A Historical Outline of Byzantine Philosophy

We are going to present a panorama of Byzantine Philosophy. As starting point should be considered the Patristic Thought, which preceded the Byzantine Philosophy and was established in the first centuries A.D. into the Greek-Roman world. It was based on the Old and New Testament, the apostolic teachings, as well as on Judaism and Greek Philosophy. Also, the Ancient Oriental Religions – especially those of the Greek-Roman period, i.e. the Gnosticism- exerted an influence on it. The Patristic Thought and the Ancient Greek Philosophy were the two main pedestals of Byzantine Philosophy. But, we cannot separate completely Patristic thought from the Byzantine Philosophy, first because the Byzantine Philosophy used all the corpus of the preceded texts of the Church Fathers and second because the Patristic Thought was continued to the end of Byzantium in interaction with Byzantine Philosophy. When we use he term Byzantine Philosophy we refer to the ideological currents that flourished from the 9th century till the 15th in the geographical area of the Greek East. Its main task was the quest for truth from the metaphysical point of view. In this era we have not only commentaries and scholastic works, but also an assimilation of the previous philosophical and scientific developments in purpose of an interior evolution. The opposition to, and the use of, the Western scholasticism were also another two special characteristics of Byzantine Thought. The use of the logical works of Aristotle and the metaphysics of Plato made up its main theoretical body, always in relation to the Christian dogmas. The logical, metaphysical, cosmological, ethical, aesthetical and anthropological subjects were closely connected with the fixed Christian view of the World, God and Man. But despite the influence of the Christian religion and the Aristotelic, Platonic, Stoic, Neoplatonic etc. teachings, today we can arrive at the conclusion that from the ninth through the fifteen century a relative autonomy of Philosophy in Byzantium was emerged. Also, the Philosophical thought in Byzantium gave some new solutions to the old problems and dared sometimes to proceed in new rational, mystical or even empirical elaborations of original philosophical questions

Career Design in Journalism

Authors consider professional career of the journalist in close interrelation with creative selfrealization of the personality - with development its communicative, mental and literary abilities based on which the professional destiny and career is built. Relevance of research. Today the modern media culture exerts serious large-scale and sign impact on ways and forms of giving of news in mass media. Under the influence of technology factors, the new system of functioning of mass media, which has allowed modern generation of journalists to come to essentially new level of the professional development, was created. For this reason in the field of research attention, there were questions, coherent with the journalist of new technologies and methods of his work. Relevance of a problem and the practical importance have defined the purpose and problems of scientific research, its internal logic and structure. Object of research - the professional, communicative, intellectual and creative skills, knowledge and abilities exerting impact on the qualification growth of the young journalist. The purpose of scientific research is detection of the main requirements imposed to the graduate of journalism faculty, multimedia mass media. Implementation of this purpose assumed the solution of the following tasks: 1. To reveal the professional, communicative, intellectual and creative skills, knowledge and abilities exerting influence the qualification growth of the youn g journalist. 2. To disclose specifics of work of the modern journalist from the point of view of genre specialization. The principles of the structural, system and complex analysis act as a methodological basis of scientific research. In the course of work authors used formal and logical, substantial and logical methods and general scientific (the analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction) methods. The practical importance of work is that the requirements considered in research imposed to the graduate of journalism faculty, multimedia mass media would allow raising quality of training of the experts who are trained in «journalism»

Michael Polanyi and Thomas Kuhn: priority and credit

The article argues that Polanyi was a likely source of influence on the theory of science that Kuhn developed in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The striking similarity between Kuhn&rsquo;s idea of incommensurability and Polanyi&rsquo;s rendering of scientific controversy in Personal Knowledge is featured here, and is used to expose a tension between Polanyi&rsquo;s notions of scientific controversy and unfolding truth.<br /

An Absurd Consequence of Stanford’s New Induction Over the History of Science: A Reply to Sterpetti

In this paper, I respond to Sterpetti’s attempt to defend Kyle P. Stanford’s Problem of Unconceived Alternatives and his New Induction over the History of Science from my reductio argument outlined in Mizrahi :59–68, 2016a). I discuss what I take to be the ways in which Sterpetti has misconstrued my argument against Stanford’s NIS, in particular, that it is a reductio, not a dilemma, as Sterpetti erroneously thinks. I argue that antirealists who endorse Stanford’s NIS still face an absurd consequence of this argument, namely, that they should not believe their own brand of scientific antirealism

Open source, collectivism, and Japanese society

This paper is about collectivism in the Network Society. Many\ud researches about the Network Society evaluate collectivism, citing Japanese\ud culture and Hacker culture as good models of such collectivism. However, some\ud researchers, such as K. Abe in his analysis of “Seken,” criticize Japanese\ud collectivism. Abe’s study pointed out the negative effect of Japanese collectivism\ud on scientific progress. This paper will criticize Abe’s study and offer a new model\ud for evaluating collectivism, which has previously been evaluated in earlier studies\ud about the Network Society. First this paper introduces the previous studies and\ud considers a model of communication in the Network Society. Then this paper\ud considers the results of a survey of Japanese engineers in order to test the validity\ud and shortcomings of this model

Reflective Argumentation

Theories of argumentation usually focus on arguments as means of persuasion, finding consensus, or justifying knowledge claims. However, the construction and visualization of arguments can also be used to clarify one's own thinking and to stimulate change of this thinking if gaps, unjustified assumptions, contradictions, or open questions can be identified. This is what I call "reflective argumentation." The objective of this paper is, first, to clarify the conditions of reflective argumentation and, second, to discuss the possibilities of argument visualization methods in supporting reflection and cognitive change. After a discussion of the cognitive problems we are facing in conflicts--obviously the area where cognitive change is hardest--the second part will, based on this, determine a set of requirements argument visualization tools should fulfill if their main purpose is stimulating reflection and cognitive change. In the third part, I will evaluate available argument visualization methods with regard to these requirements and talk about their limitations. The fourth part, then, introduces a new method of argument visualization which I call Logical Argument Mapping (LAM). LAM has specifically been designed to support reflective argumentation. Since it uses primarily deductively valid argument schemes, this design decision has to be justified with regard to goals of reflective argumentation. The fifth part, finally, provides an example of how Logical Argument Mapping could be used as a method of reflective argumentation in a political controversy

The Four Phases of Philosophy

Introduction and translation of “The Four Phases of Philosophy” by Franz Brentano