The article discusses the theoretical possibility of revealing the properties of autopoiesis and recursion in the canonical text of J. W. Goethe’s autobiography Dichtung und Wahrheit (“Poetry and Truth”), determines the formative role of autopoiesis in the development of autobiographical narration and interaction with the genre canon of autobiography.

Key words: autopoiesis, goethe, maturana, autobiography, canon, “dichtung und wahrheit”, recursion

Robert Stecker has posed a dilemma for the constructivist theory of interpretation: either interpretations consist of statements with truth values or they do not. Stecker argues that either way, they cannot change the meaning of an artwork. In this article, I argue contra Stecker that if interpretations consist of meaning declarations rather than statements, they can change the meanings of the objects toward which they are directed, where whether they so consist is largely a function of the interpreter’s intentions. Hence, the second horn of Stecker’s dilemma is defeated.

This paper has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it suggests ways of making autopoietic theory more precise and more operational for concrete communication analysis. I discuss concepts such as distinction, system, bound- ary, environment, perturbation, and compen- sation. The explication of the concepts is ba- sed on catastrophe theory, and in order to make them operational I emphasise their affinity to traditional semiotics and communi- cation theory. On the other hand I propose changes to the semiotic tradition in order to incorporate insights from autopoietic theory, namely that the human condition is characte- rised by the phenomenon of self-reference and therefore also by the unavoidability of para- doxes. Firstly, this means that truth cannot be a basic semiotic concept; instead the notion of stability is suggested. Secondly, in order to act in a paradoxical context, we need to unfold the paradox in time, which again calls for a dynamic theory of meaning.

The article offers an analysis of a number of Russian studies of the work of Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998), focusing on the understanding of religion as a special autopoietic subsystem of society. The authors describe the formation of “differences” in the religious sphere of social life and their “autopoiesis.” The first ideas about religion as the “faith” (“вѣра”) of the prince and the court elite are implicitly recorded from the 10th – 11th centuries in the context of “theological,” reflections on “true piety,” which, like “truth” and “law,” opposed “lie” and “lawlessness.” The term “religion,” generally accepted today, has been fixed in texts in Russian since the beginning of the 18th century, remaining rare until the second half of the 60s of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, it acquires about 20 meanings in a spectrum of connotations from the extremely sublime (“saving truth”) to the extremely profane (“opium for the people”) in the “atheistic” publications of the Soviet period, when the authorities begin to construct “communism” as a global perspective “universe of truth,” in which “atheism” must be established, and all religions must “die off.” Modern Russian religious studies “academically” describe the phenomenon of religion in a number of specialized research areas with its own distinctions of “true/false,” including understanding it as an “autopoiesis” of the beliefs of our fellow citizens and their communities as “actors” of communication processes that are part of the social subsystems of science, rights, media, etc. with its “atheistic/religious” distinctions. The publications of the 21st century discuss the variety of meanings of the Latin word “religio” and its derivatives, denoting both the infinitely complex and indescribable “extra-linguistic reality” of a person’s existence in the world, and local forms of “observing of the unknown,” reducing everything “unmastered” to the languages of the confessional “piety” and individual or group “vernacular religiosity,” which today can be understood “theologically,” “atheistically” or “academically.”

Key words: religion, atheism, russia, vernacular religiosity, analysis of differences, autopoiesis, n. luhmann

The course on nature coincides with the re-working of Merleau-Ponty’s breakthrough towards an ontology and therefore plays a primordial role. The appearance of an interrogation of nature is inscribed in the movement of thought that comes after the Phenomenology of Perception. What is at issue is to show that the ontological mode of the perceived object – not the unity of a positive sense but the unity of a style that shows through in filigree in the sensible aspects has a universal meaning, that the description of the perceived world can give way to a philosophy of perception and therefore to a theory of truth. The analysis of linguistic expression to which the philosophy of perception leads opens out onto a definition of meaning as institution, understood as what inaugurates an open series of expressive appropriations. It is this theory of institution that turns the analysis of the perceived in the direction of a reflection on nature: the perceived is no longer the originary in its difference from the derived but the natural in its difference from the instituted. Nature is the “non-constructed, non-instituted,” and thereby, the source of expression: “nature is what has a sense without this sense having been posited by thought.”\\The first part of the course, which consists in a historical overview, must not be considered as a mere introduction. In fact, the problem of nature is brought out into the open by means of the history of Western metaphysics, in which Descartes is the emblematic figure. The problem consists in the duality at once unsatisfactory and unsurpassable – between two approaches to nature: the one which accentuates its determinability and therefore its transparency to the understanding; the other which emphasizes the irreducible facticity of nature and tends therefore to valorize the viewpoint of the senses. To conceive nature is to constitute a concept of it that allows us to “take possession” of this duality, that is, to found the duality. The second part of the course attempts to develop this concept of nature by drawing upon the results of contemporary science. Thus a philosophy of nature is sketched that can be summarized in four propositions: 1) the totality is no less real than the parts; 2) there is a reality of the negative and therefore no alternative between being and nothingmess; 3) a natural event is not assigned to a unique spatio-temporal localization; and 4) there is generality only as generativity.

Purpose: There is a lack of epistemological considerations in religious studies methodologies, which have resulted in an on-going critique in this field. In addressing this critique, the researcher’s observer effect needs to be actively accounted for owing to the influence of the researcher’s epistemology in the author’s research. This paper aims to answer the question of why a researcher should address one’s epistemology in the research. Design/methodology/approach – Using second-order cybernetics as an approach, observer dependence is exemplified and justified in the context of religious studies research methodology. The research activity is shown as a relational temporal coupling that introduces inter-subjective aspects to the research. The research process is analysed showing the need to provide scope for the researcher’s epistemology in one’s research. Findings: A relational observer-dependent approach to research embraces the epistemology of the researcher and the participants providing equality in the relationship. The research results are thus framed according to the nature of the relationship and are thus not detached. This addresses social justice and reduces troubling truth claims. Research limitations/implications – This first paper focuses on the question of why epistemology should be included in scholarly research. A detailed framework for how scholars may achieve this goal is to be part of the future study and is not presented in this paper. Practical implications: In many positivist approaches there is a motivation to hide the researcher; however, recently there has been a move towards including authors in the first person, realising that science is tied to politics, which does not reach its ideals of objectivity. Cybernetics is presented as an approach to addressing the move from “objective” to “subjective” research. Social implications – Researchers cannot get into the minds of their participants and thus an authorial privileged presentation by the researcher of the participant’s experiences is fraught with epistemological weaknesses. Attempting to own one’s own epistemology could address social justice in research by personalising the research and accounting for the observer effect and the inter-subjective attributes of the research relationship. Originality/value – The principle of observer dependence in cybernetics is not new; however, a research approach that focuses on the nature of knowing and how this may influence one’s research in religious studies is uncommon. It is thus presented here as a viable option to address the critique of epistemologically weak research methodology in religious studies.

Key words: intersubjectivity, research methodology, second-order cybernetics, epistemology, observer dependence, religious studies

Shaun Gallagher applies enactivist thinking to a staggeringly wide range of topics in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, even venturing into the realms of biological anthropology. One prominent point Gallagher makes that the holistic approach of enactivism makes it less amenable to scientific investigation than the cognitivist framework it seeks to replace, and should be seen as a “philosophy of nature” rather than a scientific research program. Gallagher also gives truth to the saying that “if you want new ideas, read old books”, showing how the insights of the American pragmatists, particularly Dewey and Mead, offer a variety of resources and tools that can be brought to bear on modern day enactivism. Here, I suggest that the adoption of enactivist thinking would undermine the assumptions of certain scientific positions, requiring their abandonment, rather than simply making it more difficult to conduct research within an enactivist framework. I then discuss how Mead’s work has been used previously as a “pragmatist intervention” to help resolve problems in a related 4E endeavour, Gibson’s ecological psychology, and make a case for the inclusion of radical behaviorism as another pragmatist resource for 4E cognition. I conclude with a plea for further enactivist intervention in studies of comparative cognition.

There are many varieties of epistemological and cognitive constructivism. They have in common an appreciation of the failures of centuries of attempts to realize a correspondence notion of truth and representation, and they all propose some constructivist programme as an alternative. The programmatic proposals, however, can differ greatly. Some contemporary constructivisms that are being vigorously advocated propose a social form of idealism with a consequent relativism. Such proposals risk giving constructivism a bad name. The main burden of this article is to show that such an idealism and relativism is not forced by constructivism, but, instead, is the result of an additional and questionable presupposition. Constructivism per se is a strong epistemological position that is fully compatible with realism.

Key words: cognition, constructivism, correspondence, encoding, epistemology, idealism, realism, relativism, representation

The article considers peculiarities of modern subject-object relation son the basis of radical constructivism and their key question – the problem of verity. It reveals that the vector of a new definition of subjectivity through epistemology of radical constructivism is risky for false subject-object relations picture, due to the loss of differences between real and virtual reality, limitation of postmodern tendencies to stop the gap between the reality and the world of simulacris. Ourvisionofpeculiaritiesofsubjectivenatureofcognitionandaman’ssubjectivityfromthepointofviewof subjective and objective dialectics in the verity as well as their criteria, suggests the reasoning of introducing the term “criteria of mistaking” into epistemology. As we see the problem, radical constructivism uses just on criteria of versions of mistaking, though it rejects the problem of grounds of cognition. Moreover, it is clear that radical constructivism stands for general line of modern social epistemologies, it revealed the vector of postmodernist culture as a tendency for cognition to alter into pure game with its constant and changing simulacris – rules, ideas, signs, reflecting the reality in a distorted way, without any connection with it, and even hiding the reality, sometimes.…

Key words: subject, object, subjectivity of knowledge, truth, radical constructivism, the criterion of error, virtual reality, simulacris

Open peer commentary on the article “Enaction as a Lived Experience: Towards a Radical Neurophenomenology” by Claire Petitmengin. Upshot: Petitmengin’s strategy of dissolution of the “hard problem” of consciousness is shown to rely on some radical phenomenological premises that are listed and analyzed. It presupposes a starting point of research in a state of epoché (or suspension of judgment); it unfolds into a participatory conception of truth; and it ends in a quest for non-dual pristine experience. Each one of these moves is endorsed and amplified.