The trend towards postponement of childbearing has seen increasing numbers of women turning towards oocyte banking for anticipated gamete exhaustion (AGE banking), which offers a realistic chance of achieving genetically connected offspring. However, there are concerns around the use of this technology, including social/ethical implications, low rate of utilisation and its cost-effectiveness. The same societal trends have also resulted in an increased demand and unmet need for donor oocytes, with many women choosing to travel overseas for treatment. This has its (...) own inherent social, medical, financial and psychological sequelae. We propose a possible pathway to address these dual realities. The donation of oocytes originally stored in the context of AGE banking, with appropriate compensatory mechanisms, would ameliorate AGE banking concerns, while simultaneously improving the supply of donor oocytes. This proposed arrangement will result in tangible benefits for prospective donors, recipients and society at large. (shrink)

The paper by Savulescu et al is timely and the concepts illuminated deserve further reflection.1 Reproductive tissue which includes sperm, oocytes and embryos are commonly treated differently to other human tissue, even when the reproductive potential of these has no possibility of being realised. This unnecessary exceptionalism hampers research in human reproduction, disadvantaging patients and delaying life-changing treatments from being incorporated into clinical practice. In jurisdictions where embryo creation is permitted for clinical purposes, such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF), supernumerary (...) embryos are routinely discarded once they are no longer required to attempt pregnancy. We contend that research on such embryos, which will never realise their reproductive potential, is not substantially different to any other human tissue research and should not require any additional ethical or regulatory oversight. The only individuals who can possibly be harmed by such research are the tissue providers and their interests, including confidentiality and informed consent provision, should be protected. This protection once again is no different in its scope to any other type of research involving human cells and tissues. Most Western societies have moved away from the concept that ‘every sperm is sacred’ and it is time that the regulators and scientific community aligned with the prevailing communal norms and stop treating gametes and embryos as somehow holding higher moral value, compared with other human cell/tissue lines, provided that there is no intention to attempt a pregnancy …. (shrink)

_Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Ways of Seeing the Religious Other_ examines the hermeneutics of interreligious encounter, investigating the implicit judgments of Judaism and Islam that often arise in contexts of conflict.

In Simferopol, the names of the streets appeared rather late. In 1837 the Tavrian governor was given an order on the name of the city streets and lanes. Here is their complete list: Gubernatorskaya, Aleksandrovskaya, Novosobornaya, Moscow, Nevoryanskaya, Malobazarna, Mokra, Bazarna, Trading, Jewish, Greek, Petropavlovskaya, Hospital, Tatar, Gypsy, Banny, Meat, Prison, Armsky, Nagorny. Already in this very first list of streets, our attention is attracted to the horns, in the names of which in one form or another have a connection (...) with the history of religions. (shrink)

The book offers a philosophical and cognitive justification for the author's concept of Objective Mental Reality (OMR), which links individual consciousness with society's intersubjective understanding of the world. The first part of the book explains why the concept of OMR is essential to modern science. Objects and phenomena do not exist for humans in isolation: they are formed in consciousness as mental representations and only in OMR do they acquire the status of real entities. This makes reality understandable, structured, and (...) actionable. The second part is devoted to the physical realm of OMR. Any object appears not only as an object of perception but also as a bearer of cultural meanings. Even the scientific picture of the world turns out to be part of OMR, since its laws and facts are also mental constructions. The third part addresses the social sphere. Institutions, roles, norms, values, and events exist only insofar as people believe in them and confirm them through their behavior. OMR is revealed as a "second layer" of reality, where entities are formed that organize experience and guide our behavior. The book offers a groundbreaking explanation of how consciousness and society create the world we live in, revealing the key role of the OMR in the interaction of psyche, matter, and society. (shrink)

This book explores the concept of Objective Mental Reality (OMR)—a fundamental, intersubjectively formed symbolic layer of consciousness. In Part I, it delves into foundational psychological constructions such as the soul, mind, consciousness, and intelligence, as well as the nuanced roles of personality, beliefs, and cultural codes. These entities are examined not only as subjective experiences but as components of a shared mental reality that can be studied objectively. The section further investigates the processes through which the entities of the psyche (...) are constituted and reveals their role in shaping OMR. Parts II and III address specialized domains of OMR — including religious faith, mathematics, art, and media — as well as OMR’s relationship to time, language, and artificial intelligence. The book proposes a new scientific paradigm in which the anthropomorphic world is understood as a product of collective mental creativity constituted within the OMR of society. Through and by means of OMR, humanity comprehends the universe and becomes aware of its own nature, while the psyche transforms from a passive mirror of being into its active co-creator. (shrink)

We describe in detail the first experimental test that distinguishes between an event-based corpuscular model of the interaction of photons with matter and quantum mechanics. The test looks at the interference that results as a single photon passes through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The experimental results, obtained with a low-noise single-photon source, agree with the predictions of standard quantum mechanics.

The linguistic turn in historiography has given way to a ‘cultural’ or ‘practical’ turn over the course of the last several decades. For its proponents, this new development heralds a return of the intentional subject and a re-invigorated concern with the dynamic nature of the social realm. Approaches clustered around the concept of practice, emphasizing routines of daily activities as the backbone of social organization and its stability, specifically seek to resolve the persisting conceptual tension in social sciences between structure (...) and agency. This article surveys the seminal work on the topic of practice, and considers how the approach can be recruited for purposes of historiographic analysis. In defending a tentatively optimistic assessment of practice theory’s usefulness for this purpose, the article also evaluates some of the weaknesses that this approach has yet to cogently address. (shrink)

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

You know what someone else is thinking and feeling by observing them. But how do you know what you are thinking and feeling? This is the problem of self-knowledge: Alex Byrne tries to solve it. The idea is that you know this not by taking a special kind of look at your own mind, but by an inference from a premise about your environment.

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

Origens : Alex Atala, Fernando e Humberto Campana -- Presente : Fernando e Humberto Campana e Jum Nakao -- Intermezzo : convívio : Jam Nakao e colaboradores -- Destinos : Alex Atala e Jum Nakao -- Entrevistas -- Um pouco de história.

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely (...) silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. -/- In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. -/- This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to an analysis of mathematics as a distinct domain of objective mental reality, which is grounded in a quantitative mode of representing the world. The quantitative entities of mathematics (and the world) are formed on the basis of a single universal property—calculability—which allows any qualitative entity and its characteristics to be translated into uniform measurable sets. Thanks to this, consciousness is capable of perceiving any entity as a set of abstract countable elements, thereby constructing quantitative models (...) of the world. Unlike the qualitative approach, which captures the unique, sensually representable properties of entities, quantitative symbolic representation reduces them to sets that can compare quantitative entities, or sets, according to a single parameter—cardinality, that is, the property of countability.Quantitative representation produces a particular projection of the world, that only captures the relationships between new kinds of entities—sets. Although these sets are, by their nature, mental entities, in physical reality they possess firm referents and can therefore often be directly correlated with it. Mathematical creativity, which may at first seem detached from the familiar, sensory-based picture of the world, unexpectedly gives rise to models suitable for describing fragments of reality. This can be explained by the fact that there are objective relations and dependencies in the world between the physical referents of mathematical objects and constructions.Mathematics is an autonomous domain of objective mental reality that reveals the hidden structure of the world. However, looking for correspondences between its constructions and fragments of reality is usually a complex and intuitive process. (shrink)

Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentional component could be present without the sensational component or vice (...) versa. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of the social domain of objective mental reality. The author identifies two key components of social reality: the mental and the physical. The former belongs to objective mental reality and is represented in the consciousness of members of society by stable verbal and sensory representations of social entities (institutions, roles, norms, values, etc.).The latter is part of the physical world and is represented by the actions of people motivated by belief in the existence (...) of these entities. The author stresses that social objects are constituted by consciousness and embedded in language, acquiring the status of reality only when they are internalized by the majority of individuals and when they begin to regulate these individuals’ behavior.Social reality exists insofar as it is present in their consciousness and in objective mental reality, and insofar as people act as if these social entities truly exist in the physical reality surrounding them. Its stability is determined by the cognitive coherence between individual representations and their continual reinforcement through social interaction.The key mechanisms involved in the formation and stabilization of social reality are examined: internalization, externalization, objectivation, legitimation, and reification. Examples are provided to illustrate how mental constructions acquire institutional form and may even be reified. The chapter also addresses the difficulty of distinguishing between the concepts of the social and the cultural, which represent overlapping zones within objective mental reality. (shrink)

[English version below] Diese Stellungnahme zielt darauf ab, Empfehlungen für akzeptable Rahmenbedingungen eines Genomischen-Neugeborenen-Screening (gNBS)-Programms in Deutschland zu formulieren, darunter Empfehlungen zu Auswahlkriterien für Zielkrankheiten und zum Management eines gNBS-Programms sowie zur gesetzlichen Neuregulierung. Sie ist Ergebnis eines dreijährigen Forschungsprojektes, das an den Universitäten Heidelberg und Mannheim durchgeführt wurde. An dem interdisziplinären Projekt beteiligt waren Forscher:innen aus den Bereichen Kinder- und Jugendmedizin, Humangenetik, Rechtswissenschaft, Medizinische Psychologie und Medizinethik sowie Vertreter:innen von Patient:innen-Organisationen (Kindernetzwerk e.V. und Deutsche Interessengemeinschaft Phenylketonurie und verwandte angeborene (...) Stoffwechselstörungen e.V.). Das Projekt wurde vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF; seit 2025 Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt: BMFTR) gefördert und trägt den Titel NEW_LIVES („Genomic NEWborn screening programs – Legal Implications, Value, Ethics and Society” – „Genomische Neugeborenen-Screening-Programme – Rechtliche Implikationen, Werte, Ethik und Gesellschaft“). Die Stellungnahme beginnt mit einführenden Kapiteln zum Hintergrund des gNBS aus Sicht der verschiedenen Fachbereiche und aus Sicht der Gesellschaft, gefolgt von konkreten Empfehlungen für ein zukünftig mögliches gNBS-Pro- gramm in Deutschland. In der Einleitung (1.) werden erste Ergebnisse bisheriger Forschungsprojekte zum gNBS zusammengefasst und die Zielsetzung und Methode, einschließlich der Rolle von Patient:innen-Vertreter:innen bei der Erarbeitung der Stellungnahme werden beschrieben. In Abschnitt 2 („Medizinischer Hintergrund“) werden Entwicklung, Umfang und Ablauf des derzeitigen Neugeborenen-Screening (NBS)-Programms in Deutschland beschrieben und die Besonderheiten eines gNBS-Programms erläutert. Abschnitt 3 („Perspektive von Patient:innen, Eltern und medizinischem Personal“) fasst die Ergebnisse der sozialempirischen Studien zusammen, die im Rahmen des Projektes NEW_LIVES durchgeführt wurden (Fokusgruppen, bevölkerungs-repräsentative Befragung, querschnittliche Online-Befragung) und vergleicht die Ergebnisse mit anderen, internationalen Studien. Abschnitt 3 enthält außerdem eine gemeinsame Stellungnahme der beiden Patient:innen-Organisationen, die am Projekt NEW_LIVES mitgewirkt haben, zum gNBS. Abschnitt 4 („Genomisches Neugeborenen-Screening aus rechtlicher Sicht“) skizziert den rechtlichen Regulierungsrahmen zum gNBS in Deutschland. Abschnitt 5 („Genomisches Neugeborenen-Screening aus ethischer Sicht“) benennt zentrale ethische Herausforderungen des gNBS und formuliert ethische Orientierungsmaßstäbe für ein zukünftiges gNBS-Programm in Deutschland. Da die Neugeborenen diejenigen sind, die an einem gNBS teilnehmen würden und davon profitieren könnten, stellt deren Kindeswohl den zentralen ethischen Orientierungsmaßstab für die Bewertung dar. Die sich in Abschnitt 6 anschließenden Empfehlungen sind aus Sicht aller an der Erarbeitung dieser Stellungnahme beteiligten Fachdisziplinen und der Patient:innen-Organisationen verfasst Darunter sind einerseits transparente Auswahlkriterien für Zielkrankheiten eines gNBS-Programms (Kriterien 1–11). Andererseits werden Empfehlungen für die Einführung, Qualitätssicherung und Nutzenbewertung eines gNBS-Programms formuliert (Kriterien 12–18). Zudem enthält diese Stellungnahme Empfehlungen zur gesetzlichen Neuregulierung. Eine Publikation der Empfehlungen auf Englisch findet sich in Schnabel-Besson et al.: “A multi-dimensional fra- mework for establishing and managing a genomic newborn screening program” (Arbeitstitel; zum Zeitpunkt des Verfassens dieser Stellungnahme in Vorbereitung; DOI der Preprint-Version: 10.1101/2025.06.17.25329 471). - This position paper has the aim of formulating recommendations for what would be an acceptable framework for a genomic newborn screening (gNBS) programme in Germany, including recommendations for selection criteria for target diseases, and for the management of a gNBS programme, as well as for revision of legislation. It is the result of a research project conducted at the Universities of Heidelberg and Mannheim over the course of three years. This interdisciplinary project brought together researchers from the fields of paediatrics and adolescent medicine, human genetics, law, medical psychology, and medical ethics, as well as representatives of patient organisations (Kindernetzwerk e.V., and Deutsche Interessenge- meinschaft Phenylketonurie und verwandte angeborene Stoffwechselstörungen e.V.). The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; since 2025 Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space: BMFTR) and is called NEW_LIVES (“Genomic NEWborn screening programs – Legal Implications, Value, Ethics and Society”). The position paper begins with introductory chapters on gNBS from the perspective of the different disciplines, and from a societal viewpoint, followed by concrete recommendations for a possible future gNBS programme in Germany. The Introduction (1.) summarises the initial results of previous research projects on gNBS, and describes the objectives, and methodology, including the role of patient representatives, in the development of the position paper. Section 2 (“Medical Background”) describes the development, scope, and process of the current NBS programme in Germany, and explains the specific features of a gNBS programme. Section 3 (“Perspectives of Patients, Parents, and Medical Staff”) summarizes the results of the social-empirical studies conducted as part of the NEW_LIVES project (focus groups, population-representative survey, cross-sectional online survey), and compares the results with other, international studies. Section 3 also contains a joint statement on gNBS by the two patient organisations that participated in the NEW_LIVES project. Section 4 (“Genomic Newborn Screening from a Legal Perspective”) outlines the legal regulatory framework for gNBS in Germany. Section 5 (“Genomic Newborn Screening from an Ethical Perspective”) identifies key ethical challenges of gNBS, and formulates ethical guidelines for a future gNBS programme in Germany. Since newborns are the ones who would participate in, and benefit from gNBS, their welfare represents the central ethical guideline for the evaluation. The recommendations in Section 6 are written from the perspective of all disciplines, and patient organisations involved in the development of this position paper. These recommendations reflect the consensus of the inter-, and transdisciplinary group of authors, and form the core of the position paper. They comprise 18 criteria for a possible future gNBS programme in Germany. These include, on the one hand, transparent selection criteria for target diseases of a gNBS programme (criteria 1–11). On the other hand, recommendations are formulated for the introduction, quality assurance, and benefit assessment of a gNBS programme (criteria 12–18). This position paper also contains recommendations for new legal regulations. An English version of the recommendations, including the 11 criteria for selecting target diseases and the 7 criteria for programme management can be found in Schnabel-Besson E, Dikow N, Alex K et al.: “A multidimensional framework for establishing and managing a genomic newborn screening program” (working title; in preparation at the time of writing this position paper; doi of preprint version: 10.1101/2025.06.17.25329471). (shrink)

Sex used to rule. Now gender identity is on the throne. Sex survives as a cheap imitation of its former self: assigned at birth, on a spectrum, socially constructed, and definitely not binary. Apparently quite a few of us fall outside the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’. But gender identity is said to be universal – we all have one. Humanity used to be cleaved into two sexes, whereas now the crucial division depends on whether our gender identity aligns with our (...) body. If it does, we are cisgender; if it does not, we are transgender. The dethroning of sex has meant the threat of execution for formerly noble words such as ‘woman’ and ‘man’. In this provocative, bold, and humane book, the philosopher Alex Byrne pushes back against the new gender revolution. Drawing on evidence from biology, psychology, anthropology and sexology, Byrne exposes the flaws in the revolutionary manifesto. The book applies the tools of philosophy, accessibly and with flair, to gender, sex, transsexuality, patriarchy, our many identities, and our true or authentic selves. The topics of _Trouble with Gender_ are relevant to us all. This is a book for anyone who has wondered ‘Is sex binary?’, ‘Why are men and women different?’, ‘What is a woman?’ or, simply, ‘Where can I go to know more about these controversies?’ Revolutions devour their own children, and the gender revolution is no exception. _Trouble with Gender_ joins the forefront of the counter-revolution, restoring sex to its rightful place, at the centre of what it means to be human. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the study of the scientific picture of the physical world as a part of objective mental reality. The author demonstrates that scientific knowledge, notions, entities, facts, hypotheses, theories, and even the laws of nature are not so much discovered as constructed in human consciousness through language, thinking, and collective experience. Notions such as mass, energy, or force are represented through concepts. In other words, they are stable verbal constructions that are designated by words. These are (...) created within the scientific community, undergo verification, become legitimized, and are then integrated into the structure of objective mental reality as elements of the shared understanding of the world. The author stresses that science is not a mirror of reality: it creates a cognitively and linguistically mediated representational system with the help of which people structure both sensually perceptible and hidden aspects of the world. Many scientific “objects” have no direct physical analogs, yet persist within the scientific worldview as the externalized mental constructions of their creators. Thus, scientific knowledge is not just a tool for description but also a means of shaping reality—one that is transmitted through culture and language. Science does not simply explain the physical world; it completes it, adding new elements, and imparting to it structure, meaning, and internal coherence. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the analysis of intelligent systems (IS) and artificial intelligence (AI). The author argues that intelligent systems neither imitate human reason nor possess a mind (psyche), but rather implement a fundamentally new mode of cognition—a direct mathematical representation of reality, mediated by computational technology and aimed at revealing its quantitative structures and their interconnections and relationships. In IS, mathematics functions not as an auxiliary tool, but as an independent method of primary investigation, enabling the detection of deep (...) relationships between entities of the world that are inaccessible to perception and intuition. Unlike consciousness, which creates meaningful mental representations, intelligent systems perform logical and mathematical operations on large datasets—potential representations of the world. This makes them a new scientific instrument, capable of discerning hidden patterns within “reality-in-itself.” However, intelligent systems do not create artificial reason: the term AI reflects a cultural illusion arising from the incorrect interpretation of the impressive results produced by intelligent systems. Nevertheless, the output of intelligent systems—texts, images, and videos—is internalized by humans, enters culture, and gives rise to new entities within objective mental reality. Intelligent systems thus become active agents of its transformation and increase humanity’s functional dependence on digital tools. The threat that AI poses to society does not lie in AI itself, but in the potential use of intelligent systems by a socially irresponsible human mind. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of religious beliefs as an autonomous and specific domain of objective mental reality. The author explores the nature of faith as a form of conviction in the veracity of one’s verbal representations of aspects of the world that are inaccessible to perception—convictions based not on logic or facts, but on a subjective sense of their truth. Religious faith is interpreted as a special way of representing reality, forming a mythologically and symbolically rich worldview (...) that acknowledges the existence of higher, divine powers and their connection to human life. An important element of religious objective mental reality is the collective nature of beliefs and rituals, which unite individuals into a shared community. The author analyzes the ideas of various thinkers, emphasizing the historical role of religion as a foundation for social organization. The interconnection between religion and morality is explored, as well as the capacity of religious objective mental reality to penetrate other domains of mental reality, influencing norms, values, political power, and social institutions. The chapter highlights the ambivalent status of religion—as both a component of objective mental reality and a force capable of transforming it. (shrink)

The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in (...) the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate. (shrink)

The present volume, comprising ninteen articles by renowned scholars, is divided into three sections, namely, Buddhist Jaina and Hindu Philsosphical Researches.

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of the mental preconditions for the formation of objective mental reality. It critiques the approach of cognitive psychology, which tends to treat mental representations primarily as functional or computational structures that lack definition in terms of phenomenology. As an alternative, the author proposes a phenomenological model that describes the process of the progressive complication of mental phenomena, united by a common nature: from sensation—to a mental image (of perception, memory, or imagination), then to (...) a sensory mental construction (an integrative representation, or sensory concept), next to a notion (an image of a word with symbolic meaning), and finally to a verbal construction that includes verbal concepts capable of representing abstract entities.It is demonstrated that the primary outcome of the psyche’s functioning is not just the creation of complex mental structures, but the formation—through them—of entities (physical, social, and mental) in the world around us. Some mental constructions are concepts that represent entities in the world and are associated with images of words (notions) that denote corresponding entities. Concepts may be sensory, verbal, or mixed. Phenomenologically, verbal images (notions) are auditory and visual mental images of physical objects—words, that are accessible to perception. However, unlike images of other objects, images of words acquire an additional symbolic significance in the consciousness. This makes them more than just representations of words—they become symbols of other entities designated by those words.The externalization of notions and verbal constructions in the form of linguistic constructions makes it possible to transmit them to other individuals who speak the same language. Notions and verbal constructions are a mode of existence and expression of human reason. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of actions and events as key categories of objective mental reality. The author introduces the notion of action within objective mental reality as a mental act carried out by an object of objective mental reality (an individual, institution, or group) within objective mental reality. This act is accompanied by a physical action but is not reducible to it, and it results in the transformation of objective mental reality itself. Unlike the actions of animals, (...) human actions acquire symbolic and status-related significance, as they are realized within the framework of collective objective mental reality. The author emphasizes that entities such as a promise, obligation, command, trust, and prohibition are specific constructions of objective mental reality, existing solely within consciousness and its symbolic structures. Many actions that appear to be purely physical—such as a court ruling, voting, or an inauguration—in fact occur within objective mental reality, where they acquire their meaning and consequences. This chapter explores the interrelation of physical and mental reality as two interdependent layers of the human world, in which changes are mutually conditioned. Events and situations, being meaningful changes rather than mere physical facts, exist primarily within objective mental reality. The author stresses that humans live and act not only in physical reality, but also in a symbolically structured mental reality, which they themselves, to some extent, constitute. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to assessing the consequences of the discovery of objective mental reality, which are radically transforming our conceptions of the mind (psyche), culture, and scientific knowledge. Personal objective mental reality is an autonomous, intersubjectively structured layer of the individual mind (psyche), containing stable, predominantly verbal representations of the world that are shared among members of a society. It dismantles the dichotomy between the internal and the external, demonstrating that the mind (psyche) does not just reflect the world (...) but actively shapes it as a set of verbally represented entities, along with their relations, connections, and interactions. For psychology, this entails a paradigm shift: a move away from neurocentric reduction in favor of a constructivist approach, centered on the structure of verbal representations, collective concepts, and intersubjective meanings. The mind (psyche) becomes an active mechanism for the shaping of reality, rather than a secondary epiphenomenon accompanying brain activity. Language turns into the “building material” of mental reality. Psychology gains the ability to study the process of forming entities—the basic units of consciousness and culture, including abstract ones (God, freedom, duty, and others). In sociology, objective mental reality explains the mechanisms of socialization, identity, and the stability of cultural norms, uniting the micro- and macro-levels of analysis. For science as a whole, objective mental reality offers a new ontology of knowledge, in which even physical notions are transformed into elements of a symbolically mediated intersubjective reality. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of the mind (psyche) in the formation of the entities that make up objective mental reality. Critiquing the objectivist position, the author argues that the objects and phenomena of the world are not originally present in it, nor are they simply “discovered” there by people. Rather, they are formed by consciousness through stable mental constructions—concepts—and placed within an anthropomorphic world.An entity is a mental representation of an element of “reality-in-itself,” created by consciousness and regarded by (...) it as something separate from consciousness—as something present either in the world around us or even within the mind (psyche) itself. It is formed through the processing of sensory data by means of their conceptualization, which simplifies the world for the individual. Entities are dependent on both “reality-in-itself” and consciousness. During the formation of both abstract entities and entities that are accessible to perception, only the degree of involvement in this process changes—between the sensory representations of “reality-in-itself,” on the one hand, and imagination, on the other.A new entity becomes real only after it has been verified in practice and accepted by society. The vast majority of entities are not invented by individuals but are instead assimilated by them. These entities were formed by previous generations, designated by words, embedded in culture, and transmitted through language. During the process of socialization, as children acquire language, they come to understand the objective mental reality of their society and adopt with it a set of entities of the world and verbal representations of their relationships and connections. Language functions not only as a means of communication but also as a mechanism for storing and transmitting the entities of objective mental reality—including those that are not accessible to perception and highly abstract. (shrink)

This chapter explores the history of the development of human representations of a special immaterial realm located in the world around us—a realm in which, like in physical reality, every individual exists. This realm, which the author refers to as objective mental reality, is represented by similar mental constructs that are present in human consciousness.This chapter examines key concepts developed by researchers that correspond with objective mental reality, such as the world of ideas, collective and social consciousness, the symbolic universe, (...) the third world, collective representations, intersubjectivity, and collective intelligence, among others.This chapter analyzes the mechanisms of institutionalization, legitimation, and internalization that ensure the integration of shared mental content into the structure of individual consciousness. Despite a long history of discussion, this realm remains poorly defined and not well understood; it has not been fully developed either theoretically or methodologically, and it has not yet been phenomenologically represented within contemporary psychology. The author argues for the need for a systematic, interdisciplinary investigation of objective mental reality as a distinct layer of reality.In the context of the world’s digital transformation, the spread of network-based forms of cooperation, and the growing role of intelligent systems, the study of objective mental reality is becoming critically important. The extent to which it is theoretically developed will determine our ability to scientifically understand, monitor, and manage collective mental processes that influence the dynamics of culture, social institutions, and mass behavior. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the examination of mental entities that lie on the periphery of scientific discourse but play a significant role in the humanities and culture. Particular attention is paid to the notion of the archetype, which continues to be widely used today, despite never having acquired scientific clarity or definition over the course of its existence. It is proposed that the archetype should be interpreted not as an element of the collective unconscious, but as a mental entity (...) formed by history—a multilayered collection of sensory and sensory-verbal concepts associated with entities that are fundamental to human beings (the mother, death, water, war, love, etc.). Using this interpretation, the archetype becomes a set of meanings that reveal, in different ways, the significance of certain entities that are well-known to all people—meanings that have accumulated over the centuries in language, myths, beliefs, folktales, art, and culture. It is a stable semantic structure, represented in objective mental reality and fixed in language, and therefore continues to influence human thinking and behavior. This chapter also discusses the phenomenon of researchers creating new mental entities. Some of these disappear, while others—such as the notion of the “cultural code,” for example—become successfully established in public consciousness. Studying such entities is important as a means of uncovering the deep cognitive and symbolic structures of culture. (shrink)

Objective mental reality is continuously expanding and changing as a result of human activity. Every new form of activity—whether everyday, professional, scientific, technological, and so on—is accompanied by the creation of new entities and their interrelations and interactions, which together shape new domains within objective mental reality (such as philately, diving, oil extraction, postal services, biotechnology). However, these domains may be reduced if the corresponding activity loses its social relevance. A good example of a distinct domain of objective mental reality (...) is metrology, since consciousness not only constructs entities but readily invents ways of measuring them. Measurement is a mental act, even though it is typically accompanied by physical actions. A significant space in objective mental reality is occupied by the domains of game-based and literary reality, which have been created by humans on the basis of verbal conventions and cultural frameworks. Verbal constructions—the rules and conditions of particular games—constitute new conventional gaming entities in objective mental reality, along with the new relationships and interconnections between them. Constitutive rules and frameworks do not just regulate human actions in game-based reality but actually create this reality itself, along with the very possibility of action within it. Objective mental reality is shaped not only within scientific and rational contexts, but also under the influence of mass communication. Modern media often replicate the world around us in a distorted and biased manner, displacing actual reality and even generating an objective mental pseudo-reality in human consciousness. (shrink)

This chapter explores the central role of language in the formation of objective mental reality and explains why the latter’s existence would be impossible without the former. Language comprises three components: words, their mental images (notions), and their meanings in the form of mental constructions—concepts. It exists simultaneously in the physical and mental domains, linking the external world with internal representations.Words are artificial physical objects (sounds or symbols) that are used to denote and designate the world’s entities. The mental images (...) of words replace representations of other objects, denoted by these words, in the mind, enabling both thought and communication. Although language is not a part of objective mental reality, it makes it possible: it is precisely through words and their images that verbal constructions representing reality are formed and transmitted.Language enables the development of verbal thinking in children, who, in the process of acquiring language, simultaneously assimilate the knowledge accumulated by society. Each new word becomes a means of mastering the entities of the world that have been conceptualized by society. Language provides a verbal mode of representing the world and shapes an ethno-specific system of entities, their connections and relations, which influences the structure of objective mental reality.Verbal representations of the entities of the world are disseminated through speech and text, becoming embedded in culture as elements of collective knowledge. Thus, language is not only a means of communication but also the foundation of the human mind and of objective mental reality. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of the physical behavior of members of society as a key mechanism for the verification and maintenance of the social dimension of objective mental reality. The author emphasizes that actions themselves are not a part of objective mental reality but are to a large degree defined by it—stable verbal constructions that represent social entities, their relations, and connections. The behavior of all members of society, expressed in verbal and nonverbal physical actions that correspond (...) to the representations of shared objective mental reality, including its social domain, ensures its indisputable and unquestionable verification in the eyes of each individual and reproduces the social order. This chapter describes the ways in which actions bring about the objectivation and legitimation of norms, roles, and institutions. Special attention is paid to entities that regulate behavior, such as morality, conscience, duty, shame, authority, and power. It is demonstrated that these are created by individuals, preserved in objective mental reality, internalized from there by new generations, and become motivational foundations for socially acceptable actions. These entities not only ensure the stability of society but are also vital for each individual—protecting them from arbitrariness, strengthening trust, and creating a space of predictability. The author comes to the conclusion that social reality is sustained not only by shared representations but also by the constant, consistent actions of the individuals that make it, as it were, perceivable and more stable. (shrink)

This chapter explores those mental entities that are formed by people over the course of their life in society. The author examines the personality as a real mental entity—or a set of stable mental structures that include: beliefs, worldview, values, moral principles, sense of duty, and responsibility. These are formed and remain in the person’s mind as part of their personal objective mental reality, but they have referents in physical reality. Beliefs, worldview, values, morality, duty, responsibility, and other mental entities—often (...) referred to collectively as a “structured set of meanings that are significant to the individual”—are basically stable verbal representations of the world. They reflect the individual’s generalized personal experience as well as the internalized collective experience. Over a person’s lifetime, many of these acquire the status of subjective truths for the individual and begin to guide their behavior, ensuring both personal and social stability. Although social in nature, they form the “mental foundation” of personality, defining perception, modes of thinking, interpretation, and action. The mind seeks to preserve its coherent verbal content and actively resists external influences upon it. This is manifested in resistance to alternative views and in the collective defense of society’s objective mental reality. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to the analysis of physical entities that are formed by humans in objective mental reality but are regarded as elements of the physical world. They are represented by verbal concepts and illustrated through mental images. For example, entities denoted by notions such as density, momentum, and energy, as well as abstract categories like ecology or information, are mental in their nature but are considered part of physical reality. At the same time, people do not usually notice (...) the phenomenological differences between entities that are accessible to perception and those that are not.Without objective mental reality, it would not only be impossible to use many objects, but even to understand them, since their functions, meanings, and causal relationships are revealed only within mental reality. Many physical entities exist solely as constructions of objective mental reality. This realm not only complements but radically transforms the perceived world, filling it with entities, relations, and dependencies without which anthropomorphic reality would be impossible. Objective mental reality, as a superstructure over perception, shapes the spatio-temporal structure of the physical world and constructs the psychophysical picture in which society exists. (shrink)

This chapter examines key mental entities, such as the mind (psyche), consciousness, the “I,” thinking, will, attention, awareness, understanding, and intelligence, emphasizing their representational nature. In contrast to the objectivist tradition, the author argues that these entities are not revealed through introspection in the mind as some kind of ontological given that merely needs to be described. Rather, they are formed by researchers through reflection, imagination, and intersubjective discussion in the scientific and cultural community. Once collectively acknowledged, these newly verbalized (...) entities become embedded in language, becoming part of mental reality and an important component of objective mental reality. The author notes that the psyche (mind) and consciousness are not transcendent in relation to the body, but function in an inseparable connection with it, ceasing to be able to manifest themselves once the underlying physical structure ceases to exist. The author offers an original interpretation of such entities as the psyche (mind) and consciousness. The “I” is examined as a sensory-verbal representation of an active organism, associated with the sense of personal existence. The author highlights the conceptual indeterminacy of psychological categories and proposes viewing them as complex mental constructions—the products of cognitive and linguistic activity that serve a heuristic and explanatory function in the science of the mind. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to an analysis of the physical realm of objective mental reality as an integral part of the human picture of the world. The author demonstrates that even familiar items and physical objects that are accessible to direct perception are represented by consciousness not only sensorily but also verbally. It is precisely this second, mental dimension that transforms a perceived entity into a distinct thing (item) by endowing it with meanings that are understandable to all.Things and phenomena—including (...) even elementary items like a spoon—acquire cultural and symbolic significance only after the internalization of verbal constructions passed on to a person in the course of their socialization. This chapter examines the dual structure of physical objects: their simultaneous existence in both physical and mental reality.Particular attention is given to the role of language, culture, and objective mental reality in shaping the mental “second face” of physical entities. The mental aspect can dominate the material to such an extent that the physical object becomes a sign of another entity (examples include words, money, and works of art). The author argues that a deep understanding of even the natural world is impossible beyond the bounds of objective mental reality, since the meanings of physical objects are created and transmitted within the mental sphere. This chapter explores the socio-psychological and cultural mechanisms through which physical reality acquires meaning and structure. (shrink)

This chapter is devoted to time—one of the most important entities of objective mental reality. Time was originally conceptualized as a physical entity. However, upon phenomenological analysis, it comes across as a mental representation, an instrument—a mental coordinate axis that is vital for the constitution and measurement of another physical entity that is even accessible to perception, namely: the global and continuous change experienced by the world. Despite its mental nature, time is objective, independent of the individual, and measurable as (...) it is an entity of objective mental reality. Thanks to the conceptualization of time and the distinct phenomenology of mental images (perception, memory, and imagination), the mind and objective mental reality have formed subjectively differentiated fragments of time—the past, the present, and the future.Without time, it would have been impossible to construct many derivative entities—such as development, process, history, century, year, minute, and so forth. These require not only the concept of time but also a representation of its flow, duration, and the comparison of temporal intervals that exist only in consciousness. After all, in the physical world there is only the present moment: the past is no longer here, and the future is yet to be.As a kind of central axis of objective mental reality, time structures not only objective mental reality itself but also culture and the history of society; therefore, differences in its conceptualization alter the way people from different societies understand the world. Time travel is not possible, since time itself is not a physical entity but a mental construction. (shrink)

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

Are we able to do everything we ought to do? According to the important but controversial Ought Implies Can principle, the answer is yes. -/- In this book Alex King sheds some much-needed light on this principle. She argues that it is flawed because we are obligated to perform some actions that we cannot perform, and goes on to present a suggested theory for anyone who would deny the principle. She examines the traditional motivations for Ought Implies Can, and (...) finds that they to a large degree do not support it. Using examples like gay rights, addiction, and disability, she argues that we can preserve many of the motivations that led us to the principle by thinking more about what we, as individuals or institutions, can fairly demand of ourselves and each other. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is, only if we take it that experiences have (...) conceptual content. (1994, 162) Brewer agrees. Their view is sometimes called conceptualism; nonconceptualism is the rival position, that experiences have nonconceptual content. One initial obstacle is understanding what the issue is. What is conceptual content, and how is it different from nonconceptual content? Section 1 of this paper explains two versions of each of the rival positions: state (non)conceptualism and content (non)conceptualism; the latter pair is the locus of the relevant dispute. Two prominent arguments for content nonconceptualism—the richness argument and the continuity argument—both fail (section 2). McDowell’s and Brewer’s epistemological defenses of content conceptualism are also faulty (section 3). Section 4 gives a more simple-minded case for conceptualism; finally, some reasons are given for rejecting the claim—on one natural interpretation—that experiences justify beliefs. (shrink)

I know various contingent truths about my environment by perception. For example, by looking, I know that there is a computer before me; by hearing, I know that someone is talking in the corridor; by tasting, I know that the coffee has no sugar. I know these things because I have some built-in mechanisms specialized for detecting the state of my environment. One of these mechanisms, for instance, is presently transducing electromagnetic radiation (in a narrow band of wavelengths) coming from (...) the computer and the desk on which it sits. How that mechanism works is a complicated story—to put it mildly—and of course much remains unknown. But we can at least produce more-or- less plausible sketches of how the mechanism can start from retinal irradiation, and go on to deliver knowledge of my surroundings. Moreover, in the sort of world we inhabit, specialized detection mechanisms that are causally affected by the things they detect have no serious competition—seeing the computer by seeing an idea of the computer in the divine mind, for example, is not a feasible alternative. (shrink)

Can we trust our intuitive judgments of right and wrong? Are moral judgements objective? What reason do we have to do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong? In Conversations on Ethics, Alex Voorhoeve elicits answers to these questions from eleven outstanding philosophers and social scientists: -/- Ken Binmore; Philippa Foot; Harry Frankfurt; Allan Gibbard; Daniel Kahneman; Frances Kamm; Alasdair MacIntyre; T. M. Scanlon; Peter Singer; David Velleman; Bernard Williams. -/- The exchanges are direct, open, and sharp, (...) and give a clear account of these thinkers' core ideas about ethics. They also provide unique insights into their intellectual development - how they became interested in ethics, and how they conceived the ideas for which they became famous. Conversations on Ethics will engage anyone interested in moral philosophy. (shrink)

It has become an intellectual commonplace to claim that we have entered the era of 'postmodernity'. Three themes are embraced in this claim the poststructurist critique by Foucault, Derrida and others of the philosophical heritage of the Enlightenment the supposed impasse of High Modern art and its replacement by new artistic forms and the alleged emergence of 'post-industrial' societies whose structures are beyond the ken of Marx and other theorists of industrial capitalism. Against Postmodernism takes issue with all these themes. (...) It challenges the idealist irrationalism of post-structuralism. It questions the existence of any radical break separating allegedly Postmodern from Modern art. And it denies that recent socio-economic developments represent any fundamental shift from classical patterns of capital accumulation. Drawing on philosophy and history, Against Postmodernism takes issue also with some of the most forthright critics of postmodernism -- Jurgen Habermas and Fredric Jameson, for example. But it is most distinctive in that it offers a historical reading of the theories of such currently fashionable thinkers as Baudrillard and Lyotard. Postmodernism, Alex Callinios argues, reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of '68, and the incorporation of many of its members into the porfessional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right. (shrink)

Consciousness is the subject of many metaphors, and one of the most hardy perennials compares consciousness to a spotlight, illuminating certain mental goings-on, while leaving others to do their work in the dark. One way of elaborating the spotlight metaphor is this: mental events are loaded on to one end of a conveyer belt by the senses, and move with the belt.

"This admirable volume of readings is the first of a pair: the editors are to be applauded for placing the philosophy of color exactly where it should go, in...