Alexander E. Zhalnin

This paper reconstructs the problem of free will, determinism, and responsibility from the standpoint of the Philosophy of Reality and Alexander Zhalnin's Basic Method of Philosophy. The central thesis is that the classical opposition between free will and determinism arises from an insufficient distinction between the objective and subjective sides of will and from an incomplete ontology of consciousness. In the Philosophy of Reality, will is not a passage from a brain process to a separate subjective preference. From the objective side, will is the energy of the brain directed toward the suppression of one physiological, natural brain process by an opposing physiological brain process constituted by the system of physical analogues of concepts. From the subjective side, will is the conscious choice among possible actions according to the priority of causal relations or personal mental acceptability. The analysis incorporates the Philosophy of Reality's treatment of the hard problem of consciousness: concepts are physical analogues in the brain, every transformation of a concept is also a physical transformation, and experience is the immediate subjective givenness of this transformation. On this basis, the paper analyzes the major theories of free will and responsibility as partial accounts of one phenomenon.

The so-called “hard problem of consciousness” is usually formulated as the question of why physical or functional processes are accompanied by subjective experience. This paper argues that the problem arises from a mistaken separation of the objective and the subjective as two externally related domains. Within the Philosophy of Reality, grounded in the Basic Method of Philosophy, consciousness is not treated as an additional non-physical property of the brain, nor as a reducible physical process. Rather, it is understood as a two-sided reality: on the objective side, as the physical existence of concepts, images, and feelings in the brain; on the subjective side, as their meaningful and experiential essence. Thought is therefore not merely the manipulation of abstract information, but the formation and transformation of physical analogues of objects in the brain. Since every change in a concept is at once a physical change in the brain and a change in the form through which the concept is immediately given to consciousness, thinking is necessarily accompanied by experience. Negative experience corresponds to the weakening or destruction of conceptual structures, while positive experience corresponds to their strengthening, integration, or harmonization. Thus, the hard problem is not solved within its traditional formulation, but dissolved as a consequence of an inadequate ontology of thought and experience.

Abstract This article provides a critical analysis of the leading trends in contemporary philosophy of mind—neurophilosophy and enactivism (F. Varela, E. Thompson, A. Noë)—from the standpoint of the Philosophy of Reality and the Basic Method of Philosophy developed by Alexander Zhalnin. It demonstrates that while enactivism overcomes Cartesian dualism and representationalism, it stops at the description of sensorimotor interaction and neural correlations, failing to reach the level of ontological analysis of the mutual transition between the objective and the subjective. The Philosophy of Reality offers the missing categorical apparatus (matter/energy, form/property) and a five-stage methodology of cognition, enabling the grasping of the transformation of existence into essence and vice versa. Using the example of color perception, the limitations of the enactivist approach are demonstrated, alongside the heuristic potential of the Basic Method of Philosophy. Keywords: neurophilosophy, enactivism, Basic Method of Philosophy, Philosophy of Reality, mutual transition, living concept, autopoiesis, neurophenomenology.

This paper sets out the foundations and principles of the Philosophy of Reality as a philosophical approach that understands reality as a processual unity of existence and essence. Its starting point is the thesis that the mutual transition of existence and essence is both an immanent property of reality and the most general form of philosophical cognition. Within this framework, existence as essence is articulated through the categories of energy and matter, while essence as existence is articulated through the categories of property and form. On this basis, the Fundamental Law of Nature is defined as the mutual transition of energy and matter, and the Fundamental Law of Consciousness as the mutual transition of property and form. The paper argues that the cognition of nature and the cognition of consciousness are mutually mediated: nature is cognized through consciousness, and consciousness through nature. It therefore proposes a basic philosophical method for the analysis of any object, including the identification of its initial sides, the determination of its categorial structure, the disclosure of the transitions between its sides, and the synthesis of a new reality in thought.

The article conceptualizes artificial intelligence from the standpoint of the Philosophy of Reality. AI in the broad sense is defined as the intertransition of consciousness and a system of physical processes; AI in the narrow sense as a physical system within which an analogue of a part of consciousness is created, transformed in accordance with the directives of consciousness, and returned to consciousness in a modified form, where it is experienced as an act of cognition. On this basis, the article analyzes the ontological status of AI, its place in the structure of cognition, its difference from natural thinking, and its epistemological possibilities and limits. It is argued that AI is not an autonomous subject of cognition, but rather an externally organized mechanism for the transformation of analogues of consciousness incorporated into the circuit of intertransition between the objective and the subjective. Keywords: artificial intelligence, Philosophy of Reality, consciousness, cognition, objective, subjective, truth, analogue of consciousness, reintegration, intersubjective verification.

These Principles establish the general foundations for the analysis of poetic works from the perspective of the Philosophy of Reality. Their purpose is to define the object of a philosophically grounded analysis of a poem, to establish the principal categories of such analysis, to reveal the internal structure of a poetic work, and to determine the grounds for concluding the degree of its artistic validity. The analysis of a poetic work must not be reduced either to a retelling of the text, to the communication of an impression, or to arbitrary interpretation. It must proceed from an understanding of the poem as an artistic reality internally organized through the unity and reciprocal transition of its objective and subjective sides. The object of analysis is the poetic work itself as an internally organized artistic whole. These Principles do not treat as the object of analysis the presumed state of the reader, the psychological effect of perception, or the force of the text’s impact upon the perceiving consciousness.

This article examines the canonical edition of the Manifesto of Philosophical Reviewing of Poems Based on the Philosophy of Reality as an original normative and methodological project aimed at establishing a distinct discipline of reading poetic texts. The article argues that the Manifesto offers not merely an interpretive practice, but a coherent model of philosophical reviewing centered on the reconstruction of the loop DP -> ETP -> DP1 -> ETP1. Within this framework, the philosophical component of a poem is defined as the mutual transition of the objective and subjective sides of reality in poetic form, leading to a substantial and qualitatively new transformation of meaning and experience. The article analyzes the Manifesto's object, method, criteria of quality, statuses of conclusions, intersubjective verification, and theoretical location in relation to hermeneutics, phenomenology of reading, reception-oriented approaches, and the philosophy of literature. It concludes that the Manifesto constitutes an original contribution to philosophical poetics and to the methodology of literary interpretation.

From the point of view of the Philosophy of Reality, the history of definitions of philosophy is the history of philosophy’s partial self-descriptions. Each major definition captures a real moment of philosophical work, but usually absolutizes one pole: • the objective, • the subjective, • or some undeveloped form of their relation. The novelty of the Philosophy of Reality lies in the fact that it: 1. makes the mutual transition of the objective and subjective the proper subject of philosophy; 2. defines reality as the linkage of thing and thought; 3. understands the concept not only logically but also as a physical analogue in the brain; 4. defines truth as bilateral and intersubjectively testable correspondence; 5. thereby transforms previous definitions of philosophy into particular regimes or particular cases of a more general method. In this perspective, philosophy as science, art, critique, worldview, therapy, metaphysics, phenomenology, or practice is not false, but incomplete. Each is valid insofar as it describes one aspect of philosophy as the work of bringing into relation, movement, and provisional harmony the two sides of reality.

The document proposes a normative and methodological program for reviewing poetry grounded in the Philosophy of Reality and its Basic Method. Its central claim is that a poetic work should be treated as the “reality of the poem”—the unity of the text (the objective side) and the “inner object” produced by the text in the reader (the subjective side). A competent review, therefore, must explicitly show their mutual transition and mutual verification. As an ontological axis of reading, the document introduces the pair “existence ↔ essence”, where existence denotes the poem’s structural–linguistic givenness, while essence denotes its meaning-and-experience unfolding in consciousness. The practical section formulates prohibitions (do not replace form with impression, or impression with form; avoid one-sidedness) and presents an A–E protocol: (A) distinguishing the sides; (B) constructing transitions (the mechanism “device/technique → effect” and the reverse reading “effect/meaning → device”); (C) intersubjective verification; (D) marking the epistemic status of conclusions (opinion → assumption → conviction → truth); (E) a criterion for “stopping the method.” It also introduces quality criteria for a philosophical review (the completeness and evidential strength of the mutual transition), a glossary of key terms (the review’s two-sided truth, the “living concept,” the “neural bridge”), and an ethics of criticism understood as responsibility for the demonstrability of one’s judgments. The second part—an analytical commentary—interprets the manifesto as a transfer of the method into the humanities. It compares the approach with traditions of formalism, linguistic poetics, phenomenology/reception aesthetics, and hermeneutics; highlights strengths (disciplining experience without banning it; focus on the mechanism of understanding; an epistemic “scale of confidence”); and notes vulnerabilities (the limits of “objectivity” in poetry, the difficulty of intersubjective validation, the risk of neuro-metaphors and implicit norm-setting of taste). The analysis concludes with proposals for operationalization: refine the language of transitions, distinguish reproducibility of effect from reproducibility of interpretation, introduce levels of the inner object, and clarify rules for upgrading the status of conclusions.

The Manifesto restores philosophy’s subject and truth criterion via the Basic Method of Philosophy —tuning the mutual transition of the rational-logical and sensory-emotional in thought. Reality is framed as both a quasi-object and a quasi-concept; truth is the two-sided fit of concept and phenomenon. Its ontological core is the passage “existence ↔ essence.” It codifies argument norms, introduces “living concepts,” and outlines an education-and-research program. Table of contents  Chapter 1. Manifesto of the Philosophy of Reality  Appendix 1. What Is Reality in the Philosophy of Reality  Appendix 2. The Basic Method of Philosophy  Appendix 3. A Comprehensive Analysis of the Book The Basic Method of Philosophy

The book "The Basic Method of Philosophy" is a notable contribution to modern thought, especially in the light of the current crisis of philosophical identity. The author boldly suggests a new paradigm, which is aimed at structuring philosophical knowledge and restoring its cultural authority. His main contribution is the precise definition of philosophy through its unique method. In this sense, the book echoes the works of philosophers who have historically tried to rethink philosophy (for example, Heidegger, Jaspers), but it does so in a more practical and cognitively oriented way. The book also develops dialectical logic, reviving an approach that is often considered outdated and integrating it with the ideas of neuroscience. This can be considered as a step forward both in the philosophy of consciousness and in the methodology of science. In addition, the integrative nature of the text is noteworthy. The basic definitions can theoretically underlie several fields: epistemology, ontology, ethics, and even aesthetics. In other words, the book proposes to build a systematic philosophical construction on a renewed foundation. Such systematic ambition is rare in an era when philosophy is often fragmented, and therefore it can have a lasting impact if it stimulates subsequent discussions and work.