Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2018 number 4

By comparing the content of the pantheistic concepts of J. Bruno, L. Vanini and B. Spinoza, the direction of the movement of the philosophical thought of the adherents of pantheism to materialism from the end of the Renaissance to the beginning of the New Age is revealed. Particular attention is paid to the rationalistic nature of the pantheism of these thinkers. The conceptual foundation of this philosophical direction was laid at the end of the Renaissance by J. Bruno, which is clearly confirmed by the presence of a number of fundamental philosophical statements, not only meaningfully relevant to those which will later elaborate and substantiate B. Spinoza, but often directly coincide with these latter. The components of the positions of J. Bruno and B. Spinoza are also considered, which not only do not coincide, but radically diverge. Attention is paid to the intellectual honesty of L. Vanini, who openly proclaimed his adherence to atheism immediately before his burning at the inquisition fire. B. Spinoza as a thinker, most thoroughly and in detail developed a pantheistic world view, revealed incompatibility of the pantheistic and materialistic components of his philosophical position.

The paper analyses and contrasts instrumental and epistemic rationality, with the main focus on the content of the notions of epistemic rationality and epistemic normativity and their correlation. It shows the differences between the requirements of normativity and rationality in the process of epistemic justification. The author lists the factors, which contributed to the development of «virtue epistemology», namely the difficulties of dealing with the «Gettier problem» and internal problems with the classical definition of knowledge.

The article discusses the application of modal logic to the analysis of mathematical discourse. It is shown that such an application requires caution, as it often leads to absurd results. In particular, the thesis is being analyzed that the necessity of mathematical truths is provable in mathematics. It is shown that such a mixture of metaphysics and mathematical logic is illegal.

By analyzing the critique of Kolmogorov by mathematicians, followers of the subjective interpretation of probability theory I show the importance of philosophical preconditions in scientific research. The critique was targeted at the condition of proximity of probability and frequencies, as according to opponents, the condition coincides with the conclusion of Bernoulli theorem, and therefore it was superfluous. In reality, the critique was directed at the foundations of frequency interpretation, because it was unacceptable for subjectivists, but in the context of applications, the views of Kolmogorov were closely related to those of Mises, the creator of frequency interpretation. The critique of Kolmogorov’s condition was based on the Bernoulli theorem. I show that the condition is formalized on the basis of stability of frequencies, and doesn’t require the theorem for its verification. The theorem is suitable for an introduction of the condition in the field of mathematics; however, it applies only when the stability of frequencies obtains. In any case, in the context of frequency interpretation, the critique misses the target.

The article considers main features and a role of metaphysics which, in the author’s view, may provide a methodological base for developing a doctrine of a deep essence of the world. The analysis of rational-speculative form of the metaphysical methodology and consequences of its detaching from scientific facts makes possible to formulate metaphysical viewpoints which contribute to studying structures of physical and astronomical theories, systems and ideas. As a result, there are marked out specific metaphysical ideas which are present within the quantum cosmology hypothesis.

The social history of the proto-megascience experiments (an early stage of megascience) is studied in the framework of the generalized trading zone model through the example of the joint US-USSR accelerator-based experiments that tested the Regge theory with a supersonic gas-jet target at NAL near Chicago in 1970s. We attribute to proto-megascience the experiments that do not yet reach the scale of the developed megascience and, nevertheless, reveal certain its characteristic traits, such as a special role of political and institutional components as well as an alleviated role of the epistemic criteria for ending of experiments. The representation of experiment as a unity of sociopolitical, material, and theoretical components enables to consider it as a trading zone and apply to its analysis Galison’s and Collins’s generalized model of trading zones. Historical and archival materials allow to trace the changes in the structure of experiments and its evolution from coercive through fractionated to interlanguage, however, it is remarked that the last in the model transition to the subversive type is absent in the experiments analyzed due to the displacement of the Regge theory by the quark model in the scientific community. The applicability of the generalized model to the experiments supports the view that the consideration of the experiments as the trading zone is plausible. It is also noted that the absence of any changes in the object of study in the course of transition to proto-megascience points to community development as the driving force in the emergence of megascience.

The philosophical problem of modern biology is creating a general theory of life. The global task of theoretical biology is to develop a system of principles of vital activity of organic matter, to unite empirical facts into an integral system, and to understand and explain them as manifestations of a common essence. Theoretical biology should be based on fundamental principles of two levels: universal principles of natural science as a whole and specific principles of vital activity of biological objects.

The article presents a brief survey of some popular theories of consciousness which are divided into two types: philosophical theories and empirical ones. For each type, we propose a method of classification. The question is raised how to understand the quantum theory of consciousness - whether as a philosophical approach or as an empirical one. There are shown basic prerequisites of the quantum approach to the problem of defining consciousness.

The problem of consciousness is a crucial issue of philosophy. This research was aimed at developing the concept of digital philosophy of consciousness on the basis of the theory of chaos and self-organized criticality. For this purpose, we developed continuous cellular-automaton paradigmatic models of the two main components of consciousness - psyche and thinking. The models are designed to discover basic general principles underlying the nature of the phenomenon of consciousness in terms of modern digital philosophy. The models are made in the form of continuous cellular automata in one-dimensional and two-dimensional versions. The novelty of the work consists in applying the phenomenon of dynamic chaos to reproduce emergent properties of mental processes as a series of nonrecurring deterministic states of a distributed cooperative system. Basing on the theory of self-organized criticality, we developed rules for transition in the cell-automaton model which reproduces the propagation and vectoring of pulse avalanches representing the substantive determination of cognitive processes. The considered cellular models can be combined. The integrated combined model has a general character and reproduces some key properties of agents endowed with mentality and consciousness. Here, we mean spontaneity and emergency, imitation of a unique internal event flow of one's own being, as well as generation of avalanches of excitation and inhibition pulses that can become a basis of cognitive processes and behavioral regulators, including very complex and diverse one. The developed models can be applied in studying and forecasting the behavior of human-like systems, in the education process, as well as in the development of the methodology of artificial intelligence and robotics.

The article analyses R. Penrose’s viewpoint on the nature of consciousness according to which mathematical non-computability of consciousness can be explained only by attracting quantum mechanics as a source of probability. We consider a criticism of his concept from J. Lucas’s perspective which implies that complexity of a system results in appearance of additional qualities which are not reducible to original ones. We compare degrees of complexity of the human brain and those of modern neural networks. It is shown that complexity of a system may itself be a source of uncertainty to a sufficient extent, so it is possible to do without quantum mechanics. However, it is assumed that quantum-mechanic effects may cause uncertainty of some processes occurring in “building blocks” of the brain, i.e. neurons.

The article raises the problem of the need to revise concepts of the essence of life. The question should be solved not just by listing attributes, but by revealing a certain integral mechanism. Moreover, such central attribute of life as reproduction actually is already a property of complex chemical catalytic systems. The chemical and the biological, being integrated in the living matter, are not the same and differ as a «lower» (less complex) level and a «higher» (more complex) one. The relation between these levels is dialectical and implies a mechanism of negating the chemical in order to integrate it and make it a basis of life. The example of reproduction shows that life aims largely to control this process and regulate it at different levels, which both morphological progress and functioning of populations and ecosystems can be partly associated with. Thus, not reproduction itself but the unity of reproduction and mechanisms of its regulation can generate such integral life phenomenon as self-preservation. The level structure of life is largely determined by the fact that every higher level presupposes restraining replication at the lower one. This may be associated with both the limited capacity of environment and its resources and the functioning of «finely-tuned» biological structures and differentiation processes, which do not involve an unlimited growth of the number of elements.

The article analyzes philosophical foundations of bioethics. The authors set a complex goal: to consider an empirical basis of medicine, on the one hand, and to formulate the most important and informative generalizations of the notion of “bioethics” arising from the context of ethical concepts which often conflict with medical practice, on the other hand. Bioethics is not considered as a precept for resolving certain medical dilemmas from the perspective of human morality, but is presented as a kind of speculative model with an inherent number of general properties. The introduction of such transcendental properties helps the authors to examine ultimate limits of the real object of study, i.e. bioethics, which enables to reveal its essential basis. In this case, bioethics not only represents a subjective view in medicine, but also indicates something that is over the organic essence of the human being. That is why it is important to reveal its metaphysical principles. The authors show that bioethics in the broad sense is evidence of difficulty in resolving the moral dilemmas that arise in medicine.

The article considers the problem of objectivity of results of geological research through the prism of the hermeneutic tradition. In particular, an attempt is made to reveal the role of geologist’s skills in geological knowledge. The attention is drawn to the need for reflection on unconscious procedures in the process of geological research which are related to skills, since they cause inconsistency of results of studying the same object obtained by different researchers dealing with the Earth.

The article discusses the functioning of the concepts “entropy” and “self-organization” during the development of conceptual basis of biophysics. Relying on the distinction between “cutting edge science”, “journal science” and “textbook science” (L. Fleck), we consider the development of theoretical foundations in the textbooks on biophysics by B.N. Tarusov, M.V. Volkenshtein and A.B. Rubin. The functioning of basic concepts is examined on the base of A.I. Lipkin’s conception of primary and secondary ideal objects, and the distinction between levels of meaning of concepts is made building on V.S. Stepin’s ideas, which allows correlating the levels of declaration and model implementation. Both textbooks produce no strict theoretical system. Volkenshtein’s textbook is of more “model” character. It reproduces Schrodinger’s theoretical scheme which performs certain functions of a paradigm (T. Kuhn) and may be termed as protoparadigmatic. Here, the concept of entropy is central, it is introduced at the mathematical level and applied at the physical and biological levels owing to its natural philosophy sense. In Rubin's textbook, there is an obvious tendency to a larger theorization, biophysical models are based on the concept of self-organization, the notion of entropy is used in a limited way, and the scheme of Prigogine’s school of nonequilibrium thermodynamics becomes main. The difference between conceptual structures of these textbooks may be considered as a change of protoparadigmatic theoretical schemes and their ontologies. The fact that the textbooks on biophysics differ, are theoretically inconsistent and problematic tells that there is no fundamental biophysical theory. The desire to create it is concerned with scientists’ common “dream of a unified theory”.