not before the baptism.
book reviews
186. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Maxim Belyaev Максим Александрович Беляев
Philosophy of religion: eternal questions, classical texts, new interpretations
Философия религии: вечные темы, классические тексты, новые интерпретации

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This is a review of the fifth issue of the international almanac “Philosophy of Religion", prepared by the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the support of the Society of Christian Philosophers. The texts composing almanac are evaluated from criteria of their originality, informativeness, scientific novelty and justifyability. The reviewer seeks to be unprejudiced, paying attention both to the merits of the philosophical and theological positions presented in the text, and to imperfections, which are generated by objective and subjective conditions.
187. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 53 > Issue: 3
Yulia Gorbatova Юлия Валерьевна Горбатова
Theistic proofs: mind fights for God
Теистические доказательства: разум в борьбе за Бога

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This work is a review of the book by Stephen T. Davis “God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs". The author discusses some methodological, logical and ontological advantages and disadvantages of this book as well as some features related to the translation of the book into Russian. The analysis is presented here not in chronological (chapter by chapter), but in a thematic order that enables the reader to get quickly acquainted with topics and problems considered in the book.
editorial
188. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Sofia Pirozhkova С.В. Пирожкова
The faces of prevision: from universal knowledge to foresight forecasting
Многоликое предвидение

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Author aims to give an integral representation of different semantic fields, forming the polysemantic concept “prevision". It is proved that such representation would eliminate the ambiguity in understanding what we're dealing with in a particular instance of usage and related practices. Three semantic fields are identified through analyzing of the evolution of meaning of concept “prevision" in philosophical texts, modern prognostic practices and studies of mechanisms of cognition. The first is summing up in definition of prevision as a constructive activity with regard to the future, the second - in definition of prevision as passing experience (passing from actual experience to possible one), the third designated as formed by existential issues. It is shown that the conception of prevision as a passing experience, fixed the fundamental mechanisms of cognition and adaptation, is the foundation for other two semantic units. At the same time constructive and existential meanings of prevision couldn't be reduced to this foundation.
panel discussion
189. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Stanislav Gavrilenko С.М. Гавриленко
Historical epistemology: zone of uncertainty and space for theoretical imagination
Историческая эпистемология

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This article attempts to define a historical epistemology not as separate place in disciplinary space, but as rather specific area, which unstable configuration and “stuff" are determined by quite different from philosophy ways of talking and investigation of knowledge, especially in social sciences. More significant than emergence of competitors of philosophy in production of knowledge about knowledge (sociology, history, anthropology) was that they introduce a new regime of this production. This regime became empirical. Within that regime knowledge is objectified not as homogeneous order of representation, but as fuzzy dynamic set of heterogeneous elements, relations between which are complex and historically variable. The claims of non-philosophical disciplines to investigate knowledge generate the field of uncertainties and problematisations. Just this field is referred to as “historical epistemology". But this field is also space of conceptual imagination, where the new ways to investigate knowledge are worked on, when refusing to ascribe to it any ultimate (transcendent or transcendental) specification.
190. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Zinaida Sokuler З.А. Сокулер
Historical epistemology and the fate of theory of knowledge in philosophy
Историческая эпистемология и судьба философской теории познанияhy

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Historical epistemology is argued to be viewed at as a historically formed name for a heterogeneous complex of philosophical, sociological, historical studies of sciences, which are integrated by their common epistemological orientation - epistemological anti-foundationalism. The latter is defended against the accusations of the extreme relativism.
191. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Alexander Pisarev А.А. Писарев
Historical epistemology: epistemology and the other philosophy
«Историческая эпистемология»

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The author considers the thesis about the opposition between the universal (philosophy of science) and particular (history of science), and about the retreat of epistemology in their juxtaposition to the transformations in contemporary philosophy during last decades and its links to science studies. He claims that in order to define historical epistemology project a reason to support this project is to be found.
192. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Olga Koshovets О.Б. Кошовец
Production of knowledge about the knowledge: from the need for the “normalizing law” to the interdisciplinary exchange and competition
Производство знания о знании

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The author discusses the reasons for the disciplinary and epistemological uncertainty of historical epistemology - why it is theoretically heterogeneous and fragmented as well why it needs excessive object domain and instrumental diversity, and what is the reason for its weak comparing with the philosophy of science disciplinary status. In this context, the author considers the conditions of the philosophy of science emergence that is the era of the science transformation into a productive force which causes the objective demand for “epistemological normativity". The author puts forward the hypothesis about the reasons that have led the philosophy of science to the subsequent loss of its role of normative meta-discourse. In particular, it's drawn attention to the problem of overproduction of scientific knowledge and the fundamental impact of this factor on the development of the modern science both on the epistemological and the institutional levels.
193. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Tatiana Sokolova Т.Д. Соколова
Why so complicated?
Зачем так усложнять?

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In the article, author criticizes some points made by S.M. Gavrilenko regarding the status of historical epistemology and other social and humanitarian disciplines. Here the author relies mainly on the French tradition of historical epistemology, as well as emphasizes the need to keep clear the disciplinary boundaries between epistemology, philosophy of science, history and sociology of science.
194. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Stanislav Gavrilenko С.М. Гавриленко
Historical epistemology: necessary complications: Reply to critics
Историческая эпистемология: необходимые усложнения

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This paper sums up the discussion on historical epistemology, pointing on it's ambivalence as singled out place in intellectual field and as some project, that should be assembled. Based on remarks of the discussion participants, we make an assumption, that historical epistemology is a specific zone of maneuvers and interchanges between philosophy and empirical studies of knowledge.
epistemology and cognition
195. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Vladimir Filatov B. П. Филатов
Legal Marxism and philosophy of science
Легальный марксизм и философия науки

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At the end of the XIX century in the Russian socio-economic community dispute occurred on how to modernize the country - dispute about “the fate of capitalism" in Russia. One of the parties in this dispute were “legal marxists". The article analyzes the social, ideological and theoretical contexts of this dispute. It is shown that the marginal revolution significantly change the situation in the economics of that time. From the standpoint of the philosophy of science is given a rational reconstruction of the changing attitudes of legal marxists to Marx's economic theory. It is shown that they are quite rationally evaluated Marx's theory as obsolete and regressing and seen in marginal program a new and promising alternative in economic theory.
196. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Sofia Danko C. В. Данько
Logic, meaning and value from the performative perspective of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophics”
Логика, смысл и ценность в перформативном измерении «Логико-философского трактата» Людвига Витгенштейна

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Many contemporary scholars converge the main issues of the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" with B. Russell's agenda aimed at eliminating language confusion that causes “fundamental philosophical problems". Although this may be correct to a certain degree, the main idea of the “Tractatus" often remains overlooked: according to Wittgenstein, establishing the language boundaries must lead us to the inexpressible meanings and values of life, and somehow demonstrate them. It was done by Wittgenstein in “Tractatus", however results of his activity still remain in some way confidential, leaving a scope to various versions in this respect. This paper represents one of the possible approaches to this problem. It consists in the ultimate radicalization of characteristics of the logical structure showing that the facts within only the logical structure cannot be understood and described in comprehensible propositions. Thereby, it is possible to highlight the logical level of language and to show some non-logical meanings and values that contribute to the understanding of the world. This approach allows to show the performative perspective of "Tractatus" and to find the appropriate place for values and senses among the language expression.
language and mind
197. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Vitalii Sukhovyi В.И. Суховой
Consciousness, reduction and physicalism
Сознание, редукция и физикализм

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This paper is dedicated to the mind-body problem. My aim is to show that not only consciousness resists to reductive explanation, but also that the latter itself is a big, complex and yet unsolved problem.And if there is a gap between conscious phenomenal experience and other psychical processes as dualists think I will show that similar gaps exist between different facts of such sciences as psychology (intentions, desires etc.) and neurophysiology (activation of nervous system). And the very fact of existence of such gaps is compatible with physicalism. I also aim to show that resistance of consciousness's reduction to the physical processes is compatible with the doctrine of physicalism.The well-known argument in the defense of dualism belongs to the philosopher David Chalmers which is often also called “the zombie-argument". This argument tries to demonstrate that consciousness is irreducible to the physical facts. Zombie- argument grounds on the two premises: 1) reducibility of physical facts and 2) the possibility of complete physics. The former means that conjunction of all microphysical facts is sufficient for inference of the only one conjunction of macrophysical facts. I will try to show that we can infer from the very same conjunction of microphysical facts to different conjunctions of macrophysical facts even if the whole system would be identical in its own behaviour. Thereafter if my arguments are sound it would demonstrate that irreducibility of consciousness isn't enough for conclusion that physicalism is wrong.
198. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Vsevolod Ladov В.А. Ладов
Logical paradoxes solution in semantically closed language
Решение логических парадоксов в семантически замкнутом языке

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The author considers following question: is a consistent semantically closed language possible? The negative answer is the orthodox answer in the logic of the 20th century. It was presented in Russell's theory of types and Tarski's semantic theory of metalanguages. Nevertheless, contemporary logicians and philosophers of language return to this problem time and again, pointing to its relevance in various aspects. In particular, it is asserted that semantically closed language is a very important tool for expressing logical and philosophical ideas. In logic of the 20th century, the problem of semantically closed language was discussed in connection with the problem of logical paradoxes. Russell and Tarski saw a fundamental cause of paradoxes in the phenomenon of self-reference that arises in semantically closed language. Accordingly, a solution for paradoxes was seen in eliminating the cause, that is, in prohibiting semantically closed language by means of a hierarchy of logical types of classes (Russell) or a hierarchy of metalanguages (Tarski). However, some contemporary logicians criticize the hierarchical approach, whose main argument consists in asserting that the approach was wrong in its diagnosis of the cause of paradoxes. This author does not try to correct the diagnostics of the hierarchical approach by identifying another cause of paradoxes. Instead, the author recognizes that a general solution of the problem of paradoxes cannot be given, a priori, by eliminating what fundamentally generates them. In this article, a new “ad hoc solution" of the problem is offered that rests upon an empirical method of identifying and eliminating paradoxes. A specific characteristic of the method is admitting the existence of consistent semantically closed language.
vista
199. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Alexandra Argamakova A. А. Аргамакова
Social and humanitarian dimensions of technoscience
Социогуманитарное измерение технонауки

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The article is dedicated to re-conceptualization of ideas, implied by the theories of technoscience. In particular, they imply our understanding of technologies as material artifacts and technics, which is not the only possible one. In the same time, the presence of social technologies and innovations, practices of social planning and engineering, humanitarian labs and applied socio-humanitarian knowledge can provide reasonable ground for changes in our ways of speaking about social and human sciences in techno-scientific discourse. The first part of the article presents an updated approach to the key ideas of technoscience theory. In the second part of the article the author develops the historical argumentation for this approach. The practical functions of social sciences are described as follows: professional training for specialists; social critics and applied research; production of ideological concepts; intellectual support for social engineering; enlightenment and formation of humanitarian culture. The author argues that there are close ties between social sciences and practices, and the impact of social knowledge on developing of modern technoculture is being specifically revealed in this context.
200. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science: Volume > 52 > Issue: 2
Vadim Rozin B. М. Розин
Discourses and the types of future
Дискурс и типы будущего

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The article discusses the problems of the understanding of the future. The author suggests to consider this problem in accordance with the analysis of its discourse and types. He distinguishes the following kinds of temporal discourse: event time; contains the past; present; future; future reconstruction created on the basis of reconstructions of past and present; present actions in accordance with the images of future, finally, practices aimed at the implementation of the future as the plan or project. Based on the analysis of several cases and general considerations the author introduces his classification of the types of the future discourse. Firstly, it is “uncertain future" (“future as a thing in itself") as the most relevant type for modernity. Secondly, it is “objectively subjective future" that could be considered both as religious vision of the future and as the rational concept allowing a person to participate in the future constructing. Thirdly, it is “local technological future" that is considered on the example of the analysis of the US and the USSR nuclear project. The current understanding of the future is analysed as an attempt to predict and to build the same future for everybody. The author argues that this attempt doesn't seem to be feasible. Implementing different ideas and projects of the future and acting spontaneously without any particular image of the future, one cannot create the same future for everyone. Probably, it is necessary to accept the fact that there're a number of images of the future and each of them is narrow. Somehow, they all are involved in the formation of the future, although we do not know how exactly. It is better to assume that any of them, even inadequate and destructive are involved in the formation and flow of social processes. That's why it is so important to analyze them in order to understand their action and place in the structure of life.