The article juxtaposes Jan Srzednicki’s conception of cognition with Jean Piaget’s psychology of cognition. Human’s (child’s) cognition is syncretic. Various cognitive data are confused, systematized, dogmatized or become chaotic, and mistakes appear. These mistakes can be overcome thanks to analytical, intuitive or logical perspectives. Cognition moves from the sphere of “children’s dogmatism” to the world of “mature skepticism”. The syncretic cognition can be overcome thanks to various cognitive procedures, e.g., analytical, logical or intuitive. The intuitive cognition is primary and synthetic—it is present in the acts of analytical cognition. Syncretism may lead to dogmatism if it is uncritical or to skepticism if it is connected with logical procedures. It is explained to a different extent both by Piaget’s epistemology of development and also by epistemology of Srzednicki’s logical gap.

The subject of this article is epatage, widely spread in modern culture thanks to digital technologies. Today epatage associated to media performance is deliberately constructed, imposing mass consumerism with a ready-made-fictional image, and operating “anti-values.” There are a lot of causes of the existence of the epatage image which violates certain cultural codes. Meanwhile epatage can be described as a response to certain objective and subjective calls. As a peculiar form of culture, epatage contains both positive and negative pulses.

The origin of religion has fascinated philosophers and evolutionary scientists alike. This article reviews several mechanisms which might have led humans to various forms of religious beliefs. Modern studies and archaeological records suggest that religion may promote cooperation through development of symbolic behavior.

The aim of this contribution is to critically explore the understanding, the goals and the meaning of education in the philosophy of education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his educational novel Emile: or On Education [Emile ou De l’éducation] (1762) he depicts his account of the natural education. Rousseau argues that all humans share one and the same development process which is independent of their social background. He regards education as an active process of perfection which is curiosity-driven and intrinsic to each child. Rousseau’s educational goals are autarky, happiness and freedom.

In this paper I will argue that man as defined, at least in part, by the concept of human nature within an essentialist understanding remains a philosophically and anthropologically defensible way for understanding what it means to be a human being (person). That is, an understanding of human being includes, but is not limited to, the actuality of the non-material or non-extended substance commonly referred to as soul. The argument turns on the notion that persons are essentially persons. It seems intuitive to say that I cannot imagine myself as a “not-a-person” while it is quite easy to imagine myself as “not-a-professor.” To say I am a person seems not identical to saying I am a profesor—the former seems impossible while the latter possible. Although it might be argued that I could not verbalize I am a person without having a body it seems that would not permit one to conclude the two are identical.

The French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote provocatively about world civilization from his dual expertise as paleontologist and Catholic priest. This paper will extract from his many writings references to civilizational process in terms of his concept of the noosphere, that is, the transhuman accumulation of knowledge. Basing himself on the notion of a geogenetic process that he described in his important publication, Le Phenomenene Humain (1955), de Chardin considered the evolution of humankind to involve not merely the change of individual members of the species, but in the development of the capacity to shape the earth and its forces by the invention of technology. He foresaw the human creation of a new level of understanding (some would say this is the cyberspace of the Internet) that would be the achievement of a unifying human civilization. The impulse to contribute to and benefit from this wealth of shared knowledge constituted for the Jesuit a quasi-magnetic force that brought together disparate human experiences. Borne in part by his religious faith, de Chardin described in a second masterpiece, Le Milieu Divin (1957) this unifying force as “love”. When a new world civilization learned to harness this kind of love in common purpose, said de Chardin, “for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire”. Possibly because of his religiously tinted language and mystical orientation, Teilhard has not always been viewed a contributor to the field. This paper will offer suggestions for ways to incorporate the French Jesuit among the sources for civilizational analysis.

The article attempts to analyze unconscious cognitive empathy in Sam Harris’ discourse. Harris equates the theology of Abrahamic religions with ancient mythology. However, the expulsion of the Numinous into the sphere of the transcendent, made possible by monotheism, gave impetus to the study of nature and led to what Max Weber called the Disenchantment. This Disenchantment, firstly, led to the discrediting of ancient myths, and secondly, to the scientism of Harris and his like-minded people.

This paper argues that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection offers the tools to break free from the present impasse in order to rebuild philosophy and regain the love of wisdom. Indeed, I want to suggest that evolutionary theory provides the basis for a new, demythologized rationality, and opens the door to the wonder of human imagination.

We argue that the epistemological, ontological, locality and social structure of the world have undergone radical changes over the last decades. The greatest riddle of the information age is whether we can domesticate the “unstable chaos” to “productive anarchy.” We argue that this results in the appreciation of the creative use of the “we do not know that we know” type of knowledge that we conceptualize as exaptive resilience. We briefly clarify the difference between exaptation and adaptation, and we compare the concept of adaptive resilience with that of exaptive resilience. Our results will show that the effectiveness of complex systems in the information age depends on the capacity of adaptive and exaptive resilience.

The study of civilizations is largely motivated by a single question—what drives and defines a culture or civilization? In an effort to locate a civilization—or, in the case of this chapter, three civilizations—historically, perhaps the best way is to call this drive and defining quality the cultural “sovereign.” Historically, in almost every case, this sovereign takes on a spiritual and religious form in the earliest and most vitalized period of any civilization’s lifespan. Conceptualizing civilizations in two phases, this chapter will seek to show that, as a rule, at some point this spiritual sovereign is usurped and replaced by a human and corrupted sovereign. This transition precipitates the decay of Civilization, first explored by Oswald Spengler, examined here with a focus on the point at which the original and eternal sovereign ceases to be the arbiter of moral and cultural questions, and the State takes over this sovereignty. To understand “sovereignty,” the chapter appeals to Schmitt; the sovereign is one who has the power “to decide the exception.” In this way, the ethos of a culture begins as something in which no exceptions can be made by a human being—the point at which the eternal is sovereign. As civilization declines, however, one witnesses human beings making exceptions,as morality ceases to be binding, social propriety becomes a luxury rather than a necessity, and religion becomes a fixture rather than the core of society. This state of collapse is highlighted in three separate civilizations—the Civic (i.e. Graeco-Roman), the Pharaonic (i.e. Egyptian), and the Ecclesiastic (i.e. Western). The viability of any project aimed at “revival” or “regeneration” is also examined and, the author hopes, soundly denied.