The article explores the genesis and nature of number from the perspective of psychologism, an epistemological trend. It formulates a series of questions aimed at reexamining our understanding of number: What is the mode of existence of number? In what forms or formations does number exist, and what reality serves as its natural “carrier”? Is it justified, following realism, to regard number as an entity independent of human beings? What reasoning challenges the human-independent status of number – a stance embraced (...) by many successful mathematicians – given that this status overlooks key questions about the nature of number? To what extent can it be argued that the phenomenon of number is shaped, among other factors, by the mental and bodily organization of humans, as well as by the cultural characteristics of society? The article draws on recent research in cultural and social neuroscience, which supports the relevance of psychologism as a framework for addressing many questions in the philosophy of mathematics. It also engages with Ian Hacking’s idea of “making up reality” to further illuminate the discussion. Ultimately, the nature and origin of number are defined as abstract mental constructions arising from human cognitive activity. These constructions emerge and are effectively utilized through the interaction and representational procedures of diverse elements and traits within a given cognitive system. (shrink)

Argument The life and work of the Russian scholar Ivan E. Orlov (September 1, 1886 – October 13, 1936) is described here in detail for the first time. Orlov is well known as one of the pioneers of relevant logic, but he was also interested in a wide variety of other topics including philosophy, chemistry, and music theory. This article shows that the sociopolitical climate of the1920s and 1930s exerted a significant influence on the style and content of Orlov's work. (...) It theorizes that this climate determined to a considerable degree the evolution of Orlov's interests and also his fate. The Wolfhound Era hurls itself against my shoulders, But I am not by nature a wolf. Osip Mandel'shtam (1931). (shrink)

The article examines the main ideological content of the work of the community of scientists and philosophers, which entered the history of philosophy under the name “The Vienna Circle”. Representatives of this association viewed their main methodological task in the logical analysis of the language of science in order to eliminate metaphysical – pseudoscientific – concepts. They investigated the structure of scientific theories, the functions of the theory – explanation and prediction, the processes of justification, confirmation and refutation of theories. (...) Their results were widely recognized, set down essential influence on scientific problems as well as style of philosophical and academic studies, and are still included in textbooks on the philosophy of science. The members of the Vienna Circle created the first holistic concept of science, which gave impetus to subsequent developments in the philosophy of science and served as example for the construction of similar concepts. The socio-ideological prerequisite of this philosophical movement was the task of creating a new scientific view of the world, opposing philosophical pessimism and anti-scientism. This worldview, however, was not naive-scientististic, but presented a synthetic project at the intersection of natural science, philosophy, art and social pedagogy. (shrink)

The article has the goal to conceptualize the phenomenon of pseudoscience and its scope at the first quarter of the XXI century expires. The relevance, social and political importance of analyzing this phenomenon both at present and in historical retrospect in terms of studying the problem of demarcation of scientific and non-scientific knowledge emphasized. The existence of different types of scientific, quasi-scientific (deviant, proto-scientific) and non-scientific knowledge (pseudoscience, paranormal science, pseudoscience, shadow science) is pointed out. The expansion of pseudoscientific ideas (...) in recent years, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as by the intensification of other global changes, described. The variety of pseudoscience making up, including pseudo-mathematics and pseudo-logic, described. The necessary attributes of scientific knowledge formulated and we consider pseudoscience as the alter ego of science. Attention drawn to the fact that the belonging of knowledge to pseudoscientific knowledge determined by the methods of obtaining this knowledge. The explanation of constant reproduction of pseudoscientific ideas from the cognitive point of view offered. Confidence is expressed that such ideas will be popular enough and can accompany mankind for a long time, which, however, does not at all reduce the significance of their analysis from the epistemology and philosophy of science perspective. (shrink)

The interpretation of the abstraction process and the use of various abstractions are consistent with the trends associated with the naturalistic turn in modern cognitive and neural studies. Logic of dealing with abstractions presupposes not only acts of digress from the insignificant details of the object, but also the replenishment of the image due to idealization, endowing the object with properties that are absent from it. Thus, abstraction expresses not only the activity of the subject but the fact of “locking” (...) this activity on a certain kind of ontology as well. The latter, in the spirit of I. Kant’s apriorism, is a function of epistemological attitudes and the nature of the subject's activity. Therefore, in the context of modern neuroscience, we can mean the transcendentalism of activity type. An effective tool for comprehension of abstractions making and development is a metaphor, which, on the one hand, allows submerge the object of analysis into a more or less familiar context, and on the other hand, it may produce new abstractions. Naturalistic tendencies manifested in the fact that empirically established abstractions activate certain neural brain networks, and abstract and concrete concepts are "processed" by various parts of the brain. If we keep in mind the presence of different levels abstractions then not only neural networks but even individual neurons (called “conceptual”) can be excited. The excitation of neural networks is associated with understanding the meaning of some concepts, but at the same time, the activity of these networks presupposes the "dissection" of reality due to a certain angle, determined in the general case by goals, attitudes and concrete practices of the subject. (shrink)

This is review of the book: M. Dafermos. Rethinking Cultural-Historical Theory. A Dialectical Perspective to Vygotsky. (Springer: Singapore, 2018. IX, 309 P. ISBN 978‒981‒13‒0190‒2. Doi: 10.1007/978‒981‒13‒0191‒9). The book is devoted to the making of the cultural-historical approach in psychology in the works of Vygotsky. The author claim that Vygotsky, relying on the ideas of Spinoza, Hegel, Feuerbach and Marx, developed this approach by mastering the dialectical method in his Hegel-Marxist version. The atmosphere of the storm and the onslaught in the (...) social and cultural life of the 1920s – early 1930s contributed to the formation of Vygotsky as a thinker with broad interests and deep philosophical background, who experienced several crises in his intellectual development. These crises forced him to qualitatively revise his ideas and, thus, substantially deepen and improve them. The author shows that Vygotsky’s literary origins allow his life compare with a drama, which accompanied by drama and the proliferation of ideas. This, in particular, expressed in his criticism of Gestalt psychology, theory of J. Piaget, ultimately a divergence of views with a number of his students who created Kharkov psychological school. Vygotsky left a great scientific legacy, which includes an analysis from the standpoint of the cultural-historical approach of the nature of consciousness, the relationship between thinking and language, the evolution of personality, a multitude of other psychological problems and art. (shrink)

The article study proof and argumentation (mainly in logic and mathematics) as form of plea to scientific community with heavy ethical background. Proof is presented as the form of convincing of scientific (sub)community (rather then the form of the quest for truth) and the tool which enables to take the responsibility for the thesis soundness, gained usually as an insight, irradiation.

The article presents the standpoint that naturalistic tendencies in modern science, which are especially expressed in neuroscience, push up social knowledge toward the need to revise its attitudes and norms, which consist in consistent sociocentrism and biophobia, and, hence, a simplified understanding of the phenomenon of “genetic reductionism”. We show that the application of the methods of natural science to social disciplines often marked visible progress and even conceptual breakthroughs in their development. Achievements of modern neuroscience affect a traditional area (...) of social and humanitarian knowledge as political science, which leads to the formation of an independent area of research – political neuroscience. Through the optics of this research, cognitive styles characteristic of individuals and social groups with different value orientations imply the dominance of certain ideological sympathies and antipathies, which attributed to the opposite poles of the ideological scale – liberalism and conservatism. Considerable empirical material allows us to conclude that these ideological positions are exist due to differences in their ontogenetic “foundations”, which allows us to develop I. Kant's ideas about a priorism and transcendentalism in the context of the Kantian research program in contemporary neuroscience. The result of the implementation of this program to the political sphere was the discovery of the genesis of political views, and the demonstration of the peculiarities of their dynamics. They are based on the difference in the activity of certain neural sets, which in their turn are influenced by culture and society, forming an integral system “brain – culture – society”, where each component of which affects other components. Features and changes in the socio-cultural context of the development of an individual or a group of people may have an effect upon the architectonics of the brain and shift, due to its plasticity, of the political views along the scale of ideologies “liberalism – conservatism”. At the same time, carriers of different cognitive styles and, therefore, with a sufficient degree of probability of ideological views, percept the world in which they live in differently, and evaluate its past and possible future in diverse ways. (shrink)