The article presents the original research of the problems of Russian province as a socio-cultural and psychological phenomenon, artistic-figurative complex and philosophical metaphor. The Russian province was marked both by the author of this article and by a number of colleagues from other Russian regions as a specific spiritual phenomenon, devoid of direct geographical or socio-political coordinates and saturated with mentally determined features. The chronotope of the Russian province is revealed as a problem of interdisciplinary study. It is proved that the Russian province is not just an environment, landscape, image, place of action, it is the embodiment of the morphology of the Russian socio-geographical and cultural-historical space. The chronotope of Russian province is the embodiment of conflicting feelings and perceptions, according to which the uniqueness and belittlement, brightness and effacement paradoxically combined in one, widely spread and at the same time close space. It is necessary and urgent to reveal how the corpus of the components of the scientific metaphor “Russian province” revealed by the author of this article and colleagues-researchers at the Yaroslavl scientific school is manifested in the texts of culture, both artistic and scientific. In this corpus we have included and at the time justified it as the universally significant concepts of space, time, personality, text, symbol, and as specifically significant, first of all, chrono-tope, boredom and some others. The material component of the province -the city - is verified in synergetic, semiotic, hermeneutic aspects. The mental component is actualized through the motives of a bored person, a creative person and a marginal person. Relying on the opinions of philosophers (N. Berdyaev, V. Rozanov, V. Solovyov) and representatives of the artistic sphere (N. Nekrasov, A. Chekhov, I. Turgenev), the author concludes that the Russian province has acquired the quality of a complex artistic image and philosophical metaphor. This is a consequence of the fact that the Russian province is not homogeneous, it is multi-component, has different levels and different vectors of existence. By analogy with the well-known paradoxal phrase of V. Solovyov (“Russian European”), to the noun “province” inherently joins the adjective “Russian.” Thus, the Russian province in its conservatism and dynamism is an inexhaustible source of cultural meanings and a demanding object of interest.

The article analyzes the interdisciplinary methodology of city research within the philosophical and cultural approach. The authors argue that at present, besides sociological and economic approaches to the interpretation of the city, the cultural and philosophical examination of city is of special interest. It combines both theoretical issues and the practical aspects. The authors present the philosophical and cultural analysis of the city as well as the general concept of chronotopia. The concept of chronotope, proposed by M. M. Bakhtin and his followers, is most often used as a tool for the analysis of fiction. According to the authors, the spatio-temporal diagnostics of the city also has significant theoretical and practical potential. The authors discuss various literary and philosophical texts analyzing the feautures and evolution of the “soul of the city” (written by Russians N.P. Antsiferov, I.M. Grevs, Y.M. Lotman, M.S. Kagan, I.I. Mitin as well as by foreign scholars Y. Slezkine, K. Schlogel, exploring the chronotope of Soviet cities). The article presents other modern Russian and foreign researchers who directly collaborated with the authors of this research in joint urban projects: M. Golovanivskaya (“syntax” of urban squares), “Ural matrix” (A. Ivanov, I. Lisovets, E. Trubina), chronotope of a small Israeli city (E. Rimon), Stanford chronotopes (J. Bender, D.E. Wellbery). Since the city, like any cultural phenomenon, manifests itself within a set of spatio-temporal coordinates, the chronotope can be considered as the basic tool for its philosophical and cultural interpretation. The article substantiates the practical aspects of applying chronotopia to the analysis of the city: chronotopes of the past and everyday life in cities of certain types, strategic opportunities and boundaries of the chronotopes of a given city. The authors concludes that the chro-notopia of city is a transdisciplinary field in the cultural and philosophical studies of the city.

The article presents a phenomenological understanding of musical upbringing, education and training. This approach to the consideration of musical upbringing, education and training is unique because it is the first study of these phenomena from the standpoint of phenomenology. Analysis of these phenomena is carried out taking into account their connection with upbringing, education and training in general. The article notes that the problems of musical upbringing, education and training are a reflection of the problems that exist in the entire system of upbringing, education and training. It is indicated that the use of phenomenological approach can help to cope with these problems. The author uses the basic principles of phenomenological reflection, established by the German philosopher J.H. Lambert. Lambert believed that phenomenological comprehension of the truth of the phenomenon is supposed to proceed through three sequential stages: perception (sensory contact), cognition and usage of the will as a source for manifestation. According to the distinction of the three sequential stages proposed by Lambert, in the article upbringing, education and training are treated as three sequential stages of personal comprehension of the phenomenon. This comprehension of the world is actually the ultimate goal of pedagogical influence, and musical upbringing, education and training. The author concludes that music is the perfect manifestation of the world, which means that the introduction of a person to music (through three stages: musical upbringing, education, training) is actually the introduction of a person to the world, in other words, the solution of the pedagogical problem.

The article discusses the suggestive potential of music, coupled with three key factors that can be distinguished as part of an interdisciplinary approach. The first factor is the ability of a piece of music to impart otherness to an existing subjective experience and relive it in a new way. The second factor is the sociocultural context of the perception and understanding of any musical work, which has historical prerequisites, as music is born and develops as a group communication practice. Thus, during individual listening in the absence of direct communication, the effect of the presence of the Other, “reflecting” the experience of the subject, is still formed. The third factor is emotional coloring, interpreted as the energization of a “consonant” experience, which has a biological basis and can be described as a stimulation of a dominant, based on the concept of A.A. Ukhtomsky. Actualization of a subjective experience leads to a strengthening of the dominant and, as a result, to a significant decrease in the perception of signals coming from outside. The listed factors, according to the author, seem to be interdependent, and their philosophical understanding is of fundamental importance for understanding the role of music in self-regulation. Special attention is paid to the ability of music to actualize subjective experience without the loss of integrity. At the same time, the author does not understand integrity as plenitude or completeness but as dynamism, implying both openness and closeness in relation to something another and new. This approach to the consideration of the integrity of subjective experience allows us to interpret its transformation and enrichment, including what happens in an altered state of consciousness, and sheds light on the effect of increasing the personal resources achieved by music and used in therapy.

The paper discusses the concept of virtue in the modern ethics. The author reveals the specifics of this concept in modern moral philosophy, identifies the place of the concept of virtue in the system of other moral concepts, such as law, duty, obligation, etc., by means of which the modern conceptions of morality has been constructed. The analysis of contemporary research and the works of modern moral philosophers shows that the main change in the concept of virtue is that it is no longer considered as the main concept around which the conceptions of morality are elaborated. The concept of virtue is most often used as an auxiliary concept to express the consistency and determination of a person (his will) in the fulfilment of the prescriptions of the moral law or considered as a result of the consistent fulfilment of moral duty. In terms of moral content, virtue in most modern moral-philosophical conceptions was associated with love, or benevolence. Love, or benevolence, opposes the sphere of justice, which, unlike the sphere of virtue, is regulated by precisely formulated laws and rules. Both spheres are recognized as extremely important: justice as a sphere of laws and rules ensures the survival of society, and love and benevolence as a sphere of virtue promote the maintenance of proper human relations and improve the quality of public life. Besides that, the doctrines constituted around the concept of virtue emphasize that the inner character of moral motivation is a key feature of morality. The distinction in the conceptions of morality between the spheres of laws, rules, on the one hand, and virtues, on the other hand, implies that the modern moral philosophers understood complexity and heterogeneity of the phenomenon of morality and supposed that a more complex conceptual apparatus is required to grasp it.

The article sets a goal to clarify the problem of moral universalism in J.S. Mill’s philosophy as an important element of his methodology in ethics. The starting point of the study is Mill’s requirement: in order to do the right thing, we need to take into account the traditions, values, and moral norms, i.e., universal prescriptive judgments developed in society. The article analyzes Mill’s method of finding maximum utility and achieving general happiness. It is shown that, in this method, universality is the property of moral rules and values to be universally addressed, and this property is based on our common experience as a species. The reverse side of this genesis is the impossibility of absoluteness of these norms and values, due to incompleteness of species experience, which always has specific historical character. Therefore, such rules are subject to change and, while they remain standard in man’s activity, we also have to take them critically. Effective inclusion of moral norms in our search for maximum utility is indirectly confirmed by (a) the example of methodological difficulties in discourse ethics, similar to utilitarianism in the way it seeks rational explication of moral acts, (b) the history of economics as a discipline largely formed under the influence of utilitarianism. In both cases, researchers come to the conclusion that it is necessary to take into account supra-individual experience in decision-making and its influence on the individual. Since species experience is multilevel communication, we can note similarities between the methodology of Mill’s utilitarianism and communicative ethics. It is concluded that the problem of moral universality in Mill’s ethical methodology is revealed as a problem of maximizing communication as the basis of maximizing utility.

The article discusses the differences between the classical logic of science (17th-20th centuries) and non-classical logic (20th century). While classical logic is based on the general properties of the objects studied, non-classical logic is based on the special, individual. The classical logic singled out in the studied objects their common properties that united them and ensured their independence of human. The scientist and his social connections are volatile and cannot serve as a stable basis for obtaining the only possible true result during examination of particular object. At the same time, it was not taken into account that scientists themselves endowed nature with this property of independence. It would be more correct to say that scientist distinguished from all properties of reality precisely these properties as the most convenient for constructing a logical system that explains the entire surrounding world. All other properties were ignored. In the 20th century attention was shifted to the properties of objects and events that determine their identity, which means their ability to communicate. After all, for a communication at least two interlocutors are needed who differ from each other. Each of them has its own origin, which is formed by the context. At the origin of the formation of knowledge there is still no division between subject and object. The surgeon works with his hands guided by his theoretical knowledge. When he encou difficulty, he can modify the theory, thus solving the practical problem that has arisen. In the structure of science, knowledge is embedded in this form, without division between man and the surrounding world. However this last division remains only possible but not essential for logic. The main problem that needs to be further seriously considered is to understand how the social is included in the philosophy of science.

The article proposes to use a generally functionalist approach to create the basis of the conceptual model of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). AGI is a field of scientific-theoretical and engineering-technological research, focused on the construction and use of computer simulations, models and reproductions of cognitive phenomena of the widest range of life, mental, personal and social manifestations. The methodological basis of AGI is general computer functionalism as a contemporary interpretation of the psychophysiological theory of machine functionalism of H. Putnam of the 1960s. There are collective, conceptual and observant approaches to the formation of general functionalism. A collective approach is the collection, identification, coordination, formalization, systematization, unification, codification of all kinds of functionalist theories. A conceptual approach is the analysis and identification of the main functionalistic characteristics, relationships, patterns, causalities that are invariant with respect to the content of cognitive phenomena. The observation approach allows to evaluate from the position of a person or a social community, immersed in the communicative “waves” of the virtual and real world, the different statuses of technological realizations of general functionalism: ontological, epistemological, logical, linguistic, axiological, aesthetic, ethical and praxeological features of projects of artificial life, artificial consciousness (brain), artificial personality, artificial society. As a basic personal phenomenon, which is defined by a system of functional relations, we take not the pain phenomenon familiar to functionalism but the more productive phenomenon of need. It has an advantage due to the breadth of the scale of phenomenological evidence, epistemological adequacy, ontological foundation. Based on functionalist modeling of need, the so-called “artificial need” arises, which can form the basis for the development of AGI. The author of the article offers one of the options for formalizing needs within the framework of an artificial system based on the general functionalist principle of formalizing cognitive phenomena. The principles of formalization proposed by D. Levin and T.W. Polger, who developed the approach of H. Putnam, are used. The author concludes that the application of this methodology leads us to understanding of an observer in the system of functional relations and considers the AGI as a complexity system.

The article continues the study of the circumstances of the journey of the Russian philosopher Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev (1793-1856) in Italy in 1824-1825. This time we examine the stay of Chaadaev in Rome (March -April 1825) and Venice (late May - early June 1825). A special attention is paid to Chaadaev’s intensive communication during the Holy week in papal Rome with two outstanding Russian intellectuals: the major theorist of Russian liberalism, historian and economist Nikolai Ivanovich Turgenev (1789-1871) and the hero of the anti-Napoleonic wars, future prominent Decembrist Mikhail Fotievich Mitkov (1791-1849). The author believes that the personal experiences of Rome and meaningful creative debate with also prone to philosophizing Turgenev and Mitkov helped Chaadaev to develop main theoretical positions regarding the fate of the Catholic world. The author investigates the influence of “Roman meetings” with talented Russian artists and sculptors - Sylvester Shchedrin, Fyodor Bruni, Samuel Galberg. Based on the analysis of new sources, the author disputes the established conclusions in the literature about the circumstances of Chaadaev’s stay in Venice. The article also analyzes the circumstances of Chaadayev’s return to Russia in 1826, in the midst of the investigation of the “Decembrist conspiracy,” as well as the dramatic fate of Mitkov and Turgenev, his friends during the “Roman walks.” The article concludes that in Russian philosophy and culture Pyotr Chaadaev was the founder of research into the fruitful “Coliseum topic” on the ratio between the ancient and Christian traditions in European culture.

Book Review: P.P. Tolochko. Ukraine between Russia and the West: Historical and Nonfiction Essays. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018. - 592 pp. ISBN 978-5-7621-0973-4

This author discusses the problem of scientific objectivity and reviews a book written by the medievalist-historian P.P. Tolochko, full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), honorable director of the NASU Institute of Archaeology. The book was published by the Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences in the autumn of 2018. The book presents a collection of articles and reports devoted to processes in Ukraine and, first of all, in Ukrainian historical science, which, at the moment, is experiencing an era of serious reformation of its interpretative models. The author of the book shows that these models are being reformed to suit the requirements of the new ideology, with an obvious disregard for the conduct of objective scientific research. In this regard, the problem of objectivity of scientific research becomes the subject of this review because the requirement of objectivity can be viewed not only as a methodological requirement but also as a moral and political position, opposing the rigor of scientific research to the impact of ideological, political and moral systems and judgments. It is concluded that in this sense the position of P.P. Tolochko can be considered as the act of profound ethical choice.

The professional pianist and philosopher Alexandr Klujev’s book The Summa of Music is a fundamental work that sets a goal to comprehend the essence of music, to reveal the implicit that is “behind the notes,” that is little discussed but that defines the meaning of this art. The book presents Klujev’s concept of the philosophy of music and consists of his three works: “Music and life: on the place of Musical Art in the Developing World,” “The Ontology of Music” and “Music: A Path to the Absolute.” There is an Appendix to the book, which contains fragments from works on music by prominent authors of the 20th and 21st centuries: K.R. Eiges, N.O. Lossky, A.F. Loseva, T. Adorno, N. Hartmann, R. Ingarden, Schonberg and others. The opinions of these authors, on the one hand, confirm and, on the other hand, complement the ideas of A. Klujev. Therefore, the book’s author creates a kind of polylogue on music.