“Possible Worlds” and the Meanings of F. Dostoevsky's Providence in the Messianic Receptions of the ХХth Century

The article analyzes the specifics of the receptive impact of the artistic Messianic concept of F. Dostoevsky, which influences providential contexts in the cultural philosophy of the ХХth century. The possibility to identify the features of the artistic embodiment of the Russian Messianic problems in cultural philosophy and literature of the ХХth century determines the relevance of this study. The analysis of the strategy of modeling possible worlds in Dostoevskys work, which referentially determines the development of Russian utopian / dystopian providence, determines the novelty of the study. The concepts of the Christological axiosphere, which reflects Dostoevsky's Messianic concept, determine the most important coordinates of the providential receptive trends of the ХХth century. They are objects of analysis in the article. It is proved that the semiotics of messianic motifs in Russian literature of the XXth century is connected, first of all, with the Abrahamic religious context, which is built into the most complex providential concept of the anthropological Christology of F. Dostoevsky. According to the principles of fractal logic, the writer generates the Abrahamic canon in the key messianic world-modeling metametaphors. Dostoevsky's messianic pretext is referentially manifested in Russian literature of the twentieth century - in the work of Russian Symbolists, who understand the Messiah as a divine-existential personality, in the works of writers of the late XXth century, who interprete the messiah as a collective personality - a substitutionary sacrifice. In our opinion, the chiliastic aspiration of messianic Christology and anthropology is also connected with the influence of Dostoevsky. However, we should talk about the dissipative variability of messianic concepts due to the contextual reference of messianic ideas of eastern origin, in particular, the Zoroastrian, Sufi and Islamic contexts are found. The artistic idea of messianism in Russian literature of the XXth century can also be considered as a semiotic sign system that reveals historiosophical and socio-political meanings, modeling the tendencies of anthropologization and ontologization of the literary process.

THE “NATIVE LAND” CONCEPT IN THE REGIONAL LANGUAGE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TRANS-BAIKAL BORDER

The article presents the results of a linguistic associative chain experiment to identify the associative field of the basic concept of Russian culture – “Native Land”. Residents of the Trans-Baikal Territory participated in the experiment. The study is of interest because of the border location of the region, its polyenticity, and polyconfessional nature. In addition to general cognitive meanings and their proportions, the results of the experiment allow us to identify language representatives and reactions to them, certain regional peculiarities of the world modeling.

The world-modeling function of Russian-foreign bilingualism in the prose of S. Aflatuni (“Clay letters, floating apples”)

The prose of the Central Asian writer Suhbat Aflatuni is analyzed in the article in the context of the concept of transculturation, which is based on the principle of interference in the interaction of different national cultures, when “cultural diversity and universality” become the “heritage” of one person (M. Epstein). To determine the specifics of the image of the world in the novel “Clay Letters, Floating Apples” (2005), the article aims to reveal the mechanism of interaction between different languages and cultural codes and to trace the world-modeling function of Russian-foreign bilingualism. The text of the novel-parable is complexly organized, it intertwines the events of the present and the past, united by the themes of the Teacher and students, the awakening of genetic memory and the acquisition of the lost ancient alphabet, the return to national spiritual origins as the life-giving moisture of life (the motive of the connection of “clay letters” and water as the source of life in the symbolism of the image of “floating apples”). Thanks to the fairy tale form of the narration and the stylized language based on Russian-foreign bilingualism, the effect of interference carried out “at the borders”, in the zone of inter-lingualism, the author manages to create a universal, syncretic image of the world that demonstrates the attachment of the writer's personality to many cultures. The artistic style of the novel resembles a bright ornament of an oriental carpet with cultural codes encrypted in the drawing – as a continuation of ancient national traditions. At the same time, the form of the parable, the mythologized space, images and motives, the special author's optics, which is based on Russian-foreign bilingualism, allow us to talk about the connection between the novel and the traditions of magical realism.

Means of Lexical Representation of Spatial Continuum in Early Stories of I. A. Bunin

The question of ways of creating a spatial continuum in the early stories of I. A. Bunin “On the wrong side”, “On the farm” and “On the Donets”, united by a single principle of nomination and included in the first book of the writer’s prose “To the end of the world” (1897) is considered in the article. The semantics of the title actualizes the spatial component of the author’s linguistic picture of the world, which determined the path of linguistic and stylistic analysis of the linguistic material of stories. The authors pay special attention to the means of lexical representation of space as one of the basic linguo-cognitive categories. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that the language material has been identified, systematized and described, which makes it possible to determine the individual author's characteristics in the creation of the spatial continuum of I. A. Bunin’s early stories. The relevance of the study is due to the appeal to the problems of cognitive linguistics. On the basis of statistical, descriptive and linguo-cognitive methods of analysis, the authors identify and describe the means of lexical representation of the spatial model created in the stories of I. A. Bunin, which is characterized by a clear structuredness and individuality of the author’s approach. In the course of the study, the authors come to conclusions that make it possible to characterize the features of the construction of space in the early stories of the writer, taking into account the individual characteristics of the author's world modeling, and also to analyze the linguistic parameters of the idiostyle of I. A. Bunin.

World Modeling, Integrated Information, and the Physical Substrates of Consciousness; Hidden Sources of the Stream of Experience?

In this brief commentary on The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, I describe ways in which Mark Solms’ account of the origins of subjective experience relates to Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT). IWMT is a synthetic theory that brings together different perspectives, with the ultimate goal of solving the enduring problems of consciousness, including the Hard problem. I describe points of compatibility and incompatibility between Solms’ proposal and IWMT, with particular emphasis on how a Bayesian interpretation of Integrated Information Theory and Global (Neuronal) Workspace Theory may help identify the physical and computational substrates of consciousness.

CHAOS AND COSMOS IN THE NOVEL BY V.P. ASTAFYEV “THE SHEPHERD AND THE COWGIRL”

The article deals with the opposition Chaos - Cosmos and its functions in the artistic system of the novel by V.P. Astafyev “The Shepherd and the Cowgirl”. War, which brings death and destruction, in the image of the writer, does not relate to the destructive forces of primary mythological Chaos as a special sphere of existence, but to the space of hell, where the natural foundations of both life and death are devalued. Here, paradoxically, any death becomes meaningless, even if it is sanctified by military exploits. The hell of war in the story is contrasted with the images of the House // Cosmos // Paradise as invariant manifestations of natural order, harmony. Their symbolic personification in “The Shepherd and the Cowgirl” is the hut of Lucy. The primordial images of Home // Woman // Man // Love // Paradise are built in the symbolic subtexts of the work into a single cosmized-being paradigm. At the same time, in the initial and final episodes of the story, there is also a reflection of the classical archetypal opposition of Chaos - Cosmos, which performs a world-modeling role. The space of meeting and love between Boris and Lucy is presented here as a space of ambivalent unity of Chaos - Cosmos, while hell and Heaven are devoid of such unity. War, from the point of view of the writer, like the underworld, is alienated from the fundamental coordinates of existence and is an artificially created locus, which in turn alienates human souls from their original natural nature and purpose.

Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Expanded: Implications for Theories of Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence

Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) is a synthetic theory of consciousness that uses the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference (FEP-AI) framework to combine insights from Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT). Here, I first review philosophical principles and neural systems contributing to IWMT’s integrative perspective. I then go on to describe predictive processing models of brains and their connections to machine learning architectures, with particular emphasis on autoencoders (perceptual and active inference), turbo-codes (establishment of shared latent spaces for multi-modal integration and inferential synergy), and graph neural networks (spatial and somatic modeling and control). Particular emphasis is placed on the hippocampal/entorhinal system, which may provide a source of high-level reasoning via predictive contrasting and generalized navigation, so affording multiple kinds of conscious access. Future directions for IIT and GNWT are considered by exploring ways in which modules and workspaces may be evaluated as both complexes of integrated information and arenas for iterated Bayesian model selection. Based on these considerations, I suggest novel ways in which integrated information might be estimated using concepts from probabilistic graphical models, flow networks, and game theory. Mechanistic and computational principles are also considered with respect to the ongoing debate between IIT and GNWT regarding the physical substrates of different kinds of conscious and unconscious phenomena. I further explore how these ideas might relate to the “Bayesian blur problem”, or how it is that a seemingly discrete experience can be generated from probabilistic modeling, with some consideration of analogies from quantum mechanics as potentially revealing different varieties of inferential dynamics. Finally, I go on to describe parallels between FEP-AI and theories of universal intelligence, including with respect to implications for the future of artificially intelligent systems. Particular emphasis is given to recurrent computation and its relationships with feedforward processing, including potential means of addressing critiques of causal structure theories based on network unfolding, and the seeming absurdity of conscious expander graphs (without cybernetic symbol grounding). While not quite solving the Hard problem, this article expands on IWMT as a unifying model of consciousness and the potential future evolution of minds.

Literary forecast genre in modern criticism

The article deals with the problem of the genre, which is studied in the theoretical-critical and historical-literary aspects. The results of the comparative typological analysis of texts containing judgments about the future of literature give ground to talk about the literary forecast as an independent genre and thus update the existing classifications. The genre carriers are the topic, problems, tasks of the critic, as well as the structure of the text, the image of the literature. The future of literature as the main theme of forecasting determines the procedure for specific critical world modeling. Tasks of the critic are to offer scenarios for the development of literature; evaluate contemporary literature from the perspective of the future. The structure of literary forecasts includes reflection on the task; finding of a “fulcrum”, allowing to create the image of the future; a picture of the future (or the present in the future perspective); the ending. Critics verbalize fear of forecasting. The fears of critics are connected not only with the uncertainty of the future as a subject of comprehension, but with the unacceptability of the status of a prophet, which is being outlived at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries on the wave of postmodernism and the crisis of literary centrism. Creating images of the future, critics draw on the figure of the reader, their requests, life in its socio-cultural dynamics, unfinished tendencies. The genre analysis is supplemented by a study of the content of literary forecasts, which allows to get an idea of literary critical thinking at the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, the diagnoses which criticism gives to the modern literature. Criticism of the turn of the XX–XXI centuries demonstrates an enduring trauma from the loss of its former status (of both criticism and literature), from the loss of the position of intellectual prose and poetry. This perceived “lack” in the present defines the picture of the future.

LEXICAL AND WORLD-MODELING ACTIVITY OF SOMATISMS AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM OF LANGUAGE CATEGORIZATION IN THE PROVERB

Введение. Рассматривается лексическая и миромоделирующая активность единиц лексико-семантической группы «Части тела» ‒ соматизмов, находящая отражение в текстах русских народных пословиц. Особенности семантики и прагматики соматизмов, обусловливающие специфику их функционирования в фольклорном тексте, позволяют определять соматическую лексику в качестве маркеров национальной идентичности. Целью исследования является изучение соматизмов, функционирующих в текстах русских народных пословиц, в аспекте реализации ими своего лексического и миромоделирующего потенциала. Материал и методы. В качестве материала исследования привлекаются тексты русских народных пословиц, содержащих лексемы-соматизмы. Принцип отбора эмпирического материала ‒ на основании сплошной выборки наиболее частотно встречающихся соматических единиц из текстов. Методологию исследования составляют методы наблюдения, количественного анализа, лексико-семантического анализа с привлечением элементов дискурсивного и концептуального анализа. Результаты и обсуждение. Соматизмы, значение которых строится на основе смыслов антропоморфности, играют значительную роль в формировании представления о человеке в языковой и концептуальной картине мира. Концептуальный смысл соматизмов проявляется неодинаково в разных лингвокультурах. При наличии универсальных, константных характеристик, свойственных всем этносам, наблюдается присутствие трактовок, обусловленных спецификой той или иной культуры. Это становится очевидным при сопоставлении случаев функционирования соматизмов в текстах русских и китайских пословиц: названные лингвокультуры чрезвычайно различаются в культурном и языковом планах. Выявлено, что наибольшим лексическим и миромоделирующим потенциалом, судя по текстам пословиц, в русской языковой картине мира обладают соматизмы голова, рука, глаза. За каждой соматической лексемой закреплен конкретный концептуальный смысл, важной составляющей частью которого является аксиологический компонент «ценность». Так, соматизм голова интерпретируется как «ценность интеллекта», рука ‒ «ценность жизненной активности», глаза ‒ «ценность личного участия». В меньшем количестве в пословицах присутствуют соматизмы волосы, ноги, рот, язык, нос. В этом перечне в первую очередь очевидны такие интерпретации, как ноги, символизирующие «ценность мобильности», и волосы ‒ маркер антиценности «внешнего» в противовес ценности «внутреннего». Заключение. Изучение соматизмов в аспекте рассмотрения их лексической и миромоделирующей активности, проявляющейся в фольклорных текстах (в данном случае в пословицах), позволяет формировать представление о фрагментах языковой и концептуальной картины мира этноса. Introduction. The article is devoted to the consideration of the lexical and world-modeling activity of units of the lexical-semantic group «Parts of the body» - somatisms, which is reflected in the texts of Russian folk proverbs. The peculiarities of the semantics and pragmatics of somatisms, which determine the specifics of their functioning in a folklore text, make it possible to define somatic vocabulary as markers of national identity. Aim and objectives. The aim of the research is to study the somatisms that function in the texts of Russian folk proverbs, in the aspect of their realization of their lexical and world-modeling potential. Material and methods. As the research material, the texts of Russian folk proverbs containing somatism lexemes are used. The principle of selection of empirical material is based on a continuous sample of the most frequently encountered somatic units from texts. The research methodology consists of methods of observation, quantitative analysis, lexical and semantic analysis, with the involvement of elements of discourse and conceptual analysis. Results and discussion. Somatisms, the meaning of which is based on the meanings of anthropomorphism, play a significant role in the formation of the idea of a person in the linguistic and conceptual picture of the world. The conceptual meaning of somatisms is manifested differently in different linguocultures. In the presence of undoubted universal, constant characteristics inherent in all ethnic groups, there is a presence of interpretations due to the specificity of a particular culture. This becomes obvious when comparing the cases of the functioning of somatisms in the texts of Russian and Chinese proverbs: the named linguocultures are extremely different in cultural and linguistic terms. It was revealed that the greatest lexical and world-modeling potential, judging by the texts of proverbs, in the Russian linguistic picture of the world is possessed by the somatisms head, hand, and eyes. Each somatic lexeme has a specific conceptual meaning, an important component of which is the axiological component “value”. So, somatism, the head is interpreted as «the value of the intellect», the hand is the «value of vital activity», the eyes are the «value of personal participation.» In fewer proverbs, there are somatisms hair, legs, mouth, tongue, nose. In this list, interpretations such as legs, symbolizing the «value of mobility,» and hair, a marker of the anti-value of «external» as opposed to the value of «internal», are primarily evident. Conclusion. The study of somatisms in the aspect of considering their lexical and world-modeling activity, manifested in folklore texts (in this case, in proverbs), makes it possible to form an idea of fragments of the linguistic and conceptual picture of the world of an ethnic group.