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LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN ON COLOR CONCEPTS AND THEIR LOGIC // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 222-234

The paper suggests some keys to understanding Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late notes on colors. The authors point here at the crucial difference between the internal and external relations. This distinction is comparatively common for the later Wittgenstein and appears one of the main contexts in Wittgenstein’s investigations of colors as research of kinds of logical differences. The authors also consider Wittgenstein’s scattered notes in accordance with the following main contexts: language games and their dependence on perception, the relationship between color concepts and empirical judgments about the color of everyday objects, identity, interdependence between colors as a kind of a logical system and everyday language games. The paper also focuses on various exceptions from our color system (from the cases of color blindness to the natural relativization of color logic within a variety of language games). Finally, the authors consider the problem of meaning in connection with the study of color concepts.

Keywords: color, color concepts, identity, logic of colors, language games, internal and external relations

REVISITING THE ISSUE OF SMART TECHNOLOGIES EPISTEMOLOGY AND VISUALIZATION: DOES SMART EDUCATION LEAD TO SMART EPISTEMOLOGY? // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 9-35

The article discusses how the use of smart technologies affects educational and cognitive processes, how semiotically and epistemologically presented the assessments of the role of smart technologies in relation to the phenomena of education and cognition are. By smart technologies, the authors understand modern, basically informational, technologies of various profiles, the main task of which is to perform semiotically and epistemologically the functions of a subject, to replace a person in various spheres of life (where and as far as possible). The authors note that, in assessing the role of smart technologies, some criteria are often ignored and the role and importance of others are exaggerated. To summarize, it can be argued that the quantitative criteria for the application of smart technologies prevail over the qualitative ones, thus allowing the substitution of the essential characteristics of smart technologies to be less significant (secondary), which gives rise to certain unjustified expectations and effects. In particular, the authors analyzed one of these pseudo-effects: the educational situation, when a student is studying a particular discipline within the framework of online learning (smart technologies make this possible), begins to be semiotically visualized as epistemological. This is due to the fact that the online learning format puts a person in front of the need to “discover” knowledge independently for themselves, without having the appropriate methodological training and full-time support from the teacher. The problem is that, in a large number of studies, this situation is viewed as a definite achievement, but, as further evaluation of the results of smart learning shows, students whose methodological training is already associated with a certain methodological “baggage” cope with this role while most students only worsen their learning outcomes. It is noted that, epistemologically, such a characteristic of smart technologies as a functional replacement of a subject is directly correlated with the position of a number of constructivist trends in epistemology and cognitive sciences, according to which “knowledge without a subject” is allowed. The combination of the designated parameters of smart technologies application in education and epistemology allows a number of researchers to admit the conclusion about the possibility of the formation of smart education and smart epistemology as “objectless” ways of learning knowledge and cognition. It is shown that such a scenario is permissible, if not to separate the concepts of information and knowledge, the processes of cognition and information. It is shown that, if this requirement is ignored, the concepts of knowledge and knowledge itself lose their meanings, because knowledge as a process is a way of relating knowledge and information, which is impossible in an outer-subject form. It is concluded that smart technologies, in the context of their application in education and epistemology, should be considered as an additional tool, whose function can be reduced to performing routine, but not heuristic, creative basic actions that remain the subject’s priority.

Keywords: smart-technologies, epistemology, education, cognition, subject

WITTGENSTEIN’S “REMARKS ON COLOUR”: FROM COLOUR LOGIC TO SOCIAL STUDIES OF COLOUR // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 25-38

The main theme in Wittgenstein’s “Remarks on Colour” is the logic (or grammar) of colour. We consider the logic of colour in the context of various reductionist projects in which logical relations between colour concepts are planned to be reduced to an objective definition of colour (it is the first variant of reduction and here we will take as an example a project of Jonathan Westphal) or are planned to be universalized within the framework of a certain explication (such may be the colour octahedron, etc.) (the second variant). When examined in detail, both variants show their own insolvency. We read Wittgenstein’s remarks on colour as a consistent criticism of any reductionist projects in the study of the relationship between colour concepts. In the first case (with Westphal) we adhere to the position of Elaine Horner. When considering universalistic reductions, we look in detail at the work of Gabriela Mras. In the final part of the article, we try to show how the universalist tendency (at the level of initial premises) influences some sociological and anthropological studies of colour (we briefly consider the works of William Rivers and Berlin & Kay). And our article can be taken as an additional commentary on the work of Martin Kusch.

Keywords: colour, colour concepts, logic of colours, language games, phenomenology, colour in sociology and anthropology

PARADOXICAL CONCEPTS, QUINE’S CONSTRUCTIVISM, AND OBSERVATION SENTENCES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 4 (26). P. 150-159

The article examines Willard Van Orman Quine’s approach to the problem of paradoxical concepts in the context of their relationship with reality. Quine’s thesis, according to which it is necessary to resolve paradoxes where they appeared and not to extend them to reality, is analyzed. It has been suggested that observation sentences, being intermediaries between language and reality, in retrospective analysis, always turn out to be the primary points in the development of theories due to the constant incompleteness of empirical concepts. The working hypothesis of the study is as follows: the possibility of a particular theory, as a specific variant of the organization of empirical concepts, is determined by observation sentences arising from the schematization of reality and often producing paradoxes.

Keywords: paradoxes, ontology, observation sentences, theories, universe of reasoning, Willard Van Orman Quine

SELF-REFERENCE, THEORY OF TYPES, AND CATEGORIZATION IN WITTGENSTEIN’S PICTURE THEORY OF STATEMENTS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 213-233

The article analyzes the source of logical paradoxes Bertrand Russell identified in the foundations of mathematics proposed by Gottlob Frege. Russell proposed self-reference of expressions as the source of paradoxes. To solve paradoxes, he developed the simple and ramified theory of types. Ontological presuppositions are well substantiated for his theory; they depend on semantic, but not syntactic, preference. Contemporary approaches in symbolical logic prefer syntactic methods. But Wittgenstein’s approach in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is more interesting, especially from the perspective of his picture theory of statements.

Keywords: logical paradoxes, Bertrand Russell, simple and ramified theory of types, semantic and syntactic approach, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s picture theory of statements

REALITY OF LINGUISTIC MEANING AND LANGUAGE GAMES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2022. Issue 3 (33). P. 135-144

The article contains some considerations on Vsevolod A. Ladov’s reconstruction of the theory of semantics of Gottlob Frege and of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein. The author analyzes some problems of such reconstruction and demonstrates that problems exist. Katz’s new resolve does not eliminate them. Problems remain problems.

Keywords: Frege, Wittgenstein, Katz, sense, meaning, language, semantics, sentence, skepticism

On the subject and method of formal logic // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 4 (42). P. 143-165

This lecture examines the widespread definition of formal logic as the science of forms and laws of thinking. The content of this definition is often misinterpreted, since thinking is understood as a psychological process, and forms and laws are understood as the normative basis for the application of subjective cognitive abilities. Logic, however, is not interesting in the subjective psychological process but is interesting in the objective characteristics of thinking as such. These characteristics are peculiar not only to members of the human species, but also to any process, such as artificial intelligence, which can be likened to thinking. In this respect, logic considers not thinking as subjective process, it considers the objective result of thinking, and knowledge in the broadest sense is such a result. Logic is interested in thinking insofar as thinking is objectified in knowledge. Any knowledge includes content (and content is understood as a set of heterogeneous information that distinguishes one knowledge from another) and form, which is the same for all knowledge. Form gives the content a systematic unity. The source of the content of knowledge is experience understood in the broadest sense, and the source of the forms of knowledge representation is the thinking process. We can say that thinking gives systematic unity to the content received from experience. Forms of knowledge representation through the method of formalization can be separated from the content and investigated in themselves. These forms are the objective side of thinking. They are the subject of formal logic and are independent from subjective peculiarities of thought processes. If we use a computer metaphor, we can say that logical forms express an objective computational procedure that allows us to derive other knowledge from existing knowledge. Such algorithmic procedures have their own normative base that is a set of laws of logic. The laws of logic are contentless and formal rather than factual (i.e., related to experience). By virtue of its formality the normative basis of logic is applicable to any knowledge irrespective to difference of contents. That is why logic is universal. We can say that logic prescribes how thinking should relate to itself. A normative framework of this kind establishes general rules for the distribution of truth values and general rules for logical inference.

Keywords: thinking, knowledge, psychologism, objectivism, formal logic, logical form, logical law, normative basis of logic