Toward a Logic of the Organism: A Process Philosophical Consideration

Mathematical models applied in contemporary theoretical and systems biology are based on some implicit ontological assumptions about the nature of organisms. This article aims to show that real organisms reveal a logic of internal causality transcending the tacit logic of biological modeling. Systems biology has focused on models consisting of static systems of differential equations operating with fixed control parameters that are measured or fitted to experimental data. However, the structure of real organisms is a highly dynamic process, the internal causality of which can only be captured by continuously changing systems of equations. In addition, in real physiological settings kinetic parameters can vary by orders of magnitude, i.e., organisms vary the value of internal quantities that in models are represented by fixed control parameters. Both the plasticity of organisms and the state dependence of kinetic parameters adds indeterminacy to the picture and asks for a new statistical perspective. This requirement could be met by the arising Biological Statistical Mechanics project, which promises to do more justice to the nature of real organisms than contemporary modeling. This article concludes that Biological Statistical Mechanics allows for a wider range of organismic ontologies than does the tacitly followed ontology of contemporary theoretical and systems biology, which are implicitly and explicitly based on systems theory.

Boy with Machine

In this paper, I provide an analysis of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and the feature film The End of Evangelion through the theory of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as outlined in their seminal work Capitalism and Schizophrenia. I tackle the authors’ concepts of Oedipus and absolute deterritorialization in order to provide a philosophical consideration of the series’ central plot points and developments. My aim is to employ Charles J. Stivale’s concept of academic “animation” to critique Evangelion’s emphasis on the nuclear family structure and its influence on subject-formation, as well as to demonstrate that a Deleuzoguattarian framework is uniquely suited for this task. I conclude that Evangelion, through its experimental use of animation as a medium, produces a compelling depiction of absolute deterritorialization in the form of the Human Instrumentality Project. However, the series ultimately remains loyal to its prioritisation (rooted in psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex) of the family unit, with the protagonist Ikari Shinji rejecting Instrumentality and preferring, instead, to live as a unified subject defined by familial relations.

EROTICS AS A BRANCH OF PHILOSOPHY

The figure and discourse of Diotima of Mantinea in Plato’s Symposium had a decisive influence on the Western tradition of women’s thought and on the foundation of a “hidden” branch of philosophy: Erotics, that is, the philosophical consideration of love, sexuality, gender identity, interpersonal relationships and particularly relationships of philia such as friendship. Although Erotics was not established as one of the canonical subdivisions of philosophy, numerous texts and theories prove its existence from antiquity to the present day. Diotima and other female philosophers make it clear that the Western tradition of women’s thought maintained a constant interest in the issues of Erotics. Making Erotics visible as a branch of philosophy situates the contributions of women thinkers in the philosophical canon, thereby transforming it.

Higher education strategies for the 21st century: philosophical foundations and the humanist approach

The paper is dedicated to a philosophical consideration of the transformation strategies for higher education, particularly those revealed by the current Covid-19 pandemic. The situation of the latter is presented as a particular form of the general VUCA characteristics of the today’s world of uncertainty, unpredictability and qualitative complexity (‘supercomplexity’). It is argued that the main result of our acknowledgement of the VUCA situation in the world for higher education is the image of the developed human personality becoming the main value and at the same time the main goal of higher education. Under the conditions of volatility and ambiguity, any existing ‘ready-made’ knowledge, as well as any instructions for effective rational behavior, turns to be inadequate. Because of that, it is no longer sufficient to have a set of ‘competences’ as a final result of the educational process at today’s university. Higher education has to turn to developing in its graduates certain multidisciplinary qualities, like critical independent thinking and ability to create one’s own knowledge, up to aiming at an all-round development of cultured personality. The paper argues that the education of critical and creative thinking is closely related to the transition to student-centered learning, as each individual student is to become a full-powered subject of the educational process according to one’s own interests, abilities and curricula, with the role of a teacher starting to resemble that of a moderator, the one who is to help his or her undergraduates to navigate through the vast ocean of available information in order for them to choose and to create their own, personal knowledge. The latter task is especially enforced by the distant and online learning having become popular during the Covid-19 pandemic: that form of learning puts especially high demands on self-discipline and self-responsibility of a student’s personality, while presenting itself as rather a supplement than a replacement to more traditional forms of higher education with personal communication between student and teacher.

Philosophical consideration of social risks of intellectual automation of social management

The digital transformation of processes and control systems in the last decade has been accompanied by the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the conditions for the safe use of intelligent technologies and tools for managing social infrastructure. The research methodology bases on an integrated approach, comparative analysis, and logical synthesis. The author suggests a philosophical analysis of existential risks of intellectual automation of social management and the mechanisms of their implementation, and also investigates the conditions for a safer use of technologies for intelligent automation of socially significant decisions. Generalized measures and search directions are proposed to reduce a number of risks associated with intelligent automation of control.

CULTURAL LOGICS OF CONTEMPORANEITY: ETHICAL DOMINANT

The article examines changing optics of philosophical consideration of the ethical field. The process of moving the traditional ethical discourse from the supracultural metaphysical dimension to the intracultural one is traced. The cognitive strategy of postmodernism is analysed. Ethics is deprived of its metaphysical nature and becomes a cultural phenomenon subject to its logics. The focus is on a new, still emerging, cultural paradigm designated as “meta-modernism”, the adherents of which distinguish three “cultural logics of modernity” — modernity, postmodernity and metamodernism. The article reveals the ethical dominant of each of these logics.

Civilization and society as categories of social philosophy

The topical issue of the relationship between civilization and society as basic concepts of social philosophy is discussed in the article. In modern literature, there are great disagree­ments and ambiguities here, due, first of all, to the broad interpretation of civilization by the majority of authors, the interpretation in many cases actually coinciding with the meaning of the concept of society. The article proposes a solution to the issue proceeding from a social-philosophical consideration of four different meanings of the word society: society in general, society as a specific historical type of society, a specific separate soci­ety (socior, in the terminology of Yu.I. Semenov) and humanity as an internally differen­tiated integrity, as a modern human society. One can assume that civilization acts as a characteristic of both the state and the process of development of society in each of its meanings, a characteristic in terms of the correspondence of a particular society to a soci­ological (stage-formation) project. By defining society as an integral social system, a so­ciological theory as a scientific one gives an answer to the question of what exists (what kind of community of people is in structure, functions, subjects and social relations), and with the help of the concept of civilization – how does this society really reproduce itself, how do regulatory mechanisms that determine the actions and deeds of people. Civiliza­tion deals with the present, with the activities of people who change this present, and so­ciety, in the philosophical sense, and not in the sociological one, is the desired future, those distant mountain peaks, that transcendental reality to which the acting person rushes. When it is said today that Russia is returning to itself, that it must make a civiliza­tional choice, it is important to emphasize in every possible way that the choice of a civi­lizational identity, by definition, is unthinkable without a project. A sociological project as a scientific project is directed to the future, outlines the contours of the future, and therefore only project thinking is able to give an opportunity to make the right civiliza­tional choice.