scholarly journals КОНЦЕПЦИЯ СМЕХА В ФИЛОСОФИИ ПРАГМАТИЗМА

2018 ◽  
pp. 35-41
Author(s):  
В. Ю. Жарких

The paradox in the title can be explained by the seeming in compatability of laughter and philosophy, since there appears to be little in common between fundamental problems of philosophy and a fleeting, emotional and situational outburst of laughter.This paradox becomes less unexpected if viewed through the context of interrelation between philosophy and linguistics as was suggested by early pragmatists. Their postulates were developed in the theory of the so called «linguistic turn», within which this interrelation became the most important methodological concept. It postulated that thought is objectivizedin the process of social usage of language. Its rules are regulated by the consensus of the language community as to what is right / wrong concerning language rules / norms and validity of truth criteria of judgments and statements.No less significant is the cognitive value of the seme and the frequency of its usage. The more the seme is needed, the more plastic it becomes within the semantic triangle where it functions. Since there is no absolute coincidence in similar life situations, verbal symbols expressing ideas, things, phenomena, often tend to be used in a transferred sense to better express the unique character of a given reality.Cognitive change and mobility in the semantic structure of the word laughter is a good example of this tendency. In Rodale thesaurus itsseme is realized in 29 verbal symbols. The seme of humor, correlated with it, is expressed in 183 verbal units. If to add to them cognitively kindred semes – fun, joviality, gaiety, hilarity, mirth – together with their synonyms and derivatives – the number of verbal units will grow immensely. This wide choice of ways to express a notion shows its cognitive importance. Laughter as a purely human feature is indispensible for understanding human life and thus acquires a deep philosophical significance.   Classical pragmatists, W. James, J. Dewey, F. C. S. Schiller, to name only a few, considered laughter as a handy and useful tool by means of which man can determine the difference between good and bad. He can do it by referring to the wealth of his native language and by using it to understand and make himself understood.

Maska ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (200s3) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Miško Šuvaković

Abstract This text was written on the occasion of the 200th issue of Maska magazine. My goal is to identify and interpret the time when the text is written and when the 200th issue of Maska will be published. I identified a situation of sociability at the time of the coronavirus pandemic and the dominance of digital/postdigital communications. I am interested in the difference between media representation, virus events and political-or-artistic interpretation of modern and transitional forms of human life. If we are talking about digital art/culture/society in relation to the technological turns from the mechanical to the analogue-electronic world, from the analogue to the digital world, from the digital world to the post-digital world, and from the post-digital world into a De Re media possible world, then we are facing a conflict between the dialectic of emancipation through the new and the differentiation of the production/and/consumption of the new in a time and space where the human being is becoming the product of its own product. It is important to index the contemporary antagonism between the ‘digital proletarian’ and ‘digital fascism’. Confronted with digital fascism, digital proletarians pursue a risky process of self-fulfilment and thereby liberation/emancipation in complex digital practices and their impacts on other forms of existence – in a critical and dialectic ontology. Therein lies the essential difference between the politics of functionalism and that of liberation.


Author(s):  
Samuel Brown

In a paper which was read before the Institute of Actuaries on the 31st May, 1852, “On the Uniform Action of the Human Will, as exhibited by its Mean Results in Social Statistics,” I drew attention to the remarkable regularity with which marriages are contracted in any country, and the very small limits of difference from the average number which appear from year to year. The observations made by M. Quetelet in Belgium, from 1825 to 1845, showed that the extreme difference in the total number of marriages was little more than half the difference of the extremes in the number of deaths in the same period. Such a conclusion seemed to imply that the subject was worthy of more research. If the law of mortality can be so accurately defined at different ages, that pecuniary interests, amounting to some hundreds of millions sterling, can be valued and adjusted with the greatest nicety, it is reasonable to conclude that the labour of a statistical inquiry into the proportion of marriages at different ages would be rewarded with the discovery of some equally defined law, since the variations from year to year in a given number of facts appear, from a large number of observations, to be even less than in the former case. It is true that, as human life must fail at some time, from the natural decay of the powers of life, every interval of age after man has once attained maturity may be expected, under ordinary circumstances, to show a steady and progressive increase in the liability to disease and death. On the other hand, it may be, argued that marriage is the exercise of the free will of man—that consequently, it does not depend on the age or period of life, but on the arbitrary exertion of those feelings or mental and moral qualities which are not subject to natural laws, or at least not to such laws as we are able to express numerically in the same manner we can the law of mortality in any given population. If we consider, however, marriage as, in one sense, the natural provision for the preservation or increase of the species, and the counteraction to the law of mortality by which the species would perish, we should not be surprised to find that, however imperceptibly to individuals, there is a tendency to obey some unknown law of nature which at the period of maturity would lead to the maximum of marriages, and gradually diminish with age in the same manner as the tendency to disease and death increases with age. The motives and caprices of individuals would only have the same effect on the general results which the different habits of individuals may have in increasing or diminishing the rate of mortality. Accordingly, M. Quetelet, in a comparison of the number of marriages in Belgium for each five years of age after 21, for both sexes, for a period of five years consecutively, showed that the average results in each period scarcely differed at all from year to year. The table is so remarkable, that I have reduced the proportion to 100 of the total marriages in each year, and present it to show the small differences which will then be seen to prevail.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-211
Author(s):  
Nikola Dedić

This text attempts to mark the difference between traditional, modern, monodisciplinary and contemporary interdisciplinary approaches within the analysis of reception of media and artistic contents. Monodisciplinary approaches are connected with the classical basis of humanistic and social sciences which are related to the definition of culture based on opposition between mass and elite culture (art). Avant-garde and linguistic turn within social sciences in the 60s realized re-evaluation of the notion of culture-culture is not seen anymore as a sum of elite products of human spirit but rather as a production of cultural meaning, i.e. as a discourse. This turn enabled interdisciplinary turn within the sciences as aesthetics and art history and also enabled the emergence of contemporary interdisciplinary media theory.


Problemos ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Vytautas Rubavičius

Straipsnyje grindžiama nuomonė, jog postmodernybė yra iš modernybės kylantis kapitalizmo sistemos būvis, kuriam būdinga gyvybės suprekinimas ir suišteklinimas. Postmodernybę charakterizuoja populiariosios ir medijų kultūros išplitimas. Tos kultūros apima ne tik kultūros prekes, bet ir vartojimo būdus, įgūdžius ir jų lavinimą. Pastaruoju metu jos kuria nemirtingumo vaizdiniams bei nuojautoms palankią kultūrinę, intelektinę ir pasaulėvaizdinę terpę, kurioje struktūriškai įsitvirtina genetinis diskursas ir jo nustatomos žmogaus ir jo gyvenamo pasaulio aiškinimo gairės. Svarbus šio diskurso bruožas yra technologinis inžinerinis jo pobūdis, išryškėjęs susiejant nano ir biotechnologijas, kuriomis tikimasi įveikti gyvąją ir negyvąją gamtą skiriančią prarają, iš reikalingų atomų bei molekulių kuriant reikalingų ląstelių dalis ir klonuojant gyvas būtybes. Gyvybė suprekinama ir suišteklinama patentuojant gyvybės elementus – genus ir su jais susijusius procesus. Daroma išvada, jog visi genetikos, informatikos ir kitų mokslų laimėjimai, teikiantys žmogaus gyvenimo ilginimo galimybių, kurios palaiko gundančią nemirtingumo idėją, jau yra persmelkti prekinių santykių, tad ir pats nemirtingumas įmanomas tik kaip prekė. Aptariami kai kurie evoliuciniai ir religiniai techno sapiens sampratos aspektai. Detaliau gvildenamos dvi „nemirtingumo“ versijos: Z. Baumano, kuris nemirtingumo pažadą sieja su kompiuterinės technikos plėtra prasidėjus „Antrajai medijų erai“, ir J. Baudrillard’o, tegiančio, jog klonavimo technologijos „apgręžia“ evoliuciją ir žmogų gundo virusiniu ar vėžiniu belyčiu nemirtingumu.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: genetinis diskursas, klonavimas, medijų kultūra, nanobiotechnologijos, nemirtingumas, suprekinimas.Genetic Discourse in Media Culture: Temptation by Commodified ImmoralityVytautas Rubavičius   SummaryPostmodernity is maintained as a stage of the development of capitalism. The difference between modernity and postmodernity is explained in relation to the new sphere of commodification and resourcification, namely, that of life and of all natural living processes. Postmodern media culture, or popular culture, is peopled by signs of immortality and various kinds of immortals – cyborgs, clones, zombies, immortal human beings and others. Thus, culture accustoms a consumer to immortals and immortality which is concidered as the main goal of a human being and evolution. By nano-bio-technologies and genetic discourse this goal is made scientifically valid, thus reachable. Genetic discourse is becoming the fundamental world-view providing focal landmarks for the emerging future. Media culture supports the spreading of genetic discourse and facilitates its understanding. The temptation by immortality can be considered as a version of modernist ideology of human liberation from various natural, social and heavenly bonds. This liberation, and also secularization, is supported by a scientific genetic technological discourse which is becoming a stimulating factor of postmodern media production. The genetic explanation of the world is particularly handy for technological reflexivity: the entire world is as if encapsulated into human genes, which become the principle explaining the mystery of life, evolution and the future of humanity, thus rendering power to produce the human proper form and the future of people. All the possibilities stemming from the new genetic and biotech discoveries fell under the regulation of property relations by patenting, thus making “immortality” – as a temptation and brand – not only an exeptional commodity, but also a political tool and a commodifying force. As the relationships of private property have penetrated natural biogenetic diversity and, having turned it into a resource, the cognitive subject has reached the goal to secularise the Universe, which he has set for himself: only he as the owner and producer of genes lures people with the eternal shapes of the clones and their genetic information, which will be sustained in any location of the Universe. The temptation by “immortality” will become even stronger when the genetic code is mastered. The future of humanity is related to the mixed forms of life, trans-genic or otherwise genetically modified organisms and techno-human forms that will help to postpone, and later to conquer, death. Even thinkers with religious tendencies perceive the technological improvement of human beings as their evolution towards the techno sapiens and consider such a development as an advancement towards the Kingdom of God. The technologization of human beings is imagined in terms of their divination. Yet in this case the character of contemporary science secularising God and obliterating the perception of divinity is overlooked. Two versions of immortality are analyzed more closely – that of Z. Bauman, who links it with the development of computer technologies, and that of J. Baudrillard, who gives a warning that by cloning technologies humanity is trying to inverse the evolution and to return to the undifferentiated state of cells. The conclusion is drawn that regardless of how we understand ‘immortality,’ argue over its reality or unreality, all possibilities to prolong human life granted by genetics, informatics and other advances in science and technologies, which support the tempting idea of immortality, have already been penetrated by commodity relationships; therefore, “immortality” itself will be available only as a commodity.Keywords: cloning, commodification, genetic discourse, immortality, media culture, nano-bio-technologies.


Konturen ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Paul M. Livingston

Within contemporary analytic philosophy, at least, varieties of “naturalism” have attained a widespread dominance. In this essay I suggest, however, that a closer look at the history of the linguistic turn in philosophy can offer helpful terms for rethinking what we mean in applying the categories of “nature” and “culture” within a philosophical reflection on human life and practice. For, as I argue, the central experience of this history—namely, philosophy’s transformative encounter with what it envisions as the logical or conceptual structure of everyday language – also repeatedly demonstrates the existence of a fundamental aporia or paradox at the center of the claim of language upon an ordinary human life. I discuss the occurrence of this aporia, and attempts to resolve it, in the philosophical writing of Carnap, Quine, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and McDowell. I conclude that the prevailing naturalistic style in analytic philosophy, whatever its recommendations, is itself the outcome of an unsuccessful attempt to resolve the central aporia of twentieth-century philosophical reflection on language. Closer attention to this aporia reveals that language, as we find it in both theoretical and everyday reflection, is in the most important sense, neither essentially “natural” nor “cultural.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 019145372091991
Author(s):  
Jeff Noonan

The article argues that historical materialism is not only a theory of historical change but more generally a mediation between the natural foundations of human life and its meaningful symbolic expressions. The article begins with an interpretation of the general philosophical significance of the basic premises of historical materialism as they are sketched in the German Ideology. I argue that these premises point us in two different directions: down, towards a scientific understanding of the natural world, and up, towards interpretations of meaningful human expressions. Reductionist scientific models are appropriate for the understanding of natural forces, but these reveal their own limitations when applied to social life. Social life cannot be understood outside its symbolic expressions, but these are not free floating ideal abstractions, but remain connected to fundamental human purposes and must be understood as such.


1981 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 246-257
Author(s):  
A.G. Sciarone

Applied Linguistics is generally regarded as a multidisciplinary field in which didactics, psychology and linguistics participate. It is remarkable that within the context of foreign language teaching the focus is mainly on the didactic experiment and on the construction of psycholinguistic hypotheses. Yet for a linguistic-didactic experiment to be relevant, insight in what is to be taught, viz. language,is necessary. Many variants of language teaching could have been avoided with a better linguistic insight. Moreover, a better linguistic understanding in applied linguis-tics leads to a better distinction between the views of linguists on language didactics and psycholinguistics and the descriptions of language they give. In this paper the relation between grammar and vocabulary is discussed. It is argued that this distinction is based more on definition than on reality. Stressing the importance of the role of vocabulary does not imply denying or minimising the importance of grammar. On the contrary, the traditional task division in linguistics between grammar and lexicology has led to a sterile grammatical description. Recent tendencies in linguistics now show a more integrated description of grammar and vocabu-lary. Finally, with regard to the didactically important problem of vocabu-lary selection, some remarks are made concerning the difference between selection on the basis of linguistic properties and selection on the basis of usually arbitrary non-linguistic idiosyncrasies of words and the influence of this on teaching material. This is illustrated with examples from language courses.


Fractals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (07) ◽  
pp. 2150023
Author(s):  
HAMIDREZA NAMAZI ◽  
ONDREJ KREJCAR ◽  
ABDULHAMIT SUBASI

SARS-CoV-2 is a deadly virus that has affected human life since late 2019. Between all the countries that have reported the cases of patients with SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19), the United States of America has the highest number of infected people and mortality rate. Since different states in the USA reported different numbers of patients and also death cases, analyzing the difference of SARS-CoV-2 between these states has great importance. Since the generated RNA walk from the SARS-CoV-2 genome includes complex random fluctuations that also contain information, in this study, we employ the complexity and information theories to investigate the variations of SARS-CoV-2 genome between different states in the USA for the first time. The results of our analysis showed that the fractal dimension and Shannon entropy of genome walk significantly change between different states. Based on these results, we can conclude that the SARS-CoV-2 genomic structure significantly changes between different states, which is resulted from the virus evolution. Therefore, developing a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is very challenging since it should be able to fight various structures of the virus in different states.


Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Bhushan Aryal

In the context of the mixed perception among scholars whether the Mahabharat is a pacifist or a militant text, this paper analyzes the rhetorical project of the epic to examine its position on violence. Highlighting the existence of two main arguments in the Mahabharat, this paper argues that the author has crafted a grand rhetorical project to question the dominant war ideology of the time that Krishna presents as the divine necessity. Historically, the emergence of Krishna—one of the major characters of the epic—as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu in Hindu tradition and the extraction and elevation of the Bhagavad Gita from the epic as an independent text have undermined the complexity of Vyas’ rhetoric. This paper places Krishna’s argument within the broad rhetorical scheme of the epic and demonstrates how Vyas has represented Krishna’s rhetoric of ‘just war’ only to illustrate its pitfalls. By directing his narrative lens to the devastating consequences of the war in the later parts of the epic, Vyas problematizes Krishna’s insistence on the need to suppress human emotions to attain a higher cognitive and ontological condition. What emerges is the difference between how Vyas and Krishna view the status of feeling: the scientist Krishna thinks that human emotions and individual lives are trivial, incidental instances in the cosmic game—something not worthy of a warrior’s concern; Vyas’ rhetoric, this paper argues, restores the significance of ordinary human emotions. It is a war—not human life and feeling—that arises as a futile enterprise in Vyas’ rhetoric.


Ramus ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley A. Barlow

Enkarterēsō bioton (‘I shall endure life’). So speaks Euripides' Heracles in a moment of crucial decision when he rejects the idea of suicide in spite of the horror he has been through and the subsequent shame he must live with. This moment expresses more than patient resignation; it is a calculated and positive decision to live on, a hard-made decision and perhaps a surprising one. Was Euripides here thinking of that other great hero depicted by Sophocles, Ajax, who had been through a similar experience of madness and had chosen the opposite course in consequence of it, namely to take his own life? Sophocles' Ajax was probably produced in the 440's, Euripides' Heracles about 418. It is scarcely credible that Euripides was not familiar with this great work of Sophocles. There were doubtless other plays on the theme of madness in between but Ajax would surely be particularly memorable as a well-known cult figure in Athens and elsewhere.The similarities between the two tragedies are considerable. I want first to explore them, then show how the difference in treatment of similar themes, particularly those of aretē, madness and tukhē, make up the unique character of each play. Such a comparison starting from common focal points should serve to set in relief the distinguishing characteristics of each author's treatment.


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