Realism and Knowledge First. Interview with Timothy Williamson

The renowned British philosopher Timothy Williamson talks about his philosophical views and main lines of research. Williamson is a metaphysical realist in a broad sense. Fir him there are true or false answers to questions about all aspects of reality. Classical logic is a universal true theory. Knowledge-first epistemology is an alternative to the traditional belief-first epistemology. The former takes the concept of knowledge as a basic concept, explaining other epistemic concepts, including belief, in its terms, whereas the latter does the opposite. Knowledge, not truth, is the fundamental epistemic good. The Gettier problem and the skeptical problem that arise within traditional epistemology are ill posed and therefore cannot be solved. Hybrid epistemological theories do not satisfy the principles of simplicity and beauty and are refuted by counter-examples. Epistemic contextualism is problematic, and relativism violates the semantics of the phenomena being explained. Knowledge does not entail knowledge about knowledge. Knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori is superficial, and there are no analytical truths. The concept of qualia is unhelpful for solving the problems related to consciousness. The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness points to an area of conceptual confusions in which we do not know how to reason properly. Speculative metaphysics is quite a respectable enterprise. But progress in metaphysics is not automatic; it requires the right methodology.

Postmodern Philosophy as a Condition for the Emergence of Posthumanism Theory

The article presents a brief retrospective of the conceptions of philosophical postmodernism in their connection with posthumanism. Posthumanism is a philosophical movement that has been actively developed in the last decade, with its roots in the 60s and 70s of continental philosophy. The discourse of posthumanism implies work and development of conceptions and notions used by M. Foucault, J. Derrida, J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, R. Barthes and others. Connecting with such philosophical trends as disability studies, animal studies, postcolonial philosophy, actor-network theory, intersectional feminism, posthumanism expands, complements and reincarnates many provisions of postmodern philosophy. This article outlines the main concepts used in posthumanist discourse.

An Isle Near Terra Australis Incognita: Henry Neville’s Mental Experiment and Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

The paper analyzes the ideas of H. Neville’s philosophical novel “The Isle of Pines”. The scope of the research is to make sense of its place within the context of Early Modern political philosophy, and especially its linkage with the Hobbesian theories of human nature, sovereignty and inevitable conflict engaging pre-political communities into bellum omnium contra omnes. Rethinking Hobbesian views on the natural state Neville replaces his mechanical interpretation of human’s passions and behavioral patterns with a historical perspective. Taking into his account contemporary ethnographical knowledge Neville set a mental experiment and found out that a Hobbesian trap before the emergence of a state was not inevitable as well as the lack of social norms. We argue that Neville’s novel was an attempt to escape Hobbesian pessimism and to describe the emergence of social and political structures as a historical and evolutionary proces

Later J.-P. Sartre and Early K. Marx: The Humanistic Content of the General and the Depth of the Discrepancies of the Particular

Turning to this topic, one cannot but take into account the fact that some thinkers and philosophers who understand the philosophy of J.-P. Sartre, agreeing with him, are the young intellectuals of France, namely, Hervé Bazin, Pierre Courtade and others. Others do quite the opposite: they are categorically critical in their works, for example, Henri Lefebvre, "L'Existentialisme" (1946), Henri Muzhin "La Sainte famille existentialiste" (1947), Jean Canap "L'Existentialisme n'est pas un humanisme" (1947), Georg Lukacs "Existentialisme ou marxisme?" (1948) and others. In this situation, the question arises of where J.-P. Sartre was a follower of Marxism and where not. Besides, researchers usually do not fully take into account all stages of the development of J.-P. Sartre’s philosophy. Sartre. However, this is a necessary condition for understanding how Marxism influenced the last stage of Sartre's work (we define it as starting from about 1950). The lack of agreement between researchers on the Marxist component of Sartres’s work demonstrates, in our opinion, a lack of attention to all its stages. Of course, the volume of our article does not allow us to make up for this deficiency in full. But we tried, at least briefly, to take into account all the essential points that determine the specifics of the Marxist component in the work of J.-P. Sartre.

Rational Reasons, Counterfactual Statements and “Impossible Worlds” in the Philosophical Justifications of Thought Experiments

In his theory of natural laws David Lewis rejects the authenticity of impossible worlds on the grounds that the contradiction contained within his modifier "in (the world) w" is tantamount to a contradiction in the whole theory, which seems unacceptable. At the same time, in philosophical discourse very often researchers use counterfactual situations and thought experiments with impossible events and objects. There is a need to apply the theory of worlds to genuine, concrete, but impossible worlds. One way to do this is to reject Lewis's classical negation on the grounds that it leads to problems of completeness and inconsistency inside the worlds. The proposed extension for impossibility is compatible with Lewis's extensional metaphysics, although it leads to some loss for description completeness in semantics.

Epistemic Rationality in Political Theory

The paper presents a brief analysis of the procedural approach towards constructing liberal political conceptions of justice and democracy. Treatment of J. Rawls’s evolution shows the negative consequences of abandoning external substantive criteria for theory evaluation, including efficiency, justification, truth. It also offers justification for the “epistemic turn” in contemporary political theory. The return of classical epistemological set of tools will help to strengthen the justification and legitimation of philosophical and political conceptions of justice and democracy by overcoming the key limitations of the procedural approach.

Contemporary Approaches to the Study of Ethnic Identity

Based on the analysis of contemporary theoretical and practical research in the fields of social philosophy, sociology and social psychology, the author considers trends related to the interpretation of the phenomenon of ethnic identity. A multiple interpretation of this phenomenon is described, which allows us to study its different forms and degrees of manifestation. Network social media, multi-ethnic urban environment and processes in non-systemic politics are considered as socio-cultural factors that influence the transformation of the phenomenon under consideration. It is concluded that the process of ethnic identification cannot be further unambiguously identified with a scale directed from the zero state (identity is not formed) to the positive pole (identity is formed and expressed). Instead of this onedimensional interpretation, a metaphor of space, which includes different forms and degrees of expression of ethnic identity, is proposed.

Comparative Evaluation of the Condition of Academic Graduate School (Middle 2000s – Late 2010s)

The main task of the article was to identify the dynamics of changing social characteristics of graduate students from research institutes of Novosibirsk Academgorodok. For the comparative analysis we used the data of polls conducted in 2005 and 2018. We compared such variables as the reasons for admission to graduate school, assessments of the current state of the main elements of scientific activity, the expectations of graduate students about their future profession, primarily a scientific career, criteria and factors of its success. Based on these results we planned to identify the main trends inherent in graduate studies as the main method of training personnel for Russian science. It is concluded that at present the system of training highly qualified scientific personnel in the country is in an unstable state. As a result, there is an active discussion in the professional community about ways of further reforming graduate school.

On Some Regularities of the Transformation of the Civilizational Idea in Modern Russia

The paper analyzes the changes in the content of the civilizational idea in modern Russia. It is shown that the substantive changes concern both the traditional fluctuations between the orientation to the European and Eurasian development path, and the emergence of new features, in particular related to environmental and economic issues. At the same time, there is a reconfiguration of the civilizational idea regarding economic and political discourses. There is a fusion of civilizational identity with political identity, which manifests itself in the form of active use of national-state resources for the formation of national-civilizational identity. It is concluded that at the state level, civilizational identity is supported by political and economic discourses, and the Russian-Eurasian discourse itself is being transformed, turning from a discourse about the integration of cultures into a discourse about the integration of economies based on the integration of cultures.

Slavophiles on the Relationship between “Internal” and “External” in the Construction of the Boundaries of Russian Identity

The article is devoted to the philosophy of classical Slavophilism, which the author considers as the first conception of Russian national identity, which reached the generalizations of the philosophical level. Self-identification of a people, as well as person, presupposes an understanding of their own characteristics in relation to “others”. The Slavophilеs viewed the West as the “Significant Other”. For the Slavophiles, one of the most important markers allowing to define the boundaries of the Russian identity was the antithesis of “internal” and “external”. Comparing her position with the one of the modern European researcher K. J. Mier, the author analyzes the use of this antithesis in Slavophil anthropology.