Evgeny Loginov

In his paper, Professor Pietro Perconti advocates a social cognition approach to understanding human consciousness, arguing that self-consciousness enhances social cognition. Perconti supports his argument with empirical evidence showing that social cognition capabilities precede the development of self-consciousness in children. However, this paper raises two concerns with his reasoning: the methodological challenge of explaining consciousness through evolutionary processes and the metaphysical issue related to ontological commitments within the social cognition framework. Methodologically, the paper questions the presumption that evolutionary processes favor only functionally useful traits. Metaphysically, the paper scrutinizes the implications of understanding consciousness purely through social cognition, suggesting that such an approach may not fully account for the subjective nature of consciousness. Additionally, the paper highlights the potential for consciousness to be a neutral or even negative trait from an evolutionary perspective. The critique ultimately calls for a more comprehensive exploration of the origins and functions of consciousness, beyond its relationship to social cognition.

In this text I've tried to show how pragmatic maxim and pragmatic deduction of categories could be a thread of Ariadne in the labyrinth of the philosophy of meaning. Firstly I've briefly outlined the historical and philosophical circumstances of the problem. This exposition was based on ideas of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Leibniz, Mill and Frege. Then I made a brief lexicographical research intending to eliminate the confusion over terminology, which appeared in Russell's papers and Wittgenstein's “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus". Secondly I've presented my metaphilosophical program and discussed some general issues like truth and falsehood, reference and convention, coherent theory of truth and metaphysical idealism. Then I've formulated the problem of meaning as a contradiction of our basic cognitive beliefs and tried to show that to seize the fortress is not an easy thing. Thirdly I've offered a way to avoid this contradiction.

After an introductory discussion of Russell's place in Russian intellectual culture, both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution, this article analyzes two distinct matters connected with Bertrand Russell's 1920 visit to Soviet Russia. First, it corrects Russell's claim of meeting the poet Alexander Blok in Petrograd, demonstrating instead that his interlocutor was Andrei Bely, another prominent literary figure of the Russian Silver Age (1890–1917). Second, the article explores how Russell was received by the Petrograd intelligentsia and contrasts their responses with official Soviet reactions. Through this comparison, the paper highlights the divergence between the (non-Bolshevik) intellectual and the governmental perspectives on Russell's visit.

In this paper, I analyzed the discussion on the principle of universalizability which took place in moral philosophy in 1970–1980s. In short, I see two main problems that attracted more attention than others. The first problem is an opposition of universalizability and generalization. M.G. Singer argued for generalization argument, and R.M. Hare defended universalizability thesis. Hare tried to refute Singer’s position, using methods of ordinary language philosophy, and claimed that in ethics generalization is useless and misleading. I have examined Singer’s defense and concluded that he was right and Hare was mistaken. Consequently, generalization argument is better in clarification of the relationship between universality and morality than Hare’s doctrine of universalizability, and hence the universality of moral principles is not incompatible with the existence of exclusions. The second problem is the substantiation of the application of categorical imperative in the theory of relevant act descriptions and accurate understanding of the difference between maxims and non-maxims. In Generalization in Ethics, Singer drew attention to this theme and philosophers have proposed some suggestions to solve this problem. I describe ideas of H.J. Paton, H. Potter, O. O’Neill and M. Timmons. Paton coined the teleological-law theory. According to Potter, the best criterion for the relevant act descriptions is causal one. O’N eill suggested the inconsistency-of-intention theory. Timmons defended the causal-law theory. My claim is that the teleological-law theory and the causal-law theory fail to solve the relevant act descriptions problem and the causal criterion and the inconsistency-of-intention theory have their limits. From this, I conclude that these approaches cannot be the basis for clarifying the connection between universality and morality, in contrast to Singer’s approach, which, therefore, is better than others to clarify the nature of universality in morality.

From 2016 to 2024, we conducted a survey of philosophers to explore their views on proofs of God’s existence. The study asked participants about their overall assessment of such proofs, their perspectives on the definition of the concept of “God,” the most compelling theistic and atheistic arguments, the cultural impact of these proofs, whether Kant undermined natural theology, and their recommendations for relevant literature. 212 interviews with philosophers from 18 countries were collected. Among the contributors are Daniel Dennett, Simon Blackburn, Colin McGinn, Linda Zagzebski, Xing Nan, Muhammad U. Faruque, On-cho Ng, Daniel Stoljar, John Milbank, Robert Kane, Vadim Vasilyev, Paolo Livieri, Timothy O’Connor, Eric Olson, Hamidreza Ayatollahy, Mikhail Epstein, Graham Oppy, Nazif Muhtaroglu, Gunnar Hindrichs, Eleonore Stump, Steve Fuller, Anton Koch, Samuel Lebens, Graham Priest, Philip Goff, Richard Swinburne, Graham Harman, Gunnar Hindrichs, Peter van Inwagen, and numerous other voices in contemporary philosophy. The study results culminated in the book Loginov E.V. (Ed.) The Existence of God? Contemporary Positions and Approaches. Saint-Petersburg: Umozrenie, 2025. 928 pages (in Russian). The collected data were analyzed and compared with existing literature in the field. Here are some notable findings from the study: 1. The Russian philosophical community was found to be significantly more theistic than its English-speaking counterpart. According to data from Chalmers and Bourget, only 14.6% (2009) and 12.5% (2020) of philosophers accept theism (or lean toward it). In contrast, data from surveys by the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies (Besedin, Volkov, Onosov, et al.) show 46% (2015) and 44.7% (2024). According to Chalmers and Bourget, the proportion of atheists (including those leaning toward atheism) is 72.8% and 74.2%, respectively, while data from MCCS indicate 21% and 28.5%. Interestingly, a similar survey among Chinese philosophers excluded the topic of God altogether. 2. 60% of our respondents view arguments for and against God as rational arguments, while the rest perceive them more as meditations or something similar. The evidence for the existence of God is rational arguments: 78% of analytic philosophers are in favor and only 27% of continentals are in favor. 3. Classical theism and the perfect being theology remain more popular in academic philosophy than alternative concepts such as weak God (an imperfect creator), process theology, the theology of a dead God, dark theology, and so on. 4. Only 19% of respondents believe that Kant refuted rational theology. An interesting trend emerged: 90% of analytic philosophers deny that Kant’s critique of theoretical proofs of God’s existence destroyed rational theology, whereas 80% of continental philosophers are more inclined to agree with this statement. Thus, a statistical divide between analytic and continental philosophical traditions is evident. 5. The ontological argument was the most popular argument for theism in our survey. This is surprising since Chalmers and Bourget’s data suggest it is the least popular argument. We hypothesize that this discrepancy arises because our survey included a higher percentage of continental philosophers. Hypothetically, when asked to identify an interesting argument for theism, a continental philosopher is more likely to choose the ontological argument. 6. The philosophers most frequently mentioned in our study were: Kant, Anselm, Aquinas, Hume, Plantinga, Plato, Descartes, Swinburne, Leibniz, and Aristotle.

The article is a review of the philosophical problems of introspection as a method of cognition that are actively discussed in the contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. The article is the result of discussions that were held during the Summer School “Consciousness and Introspection” organized in July 2020 by the Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies and led by Professor D. Stoljar, one of the top experts in this field. The purpose of the article is to describe to readers the current state of affairs in the English language research in this area. Modern theories of introspection have been formed as a result of discussions in the philosophy of mind and epistemology in the XX century. One of them is S. Shoemaker’s critique of the perceptual model of introspection and the related problem of self-blindness. Another topic is the transparency of experience (G.E. Moore, G. Evans). Finally, D. Dretske offered an influential critique of introspection in general. The discussion of these topics led to the arising of various modern theories: rationalistic (A. Byrne, D. Stoljar), acquaintance theories (B. Gertler, D. Chalmers), constitutive (S. Shoemaker), simple (D. Smithies), and others. An important area in which introspection finds their application is the philosophy of consciousness. The article considers the thesis of revelation, according to which the conscious state reveals its essence in introspection: the relation of this thesis to folk psychology is analyzed (D. Lewis, D. Stoljar), arguments against physicalism based on it are considered (P. Goff). Finally, the authors consider illusionist approaches to introspection based on the understanding of introspection as a representative system (D. Dennett, K. Frankish). Proponents of these approaches suggest the most acute criticism of introspection, pointing out its unreliability as a method of cognition, and, accordingly, the inapplicability of introspection in the philosophy of consciousness. Objections to this position are represented by M. Nida-Rumelin. This work does not pretend to consider all the existing theories of introspection and related problems. However, this review can give an idea of the main positions and problems in this area and assess the prospects for its development.

In his seminal paper ‘Truth’, M. Dummett considered negated conditional statements as one of the main motivations for introducing a three-valued logical framework. He left a sketch of an implication connective that, as we observe, shares some intuitions with Wansing-style account for connexivity. In this article, we discuss Dummett’s ‘unfinished’ implication and suggest two possible reconstructions of it. One of them collapses into implication from W. Cooper’s ‘Logic of Ordinary Discourse’ $$\textbf{OL}$$ and J. Cantwell’s ‘Logic of Conditional Negation’ $$\textbf{CN}$$, whereas the other turns out to be previously unknown implication connective and can be used to obtain a novel logical system, entitled here as $$\textbf{cRM}_\textbf{3}$$. As to the technical results, we introduce a sound and complete axiomatic proof-system for $$\textbf{cRM}_\textbf{3}$$ and present a theorem for the semantic embedding of $$\textbf{CN}$$ into $$\textbf{cRM}_\textbf{3}$$.