Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2022
I. Kanaev, E. Dryaeva
4 citations
Consciousness remains poorly defined in modern science. This review examines major philosophical and cognitive-science approaches, with special attention to the Russian activity-based tradition that situates consciousness in interaction with the world and culture. Drawing on recent anthropology and neuroscience, the authors argue that human consciousness is distinct from other forms of subjective reality found in other species. They propose defining human consciousness as the capacity to control one's actions at the level of intentions, a capacity that must be acquired during life. This definition distinguishes human consciousness from other subjective realities and suggests an evolutionary trajectory, providing a foundation for linking subjective states to neural activity.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 10, 2026
Evgenii N. Ivakhnenko, Maxim F. Yanukovich
Large language models (LLMs) produce meaningful language yet lack human consciousness, creating a philosophical puzzle. The authors argue that common views—either anthropomorphizing AI or dismissing it as a "stochastic parrot"—are inadequate. By reviewing how theorists like Chalmers, Block, Luhmann, Tononi, Searle, and Nagel distinguish phenomenal consciousness (inner experience) from communicative consciousness (functional interaction), and drawing on Luhmann's systems theory, they show that a generative neural network is structurally homologous to a communicative system: it recursively processes meaning but has no phenomenal experience. The concept of an "autopoietic zombie" captures this.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 10, 2026
Viktor D. Bakulov, Danil R. Melnikov
A reflection on the collective monograph "Kant and the Philosophy of Mind" examines how Kant's critical project informs current analytic philosophy of consciousness. It asks which features of experience can be conceptually articulated and scientifically explained, and which point to principled limits of investigation. The paper discusses views of leading analytic Kantians—P.F. Strawson, W. Sellars, J. McDowell, H. Putnam—focusing on debates about phenomenal consciousness. It also considers mysterianism and panpsychism, showing how the same epistemic gap between the physical and the phenomenal can yield opposing conclusions: that consciousness is unknowable or that mentality is fundamental. Kant's question "What can I know?" retains methodological significance, delineating a productive space that avoids metaphysical dogmatism and epistemic skepticism while emphasizing examination of underlying assumptions.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 10, 2026
Pavel Nosachev
The article reviews the theoretical foundations of New Religious Movements (NRMs), New Age studies, and Western Esotericism, highlighting that their advancement is hindered by contradictions in defining each field. In NRM studies, the category of "newness" has lost descriptive precision; New Age phenomena suffer from uncertain boundaries and a lack of unified interpretive principles; and Western Esotericism encompasses mutually exclusive definitions. As a productive alternative, the author proposes Charles Taylor's concept of secularization from *A Secular Age* (2007), which frames secularization not as religious decline but as a shift in belief conditions within the "immanent frame." Taylor's model helps overcome fragmentation by situating new religious phenomena within the broader transformation of Western spiritual life.
Voprosy Filosofii
April 2, 2026
Maxim V. Yakovlev
Russian neurophilosophy, based on articles published from 2015 to 2024, has become a significant part of naturalistic and experimental philosophy of consciousness, fostering constructive interaction among philosophers, neurobiologists, and cognitive scientists. This collaboration has produced original theories and ideas, including theoretical constructions by K.V. Anokhin, A.Ya. Kaplan, and V.Ya. Sergin, the information theory of D.I. Dubrovsky, and contributions from V.V. Vasiliev, I.F. Mikhailov, and T.V. Chernigovskaya. Key research areas include the history of naturalistic approaches, philosophical reflection on psyche and brain, neurophilosophy's potential, its subject field and methods, and criticism. Work primarily uses theoretical philosophy methodology, with strengthening experimental research as a future prospect.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 6, 2025
Lev Titlin
The article compares how traditional Indian and European philosophies conceive of the subject. In most classical Indian systems—Advaita Vedānta, Yoga, Sāṁkhya, Vaiśeṣika, and Buddhism—the subject (ātman, puruṣa) is strictly separate from the external world, bodily and psychic elements, thinking, intellect, and emotions; in Vaiśeṣika even consciousness is external to the subject. Both traditions originally shared a strong soteriological intention, viewing the inner core as a connecting element toward a higher state. European philosophy, by contrast, long attributed to the subject (as 'soul') qualities like thinking, reasoning, sense perception, emotions, and memory, often highlighting the rational and intellectual element as the principal connection to the divine.
Voprosy Filosofii
March 10, 2025
Natalia S. Zhirtueva
The article compares ideas about space and time from philosophical and mystical traditions with those of modern science. The non-classical scientific paradigm views spacetime as multidimensional and relative. Space-time differs in inanimate, animate, and social matter, studied by physics, biology, and social sciences. Social space is hierarchical and boundary-creating, while mystical consciousness seeks to dissolve distinctions through global unity. Mystical consciousness supports non-linear, non-Euclidean biological space with bodily asymmetry. Biological and social time accelerate, but mystical time emphasizes total presence in the present, living "here and now." Prayer and meditative contemplation slow biological clocks, reduce stress, and promote relaxation.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 1, 2024
Maksim Miroshnichenko
The article compares Francisco Varela's and Thomas Metzinger's views on selfhood, finding both reject a stable, centralized self in favor of selfhood as a product of interacting processes. Varela's enactivist approach treats active engagement with the world as crucial to forming selfhood, while Metzinger emphasizes the illusory nature of selfhood through phenomenal self-modeling. Both see perception as inseparable from virtuality and simulation. Ethically, Metzinger warns of issues in creating self-aware AI, whereas Varela sees understanding a non-substantial 'self' as enabling deeper engagement with the world and freedom from rigid selfhood.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 1, 2024
Helena Knyazeva
Human consciousness and animal psyche comprise a plurality of worlds, not merely different states such as sleep, wakefulness, or altered states, but also the interweaving of perception, mental activity, visual thinking, intuition, embodied and situational determination, individual phenomenal experience, environmental affordances, intersubjectivity, empathic experience of self as other, and meaning-making in cognition and creativity. Drawing on enactivism, philosophical phenomenology, and complexity theory, the article argues that epistemological constructivism further supports the idea that the external and internal are cyclically determined and not sharply distinguishable, blurring the lines between perceived, conceivable, partly fictitious, and real.
Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2023
Pavel V. Khondzinskiy
The publication of William James's "The Varieties of Religious Experience" in Russian translation in 1910 prompted a discussion in the journal "Questions of Philosophy and Psychology." Less known is the critical engagement with James's concept by academic theologians M. Tareev, P. Minin, and A. Tuberovsky. They used James's scientific confirmation of religious-mystical experience to address the challenge his pluralism posed: how to distinguish specifically Christian manifestations from the general diversity of religious experience, linking them to Christian teaching and action.
Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2023
Pavel V. Khondzinskiy
The influence of William James on Russian religious thought is well known, but the contributions of spiritual-academic scholars who developed their own concepts after encountering James's ideas remain underexplored. This encounter was prepared by academic science's interest in empirical psychology and by contacts with philosophers and psychologists from the Moscow Psychological Society. For academic theologians, James's scientific recognition of mystical experience provided support for preaching Christianity in a secular world while requiring them to distinguish Christian experience from other religions. The question of how personal religious experience relates to Christian social action further fueled their interest. The concepts of mystical experience by I. Popov and S. Zarin, previously unconsidered, show a gradual approach to issues legitimized by the 1910 Russian translation of "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2022
S. Burmistrov
The analysis contrasts how two Indian philosophical traditions—Mahāyāna Buddhism’s Madhyamaka school and the Brāhmaṇic school of Advaita Vedānta—understand time. In Madhyamaka, time is a mental construction produced by consciousness clouded by afflictions (kleśa); it has no reality outside the mind, and true reality is timeless and free from distinctions like past, present, and future. In Advaita Vedānta, time has a positive but relative ontological status: it is part of māyā, the creative power of Brahman, and exists both in individual consciousness and outside it. The empirical world, including time, is not perfectly real but is not perfectly unreal either, as it conceals the truly real Brahman. Overcoming ignorance means penetrating through the changing temporal world to reach Brahman.
Voprosy Filosofii
November 4, 2024
Ilya Kanaev, Ella Dryaeva
Whether an artificial intelligence system can attain human consciousness is examined by critically reviewing neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy. The authors distinguish theoretical from instrumental approaches to assessing AI consciousness. Drawing on Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Spatiotemporal Theory, and Evolutionary Theory of Consciousness, they argue that consciousness in a material system requires an integral architecture, adaptability, and self-control. Instrumental tests can only evaluate consciousness through real-world behavior, revealing limitations and risks of anthropomorphic perceptions. The authors advocate synthesizing theoretical and instrumental approaches, propose clear criteria for determining AI consciousness, and consider ethical implications and potential challenges if AI systems become conscious.
Voprosy Filosofii
August 1, 2024
Keith Frankish, M. Gorbachev
The classic conception of qualia—as intrinsic, ineffable, and subjective features of experience—cannot serve as a neutral starting point for theories of phenomenal consciousness. A watered-down "diet" version of qualia is often assumed to fill this role, but the article argues that this diet notion has no distinctive content. Once qualia are stripped of intrinsicality, ineffability, and subjectivity, no phenomenal residue remains. Therefore, if classic qualia realism is rejected, what needs explaining are only "zero" qualia: dispositions to judge that experiences have classic qualia. Diet qualia should be abandoned.
Voprosy Filosofii
July 1, 2024
Keith Frankish, M. Gorbachev
The article argues that the watered-down "diet" conception of qualia—stripped of intrinsic, ineffable, and subjective properties—has no distinctive content and cannot serve as a neutral explanandum for theories of phenomenal consciousness. If classic qualia realism is rejected, there is no phenomenal residue left to explain; only "zero" qualia remain, which are dispositions to judge that experiences have classic qualia. The author concludes that diet qualia should be quined, or eliminated, as a useful concept.
Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2023
N. Zhirtueva, M. Kozlov
In Russian culture, magical consciousness—the belief that rituals can influence the material world—dominated from Ancient Rus' onward. Orthodox hesychasm, a mystical doctrine of 'deification,' entered with Christianity and became the moral core through ascetics who emphasized love and national unity. Mysticism, requiring conscious effort, was later supplanted in the 19th and 20th centuries by Western European occultism and magic, which is practical and utilitarian. The article argues that modern consciousness remains fundamentally magical.
Voprosy Filosofii
January 1, 2022
D. Dubrovsky
Creating artificial general intelligence (AGI) that approaches natural intelligence requires integrating phenomenological studies of subjective reality with neuroscientific findings on consciousness. The article identifies key neuroscientific studies of consciousness that could inform the modeling of specific cognitive architectures for AGI. To justify using neuroscientific descriptions of cognitive operations in computer modeling, the author proposes an informational approach that explains the connection between subjective reality and brain processes. Closer collaboration among specialists in methodology, epistemology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience is a prerequisite for progress.