Eugene Sokolov

Edelman suggests that any shape is encoded by an excitation vector with components corresponding to excitations of corresponding neuronal modules. This results in discrimination of stimuli in a shape space of low dimensionality. Similar vector encoding is present in color vision. Red-green, blue-yellow, bright and dark neurons are modules that represent a number of different color stimuli in color space of low dimensionality. Vector encoding allows effective computation of color differences and color similarities. Such a neuronal vector-encoding approach has also been applied to the perception of visual movement, line orientation, and stereopsis.

The article presents a historical and philosophical reconstruction of the development of the concept of "capitalism" in the 19th - early 20th centuries. The text describes the main stages of conceptualization of the notion starting from when it was first mentioned in the political literature of France and Germany and finishing with its introduction in everyday practice as a sustainable term. An emphasis is made on identifying the content aspects of the term in the context of ideological and theoretical preferences of the era. It is also important that in its discursive and semantic characteristics the notion and the concept of "capitalism" follows the Christian cultural paradigm.

The paper investigates the video game discourse of the Russian state media from 2011 to 2015. Critical discourse analysis serves as a methodological framework for this work, and Foucault’s power/knowledge model is used to explain the logic behind the «grotesque discourses». In the Russian press, video games are described as an instance of inculcation, provoking overintense emotions and forcing individuals to commit symbolic acts impossible from the standpoint of “normal” pedagogy. The paper problematizes the mythologization of violence in video games and identifies the main tropes used to establish the connection between video games and violence (murders) as “natural” and “obvious”. Particular attention is paid to the publications of Aleksandr Minkin, a reporter at “Moskovskij Komsomolets” (“Moscow Komsomol Member”) and one of the most prominent critics of video games, as well as to the media coverage of the first school shooting in Russia (shooting at school № 263 in 2014). It is shown that video games are used in the media discourse as an explanatory principle that allows a shift from the crime to the criminal, to those acts which reveal moral depravity or psychological disorder, and those circumstances which foster criminalism. Pointing to the games helps restore the “normal” connection between social and moral qualities, explaining the crime committed by an honours student from a “good family” as being the result of the depictions of violence in video games affecting the child’s psyche. Video games are also described as a factor in shaping the “digital generation” or “generation of gamers” — odd and politically dangerous. The dangers that games create for both gamers and society in general (the non-distinction between the “real” and the “virtual”, the illusion of a “possible restart”) allow the journalists and experts to insist on strengthening measures of supervision and protection, and expanding legal and medical control.

Introduction.The article is devoted to the consideration of the conditions and possibilities of a positive study of the philosophy of the East. The world and domestic experience in interpreting the texts of Eastern thinkers was based on those cognitive methodological strategies that were formed in the mainstream of classical Oriental studies and have a pronounced philological, historical or regional character. This formed only a distorted view of the philosophical heritage of the peoples of the East. Such an approach gave grounds to classify the analyzed texts either as philosophical prehistory, or as non–philosophy in general. Therefore, the objectives of the article are, firstly, to clarify the reasons why an adequate perception of the essential and constitutive parameters of the philosophy of the East is difficult. Secondly, the clarification of those epistemological a priori, within which the philosophical East will manifest itself in the fullness of its revelations.Methodology and sources. The obtained research results were based on 1) works on the history of Russian Oriental studies; 2) classical Chinese (Taoist and Buddhist) texts; 3) the works of E.A. Torchinov, which served as a methodological guide for the article. The author also paid attention to clarifying those necessary "conditions of possibility" that can serve as a kind of methodological basic preset. Based on it, a specific toolset would be formed, used in the philosophical analysis of specific texts or text arrays.Results and discussion. E.A. Torchinov's legacy is taken as an example of the successful experience of philosophical interpretation of the texts of Eastern (in particular Chinese) thinkers. The works of the St. Petersburg researcher can be divided into several groups, the unification of which made it possible to create a conditional “layout” of system integralities. These are analysts: 1) text; 2) theory and practice; 3) integral constructions; 4) doctrine, historically manifested in a variety of forms; and 5) results, i.e. the presentation of their own texts, “stylistically” authentic autochthonous material.Conclusion. Today, for us, the philosophy of the East is an almost completely closed "continent". The disregard for the study of the East, characteristic of Russian science, largely reproduces the situation that has developed in humanitarian knowledge as such. One of the reasons is an epistemological preset, a certain mood of our cognitive apparatus. The works of E.A. Torchinov can serve as a successful example of a study adequate to the object of Eastern philosophy.

Introduction. Socio-political disciplines are an important component of the Humanities of the Soviet period of Russian history. Scientific communism, introduced as a compulsory subject in all Higher education institutions of the USSR in the last 30 years of the state's existence, was considered as the final expression of all the theoretical propositions of Marxism-Leninism. The article attempts to consider Scientific communism as a speculative speculative construction that, on the one hand, reproduces the terminological, logical, semantic and operational regulations of classical philosophical systems, and on the other hand, is a privileged mechanism of discursive production. As a typical example of how and through what tools the doctrine is legitimized, the texts of the work of A. K. Belykh, who for almost 30 years headed the Department of the theory of scientific communism at the faculty of philosophy of LSU (now SPBU).Methodology and sources. Methodologically, the work is based on a philosophical analysis of texts representative of the epoch (D. de Tracy, grammar of Port Royal, Soviet Russian philosophers who worked in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, monographs by A. K. Belykh), included in the approved canonical corpus of Marxism-Leninism.Results and discussion. Scientific communism, now virtually removed from historical memory, was an interesting example of how social thought evolved during the Soviet period of Russian history. The corpus of socio-political disciplines, which included Marxist-Leninist philosophy (dialectical materialism and historical materialism), political economy, history of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, and scientific communism, was a single complex of speculative doctrine. All these disciplines, positioned as scientific knowledge, can be fully evaluated only in the context of the main trends in the development of social and philosophical knowledge of the New time, set by the Enlightenment era. Symbolic points of reference here can be considered projects of ”universal grammar” (Port Royal) and ”ideology” (Destute de Tracy).Conclusion. Scientific communism is not an accidental, but characteristic of Russian thought, intellectual construct. Collective, i. e. a large number of people are involved in its implementation, which means it can be considered as a well-formed direction of social thought. Among the historical analogs that use the same strategic and tactical Arsenal of means of expression and discursive fixation, it can be compared and likened to the wellknown speculative constructs of a theological nature: high scholasticism.

Processes and tendencies that became substantial and determinative when forming integrity of a human being in the modern world are analyzed in the article. The "mounting" of identity by means of life arrangement has a major value, i.e. those forms of daily routine, in particular its artistic working-through, due to which the unique complex of a man is manifested. It is significant that the artistic working-through of some segments of the "habitat", their account and mass production not necessarily lead to total unification and standardization, but, on the opposite, can be only a stage when forming unique individuality of a man.