Visual syntax in social media

Modern technologies have fundamentally changed the sphere of communication. One of the interesting social media characteristics is the prevalence of the visual transmission mode. Regardless of the fact that photo-rhetoric in social networks usually lacks complexity and is often limited to the statement of facts, there exist more complex forms of visual syntax. The article analyses the options for creating a twofold semantic conception of images, enabling communication to expand temporally. Moreover, there have been demonstrated the visual metaphors in social networks as exemplified by 2020 gestalt.

Integrating Inferentialism about Physical Theories and Representations: a Case for Phase Space Diagrams

This paper argues for an integrated inferential conception about theories and representations and its role in accounting for the theoretical value of philosophically disregarded representational practices, such as the systematic use of phase space diagrams within the theoretical context of statistical mechanics. This proposal would rely on both inferentialism about scientific representations (Suárez 2004) and inferentialism about particular physical theories (Wallace 2017). I defend that both perspectives somehow converge into an integrated inferentialism by means of the thesis of theories as being composed of representations, as defended from the representational semantic conception defended by Suárez and Pero (2019).

Verities and Truth-values

This chapter discusses Edgington’s probabilistic, degree-theoretic semantics for vagueness. After describing Edgington’s semantics, her suggestion that it and classical semantics provide non-competing descriptions of a single phenomenon is examined. It is argued that the suggestion should be rejected because classical semantics is incompatible with plausible principles about the relationship between the two frameworks. Edgington also argues that the many degrees assigned to sentences in her semantics are not new truth-values. It is argued that these arguments presuppose a certain non-semantic conception of truth. Although Edgington’s arguments do force a distinction between two theoretical roles typically associated with the notion of truth, one properly semantic and one merely expressive, they do not preclude identification of the many degrees of her probabilistic formalism with new truth-values in the semantic sense.

Truth and the Quest for Definition

The controversies in contemporary truth discourses can be traced directly or indirectly to the Fregean choice of “thought” as the truth bearer, Ramsey’s redundancy thesis, Tarskian semantic conception, and Davidson’s defence of the indefinability of truth. The common feature of these four positions is an inadequate treatment of the “what is” question. Because of the neglect of this kind of question, the consequence is that truth has been reduced to a thin concept (that is a reduction of truth to logical, semantic or linguistic analysis of the truth predicate, or analysis of intentional signs at the expense of intentional acts) and subsequent quest for the deflation of truth. I argue that such an approach to the philosophical investigation of truth is at best inadequate and at worst bound to fail. Hence, I propose that an adequate exploration of truth must first address the “what is” question, rather than just assuming it. Further, I argue that to realise this, it is vital to take into consideration the wider context in which the truth question arises, that is, the human quest for knowledge and self-transcendence; and it is the conception of truth as critical correspondence that is capable of sufficiently answering the question.

Semantic Conception of Law

The article is a continuation of the author’s publications about integrative conception of the meaning of law in the Russian Journal of Legal Research No. 2 for 2016 and No. 1 for 2017. The author understands under the semantic conception of law an a integrative holistic and collective image of law, which always has a specific historical content (in this modern society) and operates in accordance with the principle of complementarity of different types of legal understanding. This conception contains several basic assumptions. First, the semantic conception is not an absolutely new type of legal understanding, and the meaning of law is one of the supporting connecting structures that, from the point of view of modern philosophy and methodology of science, characterize the interpretational style of scientific thinking. Secondly, the dispute between the philosophy of law and the theory of law for the priority in legal understanding can be solved by a scientific convention based on the concept of the meaning of law, which harmoniously combines the internal nature of law and its external relations with economics, politics, culture and other subsystems of society. Thus, the opposition between the law “from the inside” and that which is “outside” the law is removed. Thirdly, the semantic conception of law is able to set the optimal vector for improving the conceptual apparatus of jurisprudence and for modernizing the criteria of the scientific novelty of modern legal knowledge from the position of the so-called “classical” and “postclassical” legal paradigms. If the meaning of the law is improved by the internal logic of the development of the law itself, then the scientific novelty will always be postulated as “understanding traditional ideas at a new stage”. But if the meaning of law derives its sources from the social space, then, of course, it is necessary to recognize that philosophical concepts, terms and institutions can be included in the conceptual apparatus of law within the framework of a new objective interpretation. The semantic conception of law has significant theoretical and practical potential for system analysis of the problem of modern Russian legal understanding.