Topic of the Issue: “VALUES AND MEANINGS”
Issue editor: Nikolay Mihailov
CONTENTS & Abstracts & Keywords
Silviya Mineva – Technological Progress, Economy of Knowledge, and Ethics in the Globalized World of Digital Civilization
Abstract: The article describes and analyzes the need for, and subject field, of an ethics of intellectual technologies seen as a critical discourse on, and corrective of, their development. For this purpose, the discussion includes analysis and commentary on tendencies and phenomena that characterize technological progress, including digitization, computer literacy, economy of knowledge, globalization, etc., in terms of their moral perspectives and moral risks.
Keywords: technological progress, datability, Internet of Things, computer literacy, economy of knowledge, globalization, digital cosmopolitanism
Valentina Dramalieva – Business Ethics, or Why Friendship is Friendship but Cheese Costs Money
Abstract:The article is based on a lecture given by the author as a PP-presentation on the occasion of her election to the academic rank of professor in 2015. The reference to the popular proverb “Friendship is friendship but cheese costs money”, does not evoke the usual opposition of ethics and business, but, quite to the contrary, illustrates business ethics. It is assumed that the statement gives a good idea of: (1) business ethics – i.e., the possibility to apply ethical standards to business; (2) the specificity of this application; (3) the specificity of ethical standards applied to business. The elucidation of these three questions not only clarifies important issues of business ethics but shows that the proverb is relevant to them. This ultimately helps understand (4) the actual place of friendship in business and why, even for friends, cheese costs money. The structure and content of the article follow this logical order. The conclusion refers to some hazards associated with the extrapolation of the understanding of friendship in business to all human relationships.
Keywords: Aristotle on friendship, applied ethics, business, business ethics, business game, ethical conduct, ethical standards, friendship
Hristo Hristov – On the Genealogy of the Ethical Discourse of Modernity
Abstract: The main aim of the article is to argue the existence of a necessary link between the expansion of utilitarianism in the Victorian age and the problems we find today in the ethical thinking of modern liberal democratic societies, whose fundamental institutions and structural changes of the public field are still, to a certain degree, under the sway of that influential philosophical doctrine. In pursuing this aim, I make a closer study of the utilitarian philosophy of Henry Sidgwick, insofar as he is the main representative of utilitarianism in the late Victorian Age. Moreover, Sidgwick is the ethical philosopher who succeeded in adapting the system of classical utilitarianism to the dynamically changing world of the late 19th century.He was one of the first modern philosophers whose works established conditions for the emergence of the analytical tradition in ethics. Due to this, we must have a clearer understanding of the specific changes in the body of utilitarian ethics in the late Victorian age that brought about the emergence of today's modern ethical discourse.
Keywords: Victorian Age, utilitarian moral philosophy, ethical discourse of modernity
Abstract: The article describes and analyzes the need for, and subject field, of an ethics of intellectual technologies seen as a critical discourse on, and corrective of, their development. For this purpose, the discussion includes analysis and commentary on tendencies and phenomena that characterize technological progress, including digitization, computer literacy, economy of knowledge, globalization, etc., in terms of their moral perspectives and moral risks.
Keywords: technological progress, datability, Internet of Things, computer literacy, economy of knowledge, globalization, digital cosmopolitanism
Valentina Dramalieva – Business Ethics, or Why Friendship is Friendship but Cheese Costs Money
Abstract:The article is based on a lecture given by the author as a PP-presentation on the occasion of her election to the academic rank of professor in 2015. The reference to the popular proverb “Friendship is friendship but cheese costs money”, does not evoke the usual opposition of ethics and business, but, quite to the contrary, illustrates business ethics. It is assumed that the statement gives a good idea of: (1) business ethics – i.e., the possibility to apply ethical standards to business; (2) the specificity of this application; (3) the specificity of ethical standards applied to business. The elucidation of these three questions not only clarifies important issues of business ethics but shows that the proverb is relevant to them. This ultimately helps understand (4) the actual place of friendship in business and why, even for friends, cheese costs money. The structure and content of the article follow this logical order. The conclusion refers to some hazards associated with the extrapolation of the understanding of friendship in business to all human relationships.
Keywords: Aristotle on friendship, applied ethics, business, business ethics, business game, ethical conduct, ethical standards, friendship
Hristo Hristov – On the Genealogy of the Ethical Discourse of Modernity
Abstract: The main aim of the article is to argue the existence of a necessary link between the expansion of utilitarianism in the Victorian age and the problems we find today in the ethical thinking of modern liberal democratic societies, whose fundamental institutions and structural changes of the public field are still, to a certain degree, under the sway of that influential philosophical doctrine. In pursuing this aim, I make a closer study of the utilitarian philosophy of Henry Sidgwick, insofar as he is the main representative of utilitarianism in the late Victorian Age. Moreover, Sidgwick is the ethical philosopher who succeeded in adapting the system of classical utilitarianism to the dynamically changing world of the late 19th century.He was one of the first modern philosophers whose works established conditions for the emergence of the analytical tradition in ethics. Due to this, we must have a clearer understanding of the specific changes in the body of utilitarian ethics in the late Victorian age that brought about the emergence of today's modern ethical discourse.
Keywords: Victorian Age, utilitarian moral philosophy, ethical discourse of modernity
Bozhidar Ivkov – “Simple” and “Complex” Linguistic Signs and the Construction of Meanings. Specific vs. Special Educational Needs of Children with Disabilities
Abstract:: In the framework of semiotic realism and in the perspective of complex hierarchical systems, the article analyzes how the meanings of the terms “special” and “specific” are constructed, and the consequences of the introduction of the former into the so-called complex system sign (term) “special educational needs of children with disabilities”. The author grounds the need to replace the term “special” with the term “specific” in reference to educational needs.
Keywords: children with disabilities, special educational needs, specific educational needs, sign, meaning, significance
Svetlana Stankova – Fake News: Manipulations and Mystifications in the Context of the American Presidential Elections of November 2016
Abstract: The article is focused on the mystifications and manipulations spread by fake news in the social networks during the 2016 presidential election campaign in the USA. The main hypothesis concerns the influence these might have had on the outcome of the vote in favor of Donald Trump. The author also considers the background history of the distortion of truth for purposes of political benefits in the context of the technological development of the media. The methods used in the argumentation of the article include discourse analysis, and rhetorical and interpretative analysis. The data used in the article are from a study conducted in 2017 by Stanford University and the independent digital media company BuzzFeed News.
Keywords: fake news, manipulations, mystification, propaganda, social media, presidential election campaign
Emilia Chengelova, Lyuba Spasova – The Shadow Economy as a Deviant Practice. Theoretical Principles and Problematization
Abstract:: Proceeding from the view that shady economic practices are specific forms of deviant behaviour motivated by economic objectives, the article presents some of the leading theories and concepts of social deviation, and discusses them in their application to the origin of shadow economy practices, seen as socio–economic activities that are legally authorized but in intentional violation of the legal framework and economic regulations. By theorizing shady practices in the wider perspective of the concepts of social deviations (behaviours that deviate from the norms of a given society at a given time), the authors are able to take the study beyond the purely economic mechanisms and reveal elements in the genesis and reproduction of shady practices that are common to most deviations, as well as elements specific to the analysed phenomenon.
Keywords: shadow economy, shady economic practices, deviant behavior, social deviations, subcultures
Abstract:: In the framework of semiotic realism and in the perspective of complex hierarchical systems, the article analyzes how the meanings of the terms “special” and “specific” are constructed, and the consequences of the introduction of the former into the so-called complex system sign (term) “special educational needs of children with disabilities”. The author grounds the need to replace the term “special” with the term “specific” in reference to educational needs.
Keywords: children with disabilities, special educational needs, specific educational needs, sign, meaning, significance
Svetlana Stankova – Fake News: Manipulations and Mystifications in the Context of the American Presidential Elections of November 2016
Abstract: The article is focused on the mystifications and manipulations spread by fake news in the social networks during the 2016 presidential election campaign in the USA. The main hypothesis concerns the influence these might have had on the outcome of the vote in favor of Donald Trump. The author also considers the background history of the distortion of truth for purposes of political benefits in the context of the technological development of the media. The methods used in the argumentation of the article include discourse analysis, and rhetorical and interpretative analysis. The data used in the article are from a study conducted in 2017 by Stanford University and the independent digital media company BuzzFeed News.
Keywords: fake news, manipulations, mystification, propaganda, social media, presidential election campaign
Emilia Chengelova, Lyuba Spasova – The Shadow Economy as a Deviant Practice. Theoretical Principles and Problematization
Abstract:: Proceeding from the view that shady economic practices are specific forms of deviant behaviour motivated by economic objectives, the article presents some of the leading theories and concepts of social deviation, and discusses them in their application to the origin of shadow economy practices, seen as socio–economic activities that are legally authorized but in intentional violation of the legal framework and economic regulations. By theorizing shady practices in the wider perspective of the concepts of social deviations (behaviours that deviate from the norms of a given society at a given time), the authors are able to take the study beyond the purely economic mechanisms and reveal elements in the genesis and reproduction of shady practices that are common to most deviations, as well as elements specific to the analysed phenomenon.
Keywords: shadow economy, shady economic practices, deviant behavior, social deviations, subcultures
Andrey Leshkov – Sound as Meaning (The Question of the Being of Music)
Abstract: This article attempts to approach three problems: 1) What does it mean that a work of music exists? 2) How does the experiencing of a musical artwork come into being? 3) Why does the world of a musical artwork remain ineffable? As to the problem of question 1), the solution the author proposes is that any musical artwork possesses an intermittent existence, devoid of the sort of permanence one finds in works of other arts. The problem referred to by question 2) concerns the conditions of possibility to intellectually experience a musical artwork; here an answer is sought by connecting time-consciousness and intentionality, interpreted phenomenologically. The problem referred to by question 3), regarding musicalitas ineffabilis, is addressed here as related to a certain primacy (both ontological and aesthetical) of the yet unfinished becoming over the now finished being.
Keywords: artwork(s), culture, existence, music, phenomenology, silence, time-consciousness
Kristina Yapova – Seeing Music and Listening to It
Abstract: Seeing and listening are taken as two fundamental attitudes toward music; the former is presupposed by the relation between the object (of study) and the subject (of knowledge), while the latter is constituted by the opportunity to understand founded on the musical act as such, i.e. on the actuality of music. Insofar as motion is an inherent property of music, it is reasonable to distinguish two directions connected to these attitudes. While seeing, referring to what can be seen, moves in a direction against music, listening as a way of understanding goes along with music. Some meaningful historical precedents of musical knowledge, dominated by either of these attitudes, are examined (mainly through works by St. Augustine and Boethius) in order to point out the primacy of listening over seeing for a contemporary philosophy of music.
Keywords: Augustine, armonica, Boethius, De musica, De institutione musica, listening to music, music, musica, musica mundana, musica humana, musica instrumentalis, quadrivium, seeing music
Snezhanka Stoyanova – Building Inner Beauty through Art Therapy Clay Sculpting
Abstract: The first part of the article describes two modern psychotherapeutic methods – the psychogenealogy of Prof. Anne Ancelin Schützenberger and BioNeuroEmocion. After that, the author goes into certain details of the epigenetics perspective. Bert Hellinger's “family constellations” method is briefly introduced, followed by a description of Alejandro Jodorowsky's “transgenerational” psychology. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on the benefits of combining psychogenealogy with art therapy when clay sculpting is used as a way to explore the family tree so as to reach awareness of, and transform, the inherent models of self-sabotage. In this connection, the author examines the “family sculpture” method developed by Virginia Satir.
Keywords: art therapy, inner beauty, self-sabotage, psychogenealogy, family constellations, transgenerational psychology, family tree, family sculpture, self-awareness, self-realization, individuation.
Todor Tsigov – Architectural Activism/Parametricism – Logotopics: Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis Abstract. The advent of language and reason posits architectural perceptions and a religious psyche. The linguistic perception of the world – diplastia, logoptics– creates a mythology, a natural context of life and architecture via suggestive myth-creating images and mythical precedents. Myth creation increases in speed and surpasses the construction of buildings at the dawn of the 20th century, which deprives architecture of context; thus begins the modern stage of architecture. Architectural activism (thesis), which plays a pioneering role at that stage, takes a symbolic-didactic approach in place of the missing context. But the symbol, as opposed to the myth-creating image, activates the anti-suggestive barriers. After activism, there begins a proliferation of architectural currents. Architectural parametricism, based on computer programmes (antithesis) comes in reaction to this. These programmes, however, do not reflect social history and identity. Moving from activism to parametricism, architecture does not take into account the loss of its mythological context, and the need to find a replacement for it. Architectural logoptics (synthesis) offers a rooting of architecture directly in language as a primary source of mythologies. Through language, architecture's primary regulative social functions, needed in the unstable noospheric balance of today, can be restored by means of the myth-creating image, which reflects the evolutionary wholeness of the man-world. A student's project – an architectural logoptics experiment – is presented in the article.
Keywords: language, reason, noosphere, myth-creating image, mythical precedent, symbol, didactics, good and evil, suggestia, diplastia, antisuggestive barriers, mythological context of architecture, “architectural language” and/or regional languages in architecture, architectural activism, parametricism, logoptics (author's term), Bulgarian Revival architecture
Martin Tabakov – Semantic Manipulations in Public Discourse
Abstract: The article discusses semantic manipulations in which manipulative suggestions are made using specially selected words. Some of these examples of manipulations have become established and are very hard to refute.
The notions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” are mutually related mainly in terms of state intervention in the economy and redistribution. It is not correct to qualify populist, nationalist, xenophobic political parties – or, recently, antiimmigrant parties – as “extreme right”, when there is actually a very small “rightwing” component in them and they are primarily “left-wing”. In referring to the National Socialists as “Nazi”, the word “Socialist” is manipulatively concealed.The article also indicates the semantically incorrect use of phrases such as “Turkish slavery”, “corruption”, “king”, “Russophile”, “majority”, etc.
Keywords: semantics, manipulation, the left, the right, Nazi, Turkish slavery, Ottoman rule, corruption, king, Russophile, majority, elections.
Abstract: This article attempts to approach three problems: 1) What does it mean that a work of music exists? 2) How does the experiencing of a musical artwork come into being? 3) Why does the world of a musical artwork remain ineffable? As to the problem of question 1), the solution the author proposes is that any musical artwork possesses an intermittent existence, devoid of the sort of permanence one finds in works of other arts. The problem referred to by question 2) concerns the conditions of possibility to intellectually experience a musical artwork; here an answer is sought by connecting time-consciousness and intentionality, interpreted phenomenologically. The problem referred to by question 3), regarding musicalitas ineffabilis, is addressed here as related to a certain primacy (both ontological and aesthetical) of the yet unfinished becoming over the now finished being.
Keywords: artwork(s), culture, existence, music, phenomenology, silence, time-consciousness
Kristina Yapova – Seeing Music and Listening to It
Abstract: Seeing and listening are taken as two fundamental attitudes toward music; the former is presupposed by the relation between the object (of study) and the subject (of knowledge), while the latter is constituted by the opportunity to understand founded on the musical act as such, i.e. on the actuality of music. Insofar as motion is an inherent property of music, it is reasonable to distinguish two directions connected to these attitudes. While seeing, referring to what can be seen, moves in a direction against music, listening as a way of understanding goes along with music. Some meaningful historical precedents of musical knowledge, dominated by either of these attitudes, are examined (mainly through works by St. Augustine and Boethius) in order to point out the primacy of listening over seeing for a contemporary philosophy of music.
Keywords: Augustine, armonica, Boethius, De musica, De institutione musica, listening to music, music, musica, musica mundana, musica humana, musica instrumentalis, quadrivium, seeing music
Snezhanka Stoyanova – Building Inner Beauty through Art Therapy Clay Sculpting
Abstract: The first part of the article describes two modern psychotherapeutic methods – the psychogenealogy of Prof. Anne Ancelin Schützenberger and BioNeuroEmocion. After that, the author goes into certain details of the epigenetics perspective. Bert Hellinger's “family constellations” method is briefly introduced, followed by a description of Alejandro Jodorowsky's “transgenerational” psychology. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on the benefits of combining psychogenealogy with art therapy when clay sculpting is used as a way to explore the family tree so as to reach awareness of, and transform, the inherent models of self-sabotage. In this connection, the author examines the “family sculpture” method developed by Virginia Satir.
Keywords: art therapy, inner beauty, self-sabotage, psychogenealogy, family constellations, transgenerational psychology, family tree, family sculpture, self-awareness, self-realization, individuation.
Todor Tsigov – Architectural Activism/Parametricism – Logotopics: Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis Abstract. The advent of language and reason posits architectural perceptions and a religious psyche. The linguistic perception of the world – diplastia, logoptics– creates a mythology, a natural context of life and architecture via suggestive myth-creating images and mythical precedents. Myth creation increases in speed and surpasses the construction of buildings at the dawn of the 20th century, which deprives architecture of context; thus begins the modern stage of architecture. Architectural activism (thesis), which plays a pioneering role at that stage, takes a symbolic-didactic approach in place of the missing context. But the symbol, as opposed to the myth-creating image, activates the anti-suggestive barriers. After activism, there begins a proliferation of architectural currents. Architectural parametricism, based on computer programmes (antithesis) comes in reaction to this. These programmes, however, do not reflect social history and identity. Moving from activism to parametricism, architecture does not take into account the loss of its mythological context, and the need to find a replacement for it. Architectural logoptics (synthesis) offers a rooting of architecture directly in language as a primary source of mythologies. Through language, architecture's primary regulative social functions, needed in the unstable noospheric balance of today, can be restored by means of the myth-creating image, which reflects the evolutionary wholeness of the man-world. A student's project – an architectural logoptics experiment – is presented in the article.
Keywords: language, reason, noosphere, myth-creating image, mythical precedent, symbol, didactics, good and evil, suggestia, diplastia, antisuggestive barriers, mythological context of architecture, “architectural language” and/or regional languages in architecture, architectural activism, parametricism, logoptics (author's term), Bulgarian Revival architecture
Martin Tabakov – Semantic Manipulations in Public Discourse
Abstract: The article discusses semantic manipulations in which manipulative suggestions are made using specially selected words. Some of these examples of manipulations have become established and are very hard to refute.
The notions of “left-wing” and “right-wing” are mutually related mainly in terms of state intervention in the economy and redistribution. It is not correct to qualify populist, nationalist, xenophobic political parties – or, recently, antiimmigrant parties – as “extreme right”, when there is actually a very small “rightwing” component in them and they are primarily “left-wing”. In referring to the National Socialists as “Nazi”, the word “Socialist” is manipulatively concealed.The article also indicates the semantically incorrect use of phrases such as “Turkish slavery”, “corruption”, “king”, “Russophile”, “majority”, etc.
Keywords: semantics, manipulation, the left, the right, Nazi, Turkish slavery, Ottoman rule, corruption, king, Russophile, majority, elections.
Nonka Bogomilova – “Let Them Speak!”….Minorities
Gergana Naydenova – Post-graduate School and Post-Graduate Students Scientific Session in Southwest University Neofit Rilski
Iskra Dandolova – Notes on the History of the “Big Excursion” in 1989 (In Memory of Prof. Krastyo Petkov)
Gergana Naydenova – Post-graduate School and Post-Graduate Students Scientific Session in Southwest University Neofit Rilski
Iskra Dandolova – Notes on the History of the “Big Excursion” in 1989 (In Memory of Prof. Krastyo Petkov)