The paper analyzes the limitation of alternative concepts of knowledge, constructivism and realism. A necessity of their complementarity is grounded. The core of controversy between constructivism and realism is a belief about “the given”. The author follows R. Rorty who considers two meanings of a notion of “the given”: “making” and “finding”. The author shows that these different meanings of concept of “the given” are connected with different types of subject consciousness activity. Together with intentional ability of consciousness he considers responsive ability. Both abilities were a subject of phenomenological analysis (E. Husserl, A. Reinach, B. Waldenfels). The author argues that there are certain connections between intentionality and interpretative function of knowledge, on the one hand, and between responsiveness and expressive function of consciousness, on the other hand. Developing the communicative concept of knowledge he shows the meaning of cognitive cycles «interpretation_expression» in the process of knowledge.A consideration of cognitive process as a semiotic one allows to show that interpretation is provided by such kind of basic function of sign as indication, and expression is provided by the other function of sign as substitution, or presentation. The author shows that complementary of interpretation and expression is a consequence of two processes – finding a name and making a meaning. The conclusion about complementary of interpretation and expression leads to a belief about cognition cultures and their types. He shows a place of constructivism and realism in the context of typology of cognition cultures.

This article highlights the problem of the connection between thought and scientific language. The hypothesis of nonidentity of thought-forms in different cultures, expressed in language, and the reflection of the spatial thinking in scientific terminology is tested. Author researches Mandarin language as having a phonetic system and principles of the expression of meaning a lot different from IndoEuropean languages. The research is concentrated primarily on the terms included in the semantic field of “elementary particle physics” (mainly the names of the particles) as it is a relatively recent field of science which had not had any roots in Chinese culture and did not have indigenous scientific vocabulary. First the author describes the peculiarities of Mandarin phonetic system and syllable structure which hardly let using transcription or transliteration in producing of scientific terms, and also gives the examples of translation and transcription of some western terms and names into Chinese. The author shows different forms of the assimilation of European scientific terminology and also different methods of forming scientific terms in Mandarin language. It is shown, that the terms were translated into Chinese either by loan translation (which sometimes leads to inaccurate reflection of meaning), transcription (only for the terms derived from the names such as “boson” or “fermion”) or the descriptional expression of meaning (such as tachyon, bradyon, luxon). The last one lets produce the terms which reflect the essence of the phenomena more accurately. Also the author shows the connection between scientific terminology and the traditional world view and native Chinese concepts (like “yin” and “yang”). It is concluded that Chinese scientific language tends to be visual and descriptive as much as possible, which in a certain sense indicates the reflection of the spatial thinking in linguistic phenomena.

The paper deals with the problem of subjective experience and the problem of knowledge and experience correlation, basing on the thought experiment of Frank Jackson known as “Mary, the neuroscientist”. According to Jackson, the subjective experience of seeing colour (along with having previous knowledge about what is it like – to see colours) adds something new to knowledge we’ve already had. The author disagrees with such a position and conducts another thought experiment which can be called “dreamtown visiting”. The experiment is essentially similar to Jackson’s experiment, but, as it becomes clear, it demonstrates, that we do not get any new knowledge but only get the experience which cannot be converted into knowledge, because there is no way of such a converting (this comes out from author’s conclusions made on the basis of the reflections on the thought experiment). It is also substantiated that, while discussing epiphenomenalism arguments, there shouldn’t be distinction on “know what” and “know how” – in this case we deal with the distinction of knowledge (as a holistic phenomenon) and experience (which can be considered as data, which can either be used in practice or not). In case of Mary, who walks out of her room, she gets new experience, but now an additional knowledge, and this experience has no expression in new ways of representation of visual experience (that already exists) and no practical usage. That is why, to author, epiphenomenalistic arguments in the discussion about human mind are unjustified.

Images of the universe, society and creatures as machines are already to be found in the Early Patristics, and then appear with increasing frequency in an increasing number of contexts during the Middle Ages. The emergence and evolution of such images is caused by the radical transformation of the model of the universe from a self-sufficient cosmos moving and changing its state on its own in antiquity to that of God’s creation with no independent status, put another way, a machine, in medieval culture.The foundation of Descartes’ philosophy seems to be nicely consistent with the medieval model. Reason likens man to God; hence, it is indeed reason that we should rely on in seeking the true basis for understanding reality. The universe is a set of machines; put another way, the purport of its existence and changes to its state are carried out by its Creator. The human mind can comprehend this purport because it is of the same substance as God. Thus, introspection and deduction are the basic principles of Descartes’ research programme.Bacon’s research programme is based on radically different underpinnings. An important feature of the hermetic corpus is the idea of the universe as an animated being. Importantly, this is not an exception from Renaissance thought. By addressing Ancient Greek culture, the culture of the Renaissance revives its view of the universe as a living entity performing on its own.The two paradigms described – medieval (universe as a machine) and Ancient Greek (universe as a self-sufficient entity) – could be seen as originating in two branches in the culture of early Modernity. The former is connected with the treatises of Galileo and Hobbes, and then influences the culture of the Enlightenment; the latter – with the treatises of Spinoza, Copernicus and Bruno, then being later the cause of some important traits of the culture of Romanticism.

The Modern Age development of biology studies was closely connected with the General progress of scientific knowledge. Epistemological optimism was based on the results of liquid and solid mechanics researches and the development of wide-applied experimental and inductive methods in physics. Finding the universal law of the nature and the final explanation for the being became the main research reason. The major philosophers focused their attention on the problem of scientific methods.The process of breaking new intellectual grounds on the domain of physical world explanation was successful and the primary goal seemed to be near.The rise of so-called “biological reality” during the XVII–XVIII centuries supported the development of theoretical concepts, specific research methods and accumulation of factual material. A range of biological disciplines was founded: systematic and comparative anatomy, embryology, anthropology, physiology of plants and animals, were among them. Number of important discoveries demonstrated the possibilities of experimental methods in biology. However, the scope of its use was limited. Comparative description remained the main research method. The development of the classification of living organisms contributed to the understanding of the unity of organic world. At the same time some scientific schools, which programs were based on the other ontological and epistemological purposes, were founded. Their supporters believed that the idea of “organisms as machines” leads to a loss of specificity of biological research object. Due to these discussions the problem of the nature science foundations was formulated.

In the History of historical science, efforts were made to connect the past with the future in one and the same “sense construct”, like it is the case in Christian historiography. Christian historiography has its own forward-looking statements which are proven in the biblical story, because every future is based on a “historical way”. This logic was also followed by K. Marx and N. Fedorov, whose models of future are principally based on historical arguments. In the course of human history,the two philosophers discovered a kind of “intrigue”, which reason is due to the humans past and its solution in human future. In the concepts of both philosophers, intrigue has caused “alienation” of man from his own nature. It also gives meaning and purpose to human history. The purpose of human history exists for both – K. Marx and N. Fedorov – in human emancipation.

Usually the impact of the science in the civilization development is identified as scientifictechnical progress. Impact of the science in the moral and culture is important never the less. It is determined by peculiarities of the scientific argumentation, experiences. All of these obvious facts, however, relate only to the first round of correlation ethical themes with modern science. We are talking about the sociocultural context of perception of science and its results of the society, that is, the ethical factors acting on the outside with respect to the position of science, is not inherent in science itself.The second round of the ethical issues in relation to science related to the problem of rationality. Post positivism demonstrated the role and importance of the normative, regulatory and valuable moment in the content of theoretical knowledge. In this regard, even the question arose about the different types of scientific rationality and normatively. In this case we are talking about statutory regulators built into the very content of scientific knowledge, internally inherent therein. There is another circle in which there are ethics and science. It is a question of ethics, regulations, acting in the scientific community, to be exact – communities.There is impossible to get adequate understanding of the genesis of the liberalism, multiculturalism without take into account this role of science.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of indeterministic models of causation in the analytic philosophy of action. At the beginning of this article, I deal with the most common in contemporary debates indeterministic theories authored by Robert Kane, Daniel Dennett, Alfred Mele and Laura Ekstrom. After critical examination of given theories and finding what in my opinion is their main difficulty I provide an alternative account of action. The approach seeks to integrate rationality inside the action itself and not on the specific causal chain preceding it as it became common since famous article of Donald Davidson “Actions, reasons and causes”. I propose to consider action as onotological entity consisting of three parts: 1) goal; 2) mean(s) to achieve goal; 3) teleological relation “for” between 1 and 2. Therefore, “Jim moved his arm to take a cup of tea” has 3 parts 1) taking a cup of teal; 2) Moving Jim’s arm; 3) “for” between 1 and 2. This account of rational action as I expect would escape some long-living paradoxes of causal theory of action. Finally I provide the concept of non-phenomenal will trying to explain some further properties of agency such as its “active” character and to close an explanatory gap between merely thinking about doing something and actually doing. This non-phenomenal will nevertheless is not meant as something necessarily transcendent and extra-natural, on the contrary it could match naturalistic point of view provided by neuroscience.

The author considers the influence of non-epistemic factors on development of experimental research in Big Science and megascience taking high-energy physics as an example. Stratification of the scientific community to theorists, experimentalists, and instrumentalists in megascience is further analyzed. Examples of competition between experimentalists for limited resources (beam time, buildings) when they strived for re-using their old detectors, thus considerably limiting their epistemic scopes is discussed. I argue that one of the reasons of such competition is the rise of boundary objects in the structure of a scientific experiment as well as related epistemic privileges of certain scientific communities. A role model of the scientific community grounded on the epistemic unity and involving the interactional expertise is suggested.

In the paper, we argue that the paradigm of contemporary analytic philosophy of mind has three main theoretical elements: naturalism, respect to empirical data and the search for adequate explanation of subjective experience.The paper begins with a brief overview of the history of the beginning of analytic philosophy of mind, with a description of its coming to Russia. Then every theoretical element of contemporary philosophy of mind is analyzed and their exemplification in the work of philosophers exposed. Naturalism is very popular in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and it has many varieties. In the article, we specify naturalism in strong and weak senses, methodological and ontological naturalism. The shortcomings for the naturalistic in the strong sense explanation of mind are considered.Taking into account empirical data looks like a maximum consensus in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. All major lines in philosophy of mind – materialism, functionalism, dualism – are trying to strengthen their arguments with a help from empirical data. Materialism tend to go by neuroscience due to its theoretical foundations. Debates around functionalism today include empirical data from sociology and psychology. Moreover even the proponents of dualism, usually perceived as anti-naturalists, tend to include neuro-cognitive research in their conceptual schema.Explaining subjective experience may take radically different forms- from postulating extra ontology of sensation to its total elimination. Nevertheless the choosing the strategy of explanation nearly everyone in the field agree that there could not be any satisfactory explanation of mind unless we have and adequate explanation of subjective experience. In the end, we conclude that the welfare of the current paradigm of philosophy of mind depends on successful explanation of subjecting experience within the naturalistic framework and with a firm empirical data support.

The article deals with the problem of consciousness. It is the problem of providing naturalistic explanation of phenomenal aspects of our conscious experience. Today many philosophers believe that such explanation is impossible. According to them, we can’t reduce phenomenal qualities of conscious states, or qualia, to physical or functional properties of our body. The main idea of the paper is that to move forward towards explanation of consciousness we should answer the question whether qualia are intrinsic properties of conscious states instead of discussing whether they are reducible to physical or functional characteristics. If qualia are intrinsic properties then the inverted spectrum scenario must be conceivable. In the paper it is demonstrated that this scenario is inconceivable. We can demonstrate this inconceivability appealing to Wittgenstein’s critics of the theory of private language and using his arguments such as, for example, “beetle in the box” argument. If qualia are not intrinsic properties of conscious states then we must try to explain the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience using the concept of intentionality (or mental representation). Following Gilbert Harman, it is proposed to consider qualia as relational properties of represented objects and treat conscious states as representational states. This approach allows us to provide naturalistic explanation of consciousness. In conclusion it is argued that these representational states belong not to the brain alone but to the whole body that involved in complex relationship with environment.

Ivanov’s aim in his article is to defend a naturalistical point of view in discussion about the nature of consciousness. The author used three philosophical presuppositions: (1) There are two kind of properties. We have some of our properties purely in virtue of the way we are (e.g., our mass). We have other properties in virtue of the way we interact with the world (e.g., our weight). The former are the intrinsic properties, the latter are the extrinsic properties; (2) The phenomenal properties are extrinsic; (3) The phenomenal properties must be ascribed to objects represented through the mind (e.g., material things, signs). The core of the article is Ivanov’s argument for scientific explanation of the intentionality. This argument is strongly critisized in this paper. The point of disagreement is the following: it is impossible to find the objective explanation of consciousness since it is impossible to describe phenomenal attributes of objects as physical. The general conclusion is that if (A) to take a naturalistic and scientific explanation of consciousness as identical, and (B) to define the scientific explanation as the study the relationships between different kinds of objectively existing things, and (C) to agree that phenomenal states are relational properties of the body, there is no way to justify the physical nature of phenomenal states themselves, and therefore their objectivity. Impossibility of explaining in this case due to the fact that (1) the consciousness is not conceived at the same time objectively and subjectively existing, and (2) body do not possess intentionality.

The article provides a reply to critics of On the Way Towards Explanation of Consciousness. The main idea of the paper is that there is no simple solution to the problem of consciousness. To move forward towards naturalistic explanation of consciousness we should examine many complicated arguments and thought experiments, carefully analyze a set of counter-intuitive approaches to this problem. The paper addresses the next issues raised by commentators: necessity and the conceivability arguments; conceivability of inverted spectrum scenario; ineffability of qualitative properties of conscious states; elimination of qualia; causal efficacy of qualia; possibility of naturalistic explanation of consciousness; the nature of intentionality; the prospects of representationalism. It defends the main thesis of On the Way Towards Explanation of Consciousness that to move forward towards explanation of consciousness we should answer the question whether qualia are intrinsic properties of conscious states instead of discussing whether they are reducible to physical or functional characteristics. It demonstrates that qualia are not intrinsic properties of conscious states. They are relational properties of represented objects. It is also argued that phenomenal aspects of conscious states should be explained with the concept of intentionality. The whole approach to the problem of qualia proposed in the article could be characterized as a mixture of representationalism and eliminativism.