Public Dialogue in the Socio-Cultural Environment and its Management Perspectives in the Communication Theory of W. Barnett Pearce and Vernon E. Cronen

In the research of the past decade, Russian sociologists are increasingly turning to communication theories in the discourse of constructing social reality and actualizing the meanings of the modern socio-cultural environment. According to the author, one of the most promising, although not devoid of internal contradictions, is the “Theory of coordinated control of meaning” by W.B. Peirce and V.E. Kronen. Appearing in American science in the second quarter of the twentieth century as a philosophical project, it quickly became the methodological basis for many empirical experiments. The purpose of this study is to present the management perspectives of this theory in the context of Public Dialogue as a project implemented in the late 90’s of the XX century in Cupertino (California). The corresponding range of tasks is also outlined here, namely, to show how ontological theory becomes the basis for building a social technology for managing interaction processes in the urban environment and what management resources were used to achieve the final goal of the project. In the conclusions, the significance of communication as a primary social process is formulated, which determines the expansion of six concepts as the basis of the “grammar” of the theory of coordinated meaning management.

Language Matters

There is no getting around our residence in language—language understood not primarily as a system of signification but as the necessarily ambiguous existential condition of intelligibility in which we always already find ourselves situated, the historically evolving collective articulation of things. The ontological theory of language at issue here, with its concern for the problems of meaning and translation in particular and its methodological distance-in-nearness, entails a simultaneously concentrated and expansive allegorical experience of the world. Allegory brings out the word inherent in the thing—the word not as flat marker but as gravitating and radiating body of history. This essay touches on prominent nineteenth- and twentieth-century sources of this modernist theory of language and philosophical philology, thinkers who worked in different ways to open theoretical horizons while promulgating an art of reading. Such historically oriented and textually focused work of opening remains a political-educational imperative.

The Metaphysical Grounding of Logical Operations: John Dewey’s Theory of Qualitative Continuity

In John Dewey’s logical theory, qualities or qualitative relations account for the capacity to distinguish and associate the objects of reflective thought; they are antecedent to reflective analysis and necessary for coherent processes of inquiry. In Dewey’s writings that are specifically “metaphysical” in orientation, he is much more vague about the function of qualities, but does call them “generic traits of existence.” As such, they appear to be central to his mature ontological theory. In order to more fully understand the metaphysical import of qualitative relations, I first examine the details of Dewey’s logical theory, and then generalize those details in accordance with Dewey’s larger theory of nature. The end result is a novel interpretation of Dewey’s metaphysics.

Reasoning in Life: Values and Normativity in Georges Canguilhem

This paper aims at giving an account of the philosophy of norms of Georges Canguilhem in the framework of his philosophical vitalism. According to Canguilhem, vitalism is not a metaphysical or ontological theory, but rather a general attitude or a perspective about life and living beings, both understood employing the axiological concept of ‘normativity’. This notion allows Canguilhem to enlarge the concept of life beyond the field of biological phenomena, encompassing also phenomena of the social world, included technique and scientific knowledge and rationality. Canguilhem’s perspective relocates human activities within a vitalistic conception of life, which redefines the meaning of human reason by putting it in relation to values and norms.

The Problem of Disagreement and Fields of Sense:Epistemological Implicationsof Markus Gabriel’s Ontological Pluralism

The paper considers the problem of knowing things starting with pyrrhonical skeptical argumentation that puts the problem of disagreement in accounts of things. The problem is rooted in ontology and metaphysics taken classically as knowledge of being as far as it is being. The first part deals with the pyrrhonical problem of disagreement that rests on ontological picture of “nature of things” which launches epistemological obstacles. The second part sketches Markus Gabriel’s ontological theory, particularly his notion of “existence” and rejection of metaphysics as self-contradictory ontology of totality. His theory states a plu­rality of “fields of sense” that accommodate seemingly contradictory predicates. In the third part, I point out to epistemological implications of Gabriel’s theory that promise to solve the problem by rejecting a concealed assumption that brings the problem into life. This secures knowledge of things depending on dis­tribution of contradictory features of things into different fields of sense. Also it will be shown why Gabriel cannot be labelled as a constructivist and a relativist.

Social (Political and Economical) Essence of Globalism and Its Existential Manifistations

The paper considers globalism as viewed from ontological theory and its social manifestations primarily in respect of the aspect of “a person in a situation of globalism”. The latter can be described in sociological or psychological terms, but in the work this aspect is understood in the socio-philosophical sense, that is, when it undergoes an analysis of the transformation of a person as a cultural-historical type. It is noted that in “globalism” we can distinguish at least two qualities, internal and external, - one, internal, related to the political and economic (social) content of this concept, that is, with the essence of globalism, the other, external, expresses a set of phenomena and processes of external, “visible”, measured, presented in the forms of economic and social activity, mediated by the introduction of high technologies, means of communication, etc. The internal (socio-economic) basis of modern globalism is made up, therefore, is predetermined and mediated by other, subordinate, its aspects, the capitalist mode of production and the imperialistic nature of the claims of capitalism. A person loses the “former entirety of his nature”, becomes a function of a thing, an element in the functional interaction of things, from whom it is required to develop one of his side natures (employee), his needs (at other people’s expense) to hypertrophied dimensions. It is shown how this is manifested in the field of education reform. The conclusion is drawn: the cultivation of the supersubstantial spiritual wealth of the masses is not the goal of any of the areas of immaterial activity in the era of globalism.