Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy

Should Shera and Eagan, who introduced social epistemology phenomenon for the first time in Librarianship literature, happen to still have chance to continue their studies today, they would, beyond doubt, find social media as a topic worthy of study. Shera and Eagan emphasized the role of bibliographic tools for intellectual sharing of information, as well as the need for scrutinizing their social effects. We observe that the printed communication sources, which drew attention and were very effective in creation and intellectual sharing of information by the beginning of 20th century, have nowadays been replaced by social media. Thanks to richness of second generation information technologies (Web 2.0), creation and sharing of information take place at a faster pace and on a much more participative scale. On the other hand, free and unchecked interaction of information paved the way for emergence of ‘disinformation’, ‘misinformation’, ‘uncontrolled information’ and ‘manipulated information’. While, on one hand, use of information and knowledge is encouraged, on the other hand, both these phenomena became fully integrated into consumerist culture by transforming into a commodity which is easily consumed by the society. In this paper this current situation shall be debated and a descriptive analysis shall be made.

According to several philosophers of science, optimism concerning communication in science diminished in the shift from positivism to subjectivist philosophy of science. Communication in accounting is also a problem. In both cases (science and accounting) there is a tension between objectivism and subjectivism. In science one of these approaches seems to prevail in different phases. In accounting there seems to be an oscillation or ambiguity between the two tendencies (subjectivism and objectivism) which remain side by side. As far as the information product of accounting namely corporate annual reports are concerned, a polarity seems to exist as the statutory financial reporting practices that produce statutory disclosures are influenced by objectivism, while the contextual financial reporting practices that produce contextual disclosures are inclined towards subjectivism. Subjectivism and objectivism can be interpreted as emphasizing certain modal aspects to the detriment of others. This is the case also as far as communication in accountancy is concerned. It is suggested that a balanced approach can be reached by paying attention to all the modalities, in particular to those which tend to be neglected under a certain approach (objectivism or subjectivism). In addition, both objectivism and subjectivism tend to focus on what is subjected to the law/norms and to bypass the normative side of each aspect. Even in this case a “return” to the modal aspects as sources of modal laws and norms can be beneficial. This paper offers concrete examples of how to improve communication in corporate reports by taking into account the neglected modal aspects.

Theory of gaps (lakunologiya) is an interdisciplinary area of knowledge. “Lacuna” as the term of all-humanitarian knowledge, designates “disagreements”, “failures”, “emptiness”, “contradictions”, “misunderstandings”, “dark places” and other discrepancies in communication. Relative lacunas can be filled, but absolute lacunas cannot be eliminated once and for all. The most important type of semantic lacunas are world outlook lacunas. World outlook lacunas are shown not only in the form of knowledge, but also as distinctions in styles of thinking. Religions and religious philosophical world outlook systems make a basis of mega-civilizations – civilizations of global scope, such as Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, Hindu civilizations. They accumulate historical memory of the people and generate fundamental lacunas of modern mankind. Now, inter-civilization lacunas have become even more numerous. However the real policy of the USA and the West is based mainly on a bipolar basis. The most important problem of philosophy is to cultivate reflexive thinking which helps a person to overcome world outlook lacunas.

This article is intended to provide the reader with the theoretical issues of mass communication in a philosophy of media democracy on the basis of Kazakhstani experience. It analyses modernization of the Kazakhstani society under the influence of mass media. There is evidence of public opinion’s attempts to dominate in the process of vital decision making. Such situation is a basis of competitive environment construction between institutions of information spreading among population. Specific role of mass media in the process of realization of democratic values in Kazakhstan has been revealed. The article provides clarifications for many of the concepts: dynamics of political communication development in mass media; technologies of political power cooperation with mass of the people; conceptual basis of society modernization. Experimental principles of the political science, sociology, mass communication, and mathematical statistics have been taken into consideration. The article concludes by suggesting that there is a possibility to elaborate recommendations for improvement of communicative process, to determine the stability tendencies of political system, to develop democratic principles of existence.

The evolution of communication technologies in human history has led to an emergence of a special kind of communication culture in a modern metropolis. New technologies are changing the structure of the experience of communication: information, message, comprehension are realized at different levels of the semantic structure of the city. Centrifugal tendencies are strengthened in the process of urbanization. The metropolis reflecting the diversity of its functions is turning into a “space of stream” with a polycentric structure, imbued with functional links. Metropolis acts as a device that constantly broadcasts messages. Communication becomes pointless for differentiating between genuine and disingenuous. The need for reverse social bonds makes it necessary to create an effective communication interaction by means of modern architecture and urban planning decisions. Now the formation of a metropolitan community manifests itself as communication without a message.

Some essential, but also topical, issues of an effective communication process are addressed in the paper, which is conceived from an action- and information-centered perspective, rooted in the philosophy, psychology and sociology of action. The study accesses the conceptual framework of cognition and communication management by using the specific theoretical and methodological instruments, and finishes by proposing an original, interdisciplinary and integrative model of effective communication, supported by recent findings in social and technical sciences, and coined in order to substantiate the present endeavors to diversify the communication ways, levels and techniques, as well as to actually improve the goals, motivations and norms of decision making in the communication environment. The practical approach of increasing effectiveness in communication is also present in the work, with the larger aim to enhance social effectiveness itself, as a global result of improving a certain field of human effectiveness by communication thinking, reasoning, knowing, modeling and acting.

A large part of global information interchange on the Cyberspace is neither accessible, nor transparent, lying beyond the possibility of public inspection, participation or control. Yet, an emerging culture of “open source software”, “open access to information” and “open data” is rapidly expanding worldwide. Culture, openness and transparency will most likely shape the future of Cyber-Philosophy and Cyberspace itself. The aim, methods, results and discussion of this paper rely upon exploring the nexus of Cyberspace, culture and society from philosophical and sociological perspectives. As a conclusion from such exploration, it can be observed that groups or users of the Cyberspace adopt diverging tactics for fostering transparency or non-transparency on the Internet, and therefore introduce different kinds of views or problems of social and philosophical enquiry, that appear difficult to resolve.

The proposed paper is in the general field of philosophy of the infosphere and its primary concern is the ethos of the transcending humanity into the virtual spaces of the electronically supported World Wide Web. This transcended virtual projection of humankind is called e-kind. Its nature is seen as virtual and based on the communicated human nature over a talkative web engaging the mind in the debating culture of the e-agora. The motivation of our present focus on the antinomies of e-kind lies in tracing the initial enthusiasm of the developers of the Internet, that has reached much farther than the reaches of science, getting ahead of the awareness of the changes within and the effects on the connected mind of e-kind or its growing self-knowledge as the (episteme of the) Self in (and possibly of) the net. Kantian antinomies of the mind fit to the Self, weaving the Web and getting caught in it. E-kind is talking worlds and sets of worlds, and shelves of sets of worlds into being creating the image of e-agora where ethos, pathos and logos weave up into the entity of e-kind coming into awareness of the power of its Self and the limitations of its existence. The processes and procedures of this transcendence are where the antinomies of pure reason can be observed in the practices of the Self.

The idea of “communication”, which is an interaction of people as a foundation of social reality, appeared in doctrines and concepts even before the World War II. However, at present there arises a vital necessity to create and develop a unified theory of communication through theoretical reasoning and certain structuring of those major sociological theories, schools and trends, which to greater or lesser degree examined problems of communication.

The article reveals ontological conditions of obvious and implicit intersubjective practice. The author examines sense translation as the requirement of communication norm in which cultural speech reality corresponds to mental dynamics of the person in the process of understanding. With account of phenomenological tradition according to which understanding process in communication is possible only as sacral existential senses generation, the author emphasizes the communicative value of existential norm which the individual forms in his conscious life relying on value reference. Subconscious mechanism of value reference directs understanding process, which consists of connecting general criterion of reasoning with subjective judgment; and its result is the judgment expressing an individual opinion. Metadiscoursive nature of value reference act is defined by initial semantic orientation which is accepted as an indubitable axiom. The intellectual doctrine, specifying semantic context of understanding through the ideal and comprising value reference criterion for justifying one’s own position, estimation and action choice, acts as the necessary condition of intersubjective practice.

This paper challenges the common idea that information and communication technologies democratize the archive in our societies and that any individual or collectivity is able to capture, store, distribute or share images and information. We shall take a closer look at the concept of access implied in these optimistic assumptions by exploring the different meanings its etymology offers: 1) the action to get close to the archive and its conceptual derivation to computer science (access) as reading and inscription of data in an artificial memory support; 2) the other sense in the legal field, from its derivation as accession, that is, the property right over a thing and what it produces, 3) a medical term of accession, making reference to the maladies or sudden “attacks” suffered by a body. At the same time, focusing mainly on the contributions of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, we propose a reading of the political tensions passing through the access to what we call “media archive”.

The assumptions of the problem of meaning in communication exhibit a nonlinear development: the problem implicitly appears in antiquity, where is understood as extraction of the meaning that already exists, and has grown nowadays to a central problem of understanding the meaning that combines hermeneutics and analytic philosophy. The sophistical option of relativism of meaning, that admits mutually exclusive ideas, determined the problem of variation of meaning and the question of generation of meaning as unstable process. This manifests itself most clearly in the post-modern “implementation” of simulacra and the transformation of meaning into a networked continuum of communication. The assumptions of the problem of meaning in communication determine the generation of meanings, the understanding and transformation of meanings. All this evolves as an integral real process, compatible to the principle of unity.

Для продолжения существования любого конкретного общества необходимо восполнение его естественных потерь путём передачи новым членам информации об основах соответствующей культуры. Проблема количества информации, «информационного взрыва» вовсе не современна. Более того, она неизбежна для каждого человека, отражая противоречие между количеством информации для обязательного усвоения и ограниченными человеческими возможностями. С точки зрения информационного подхода все общества можно поделить на стабильные (или традиционные) и меняющиеся. Новая информация участвует в процессе эволюционного отбора, в результате которого, либо сохраняется традиция, либо новая информация вытесняет часть старой. Но поскольку последняя носила необходимый характер, воспроизводство общества теряет устойчивость и требует новых подходов. Для общества прежде всего важен баланс между технологической и мировоззренческой информацией, т.е. информацией о том, кто такой человек и как может функционировать общество.

В статье отмечается, что развитие современного постиндустриального общества происходит в динамично развивающемся информационно-коммуникативном пространстве, формирующем «новое бытие» человека, которое, в свою очередь, предполагает глобальные изменения не только его физических, интеллектуальных данных, но и изменение его этико-онтологического отношения, как к окружающему миру, так и к собственному бытию в нем. Информация (наряду со знанием) становится мощнейшим ресурсом развития современного общества: информация сегодня становится мощнейшим средством манипулирования общественным сознанием, мощнейшим средством давления на государства, а также фундаментальной философской категорией.

The concept of information society fully reflects a condition of the modern society. Deep social changes that took place in last decades are caused by development of information and communication technologies. Era of mobile communications has designated a new stage described by scope of broad masses of the population that have access to riches of knowledge. It creates precondition for steady development of society; it is one of recipes of growth of well-being. There is a question how to transform the access to infor-mation to the real increase of an educational level of the population. This can be done by methods of social advertising, expansion of availability of libraries and scientific establishments, forms of distant education. The mobile communications will allow smoothing an acuteness of the problem of the digital divide – backlog of a number of countries in development of information and communications technologies.