The dynamics of secularization as a process of mutual learning of philosophy and religion

The article deals with the current stage of development of society, associated with the formation of a new type of relationship between the secular and the religious consciousness. If in the secular society of the recent past, these relations were based on the domination of secular ideology, and religious consciousness was interpreted as the evolutionary past of society, the significance of which decreases with social progress until the complete disappearance of religion, then post-secular culture is associated with the formation of a new constructive attitude towards the religious consciousness as an immanent component of social consciousness, which does not disappear with the development of society, but only changes the forms of expression, as well as with the formation of an equal dialogue between secular and religious. Post-secularism does not mean a return to the dominant position of religion and does not cancel the achievement of the secular paradigm. Secularism has transcoding the cultural matrix, therefore, it is no longer possible to take a central meaning and value-forming place in the culture of religion and confessional traditions that once gave birth to this culture. In addition, globalization creates a situation of interaction of religious traditions, unprecedented in the history of mankind, within the framework of one cultural and legal field. We are no longer talking about oppression by more progressive traditions of spiritually primitive traditions (Christianity or Islam in relation to paganism) - traditions with highly developed spiritual, intellectual and missionary potential have to interact with each other. Post-secularity means not only a critical revision of the stage consciousness, but also openness, receptivity, and at least interest in all the various forms of human religiosity. Secularization must be understood, according to J. Habermas, as the dual and complementary learning. Modernization embraces religious and secular consciousness, modifying them. This process of learning, change and enrichment is the essence of the post-secular era. The main characteristic of post-secular society is the "two-way learning process" of faith and reason, or their correlation. In the field of education, the necessary result of the formation of a post-secular society is the introduction of dialogue and tolerance as necessary principles of educational activity and the absence of discrimination on religious grounds.

The Future of Intelligence: The Central Meaning-Making Unit of Intelligence in the Mind, the Brain, and Artificial Intelligence

This paper focuses on general intelligence, g. We first point to broadly accepted facts about g: it is robust, reliable, and sensitive to learning. We then summarize conflicting theories about its nature and development (Mutualism, Process Overlap Theory, and Dynamic Mental Field Theory) and suggest how future research may resolve their disputes. A model is proposed for g involving a core meaning-making mechanism, noetron, drawing on Alignment, Abstraction, and Cognizance, perpetually generating new mental content. Noetron develops through several levels of control: episodic attentional inferential truth epistemic control in infancy, preschool, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, respectively. Finally, we propose an agenda for future brain, assuming a brain noetron, and artificial intelligence research, assuming an artificial noetron, that might uncover the underlying brain mechanisms of g and generate artificial general intelligence.

The Future of Intelligence: The Central Meaning-Making Unit of Intelligence in the Mind, the Brain, and Artificial Intelligence

This paper focuses on general intelligence, g. We first point to broadly accepted facts about g: it is robust, reliable, and sensitive to learning. We then summarize conflicting theories about its nature and development (Mutualism, Process Overlap Theory, and Dynamic Mental Field Theory) and suggest how future research may resolve their disputes. A model is proposed for g involving a core meaning-making mechanism, noetron, drawing on Alignment, Abstraction, and Cognizance, perpetually generating new mental content. Noetron develops through several levels of control: episodic attentional inferential truth epistemic control in infancy, preschool, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, respectively. Finally, we propose an agenda for future brain, assuming a brain noetron, and artificial intelligence research, assuming an artificial noetron, that might uncover the underlying brain mechanisms of g and generate artificial general intelligence.

Das Beziehungsgeflecht zwischen Sprache und Kultur: Forschungsrückblick, Zugänge und Beschreibungstendenzen

The main focus of this paper is on language and communication as the central meaning generating mechanisms of culture. The paper aims to systematically and heuristically investigate the complex alliance of language, culture and communicational interaction and at the same time to introduce several new fields of research by critically discussing their topics and potentials. In this regard, the dilemma of the question if, how much and which theory is necessary nowadays at all shall be examined first; therefore, the After-theory-program will also be addressed. Followed selectively by an illustrating look into the research history about language and about culture resp. about culture and language (without losing sight of the psychological process of “thinking”) with examples from selected linguistic and closely related disciplines. It is before this background, that aspects of culture-sensitive linguistic approaches will be analytically focused on and new paradigms – the Anglo-American “culture linguistics”, the Russian-post-soviet “linguoculturology” and the German Studies originated specifically multilingualism-oriented “intercultural linguistics” — will be closely scrutinised, primarily from the perspective of German Linguistics.

Neological cancer metaphors in the Chinese cyberspace

This study examines emerging cancer metaphors that are encoded as a neological construction [X-ái ‘cancer’] using corpus data retrieved from Chinese social media. The quantitative findings show that [X- ái] is a highly productive construction where the open slot X attracts a wide variety of lexical items. The qualitative findings are twofold. First, the central meaning of this construction is to express subjective feelings such as self-mockery (e.g., laziness cancer) and contempt for other people’s behaviors in gender discourse (e.g.. straight man cancer). Second, the development of this construction is caused by the exemplar-based cognitive mechanism through social labeling practices. I argue that this neological language use is employed to convey collective emotions in gender discourse and that it indexes a group style, either playful and humorous or contemptuous and disparaging, both of which construct language user identity and sociocultural ideology in the Chinese cyberspace. This study has implications for research on neological metaphors and for language use in digital culture in general.

Legal Realism in Chicherin’s Philosophy of Law

The paper considers the problem of determining the origins of legal realism by the example of the views of the outstanding representative of the Russian philosophy of law B.N. Chicherin as a generalized characteristic of the methods of legal knowledge and legal understanding that are widely used in modern legal thought. Taking into account the varie-ty of meanings and interpretations of the realism of law, the study demonstrates, first, the problem of articulating the central meaning of the principle of realism in the philosophy of law of the XIX century, which is fixed in Russian legal thought, secondly, the author substantiates the thesis that the name “legal realism” is not unambiguous and implies a variety of options for its conceptual design. Analyz-ing Chicherin’s legal views, the paper argues that legal realism in the modern history of political and legal thought is not seen only as the installation of the legal version of the philosophy of pragmatism, with its focus on making meaning based on social facts, but as a direction, articulated the recognition of the reality of law as a spiritual phenomenon.

WORDS WITH THE CENTRAL MEANING “WIND” IN TURKISH

Ветер является объективным явлением окружающей среды и может оказывать существенное влияние на жизнь и хозяйственную деятельность народов. Это находит отражение в наборе и семантике лексем, используемых для характеристики ветра и производимого им действия. В турецком языке представлены две лексемы с основным значением «ветер», ряд названий ветров, а также несколько глаголов, обозначающих действие ветра. Определяющими в семантике и сочетаемости тюркской лексемы yel ‘ветер’ стали древнетюркские представления о разрушительной силе ветра, а также сущности и причинах неприятных или болезненных физиологических процессов. Персидское заимствование rüzgâr ‘ветер’, напротив, лишено дополнительных коннотаций и более активно используется как в общенациональном языке, так и в качестве научного термина. В результате проводимой в Турции языковой политики, направленной на отказ от заимствований, использование yel активизируется, однако при этом под влиянием семантики rüzgâr и современных научных представлений слово теряет свою семантическую специфику. Кроме того, географическое положение Турции определяет наличие ряда специальных имен для ветров, каждый из которых имеет характерные признаки с точки зрения происхождения, направления, температуры, влажности, интенсивности, продолжительности, сезонности. Часть из них представляет собой заимствования из языков автохтонных народов региона, а другая часть указывает на направление перемещения воздушных масс. Основные принципы именования ветров в турецком языке сходны с французским, но существенно отличаются от языка поморов, вся культура которых напрямую связана с морем. Wind is an objective phenomenon of the environment and can have a significant impact on the life and economic activities of peoples. This is reflected in the set and semantics of lexemes used to characterize the wind and the action it produces. In Turkish, there are two lexemes with the main meaning of wind, a number of names for winds, and several verbs that denote the action of wind. The ancient Turkic ideas about the destructive power of the wind, as well as the essence and causes of unpleasant or painful physiological processes determined the semantics and compatibility of the Turkic lexeme yel ‘wind’. The Persian loanword rüzgâr ‘wind’, on the contrary, is devoid of additional connotations and is more actively used both in the national language and as a scientific term. As a result of the Turkish language policy aimed at avoiding borrowings, yel is used oftener, but under the influence of rüzgâr semantics and modern scientific ideas, it loses its semantic specificity. In addition, the geographical location of Turkey determines the existence of a number of special names for winds, each of which has characteristic features in terms of origin, direction, temperature, humidity, intensity, duration, and seasonality. Some of them are borrowings from the languages of the autochthonous peoples of the region, and the other part indicates the direction of movement of air masses. The main principles of nominating the winds in Turkish are similar with French, but they significantly differ from the language of coast-dwellers, whose culture is associated with the sea.

It is about time: Birthdays as modern rites of temporality

What do birthdays mean? Why are they so obligatory for modern people? Based on neo-Durkheimian perspectives on ritual, this article suggests the anthropological history of the western birthday as a key to understand its meaning. The article points at the unique ritual system developed by modern industrial culture, such as birthdays, jubilees, and other anniversaries—designated here as Rites of Temporality—which latch on to the numerical milestones marking the passage of time to which the celebrant (individual, institution, settlement, state, and so forth) is subject. Comparing the birthday with classical rites of initiation then reveals how over and above individualism, consumer culture, state bureaucracy, and historical consciousness, the birthday honors time’s most noticeable markers since the industrial era—numbers—thus objectifying conventionalized time as a central meaning maker for modern people.