Home – Home – Jornals – Philosophy of Sciences 2023 number 4

In the proposed series of articles, based on the idea of the unity of scientism and worldview, we intend to identify and analyse the core functions of philosophy and their role in scientific knowledge. This article considers the genesis and foundations of the methodological function of philosophy in the course of its formation and development.

Since its beginning, the philosophy of science has appeared as a polemical space where, implicitly or explicitly, discussions take place concerning meaning-related questions of the subject and status of this field of philosophical knowledge and the relationship be-tween philosophy and science. Among the diverse answers to these questions, there are always those related to alternative approaches that turn out to be diametrically opposed. The article considers two alternatives. If the alternative “G. Hegel - O. Comte” reflects the final stage of the classical philosophy of science, then the alternative “logical positivists - theoretical physicists” is a vivid expression of non-classical philosophy of science.

The article formulates arguments for the independent significance of the problem of understanding in contemporary philosophy of science. Obviously, it is impossible to devel-op a serious concept of understanding without examining the indicators of understanding used by scientists. Having studied publications in the field of artificial intelligence, natural science and philosophy of science, the author describes the criteria of understanding used by researchers in these fields of knowledge. The main result is a preliminary classification of the criteria of understanding in view of their degrees of universality and the degrees of understanding of the problems being studied, which researchers get in the course of thinking about and solving these problems when using formal methods.

The paper aims to make a proper interpretation of the cases “Airport” by S. Cohen and “Bank” by K. DeRose as arguments for contextualism and against skepticism. At the time, D. Lewis set the main “paradigmatic” frame for modern contextualism: (a) fallibilism, (b) skepticism as a change of context, and (c) the emphasis on the need of pragmatic interpretation of the meaningfulness of statements, which is set by the “epistemic standard” that determines the strength of the “epistemic position” of the person attributing knowledge in a given context. Despite the fact that S. Cohen and K. DeRose describe different situations (in S. Cohen’s example we consider the situation of knowledge attribution not for a participant in the dialogue, but for a “third party”), for both examples we can offer a uniform interpretation, which, among other things, will explain why “epistemic standards” are different in different contexts. The basis for such an “interpretation” will be a specific psychological interpretation of condition (c) that describes the pragmatics of setting the meaningfulness of a statement in context. Forming his psychological “confidence” in P, the person will be guided by the limits after which “we are no longer forming belief, but already have a conviction” (J. Nagel) and “the degree of using the privileged information to predict a reaction of the other person” (E. Royzman et al.) that will operate differently from context to context. The essential point is that for such an approach to work, we should require that the causal structure of the subconscious processes that form a belief be isomorphic to the evidentialist structure of propositional justification. In our opinion, this is a much weaker assumption than the “we can know in everyday life” assumption that D. Lewis relied on in his own interpretation of contextualism.

The article criticizes the expanded interpretation of the concept of technoscience, namely the proclamation of the end of science as such and the arrival of a new era in the history of human knowledge. It is shown that the theoretical method as the basis of science has not undergone fundamental transformations since Plato’s age. The reason why classical logic and mathematics are effective in modelling reality is that the ontology of the world is isomorphic to logic and mathematics. It is the correspondence between logic and the world as such that makes science possible. If we can talk about methodological “techno-scientific” transformations, then this is nothing but a regression to the methodology of positivism.

The article deals with the analysis of the problem of identifying the structural unit of science and scientific knowledge. For a long time, discipline stood as such a unit, and the principle of disciplinarity acted as the dominant regulative principle. The article shows the mechanism of formation of disciplinary structures. It has been revealed that the phenomenon of disciplinarity occurs not in science itself, but at the interface of science and education, in the work of the institution of transmitting the scientific knowledge. The problem of searching for possible new structural units of scientific knowledge during the transition from science to technosciences is raised. It is shown that in the transition to interdisciplinary research, the discipline as a structural unit remains basic. The search for truly new structural units of scientific knowledge takes place in the transition from disciplinary structures to project formats, research programs, problem-solving and search activity engines, in implementing social activity engineering.

The article is aimed to examine the stages of development of mathematical proof as successive stages in the development of human thinking which progresses towards the increase of abstrаction. The point of view of I. Hacking is analyzed, who identifies different styles of mathematical proof - the approaches of Descartes and Leibniz. It is shown that these styles cannot be considered, following Hacking, as independent approaches to understanding proof. They represent the development of human consciousness, which advances from concrete concepts to abstrаct thinking, therefore the approaches of Descartes and Leibniz should be considered as historically developing approaches to under-standing evidence.

According to one of the possible diagnoses of the quantum measurement problem, it is a consequence of quantum fundamentalism, which claims that ontology and epistemology of the world are exclusively quantum, and classical physics is only an approximation. For N. Bohr, the problem of measurement is a pseudo-problem, since any quantum phenomenon presupposes a classical context of an experimental unit and the use of classical concepts to describe it. We consider Bohr’s position in terms of our contextual quantum realism (QCR), which is inspired by the philosophy of the later Wittgenstein. Our approach is consistent with H. Zinkernagel’s interpretation, which is that Bohr’s position is not only epistemological anti-fundamentalism, but also ontological anti-fundamentalism.

The term “artificial intelligence winter” was coined by analogy with the term “nuclear winter” to describe the chain reaction caused by experts’ pessimistic forecasts and resulting in a drastic decline in AI research. Later on, the term “AI winter,” influenced by the concept of “hype cycle,” began to describe the investment cycle of AI research and only became stronger with coining the term “AI spring” as a synonym for “AI boom.” Over the past few years, several researchers have been predicting an AI winter and warning of potential problems following the “peak of inflated expectations.” However, a more thorough analysis shows that predicting an AI winter does not take into account some factors, the key ones being institutional and economic, as well as ignores the fundamentally different approach of modern society to AI research. This means that even with the advent of “AI November,” the winter of basic AI research will not come in the near future.

The article deals with the analysis of the main stages in the development of blood physiology. In the Ancient World, the prerequisites for the emergence of this scientific field were laid and its formation took place. In the Modern era, the accumulation and development of knowledge acquired through new theoretical and experimental approaches to understanding the processes occurring in the body continued, and important discoveries were made. At present, blood physiology is one of the important sections of physiology. The article is aimed at identifying and characterizing the main periods of formation and development of blood physiology. The materials for this work were domestic and foreign studies on the issue. The main results consist in presenting the stages of the development of blood physiology and featuring the contributions of leading researchers in this field. The conclusion is made about the process of formation and development of blood physiology as a branch of medical and biological knowledge.

The article proposes an ecosystem approach as the basis of the methodology for de-signing a university educational cluster in an emerging innovative society. The ontology of the development of university educational structures is represented as a self-developing cluster system whose principles of functioning are modeled using the ecosystem approach. The design principles for restructuring the university education system are presented at two levels: the university and its developing structure are modeled as a transdisciplinary cluster system, and the structural and functional dynamics is represented as a self-organizing system that adapts to a changing external environment. The methodology for solving the problem is revealed through key concepts and methods: the goal and purpose of the eco-system, the main activity process, the structure of the ecosystem and its elements, the educational environment, the management system, the product of the ecosystem, as well as the process of formation and self-development of educational structures of the ecosys-tem as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

The article provides a review of the book “Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge” by Nicholas Rescher and contains a summаry of the main ideas of each chapter.