The article shows, using elementary examples, that risk assessment depends both on the probability of future events and on their results. Various approaches to the integration of probabilities and numerical estimates of possible outcomes are shown and analyzed. The subjective nature of risk is substantiated. An interdisciplinary definition of risk is proposed, not associated with any science or group of sciences. The definition is based on the idea that risk is a consequence of decisions made by the subject, who evaluates their consequences. The question is raised about responsibility for decisions under risk conditions.

The article considers the thesis of epistemic dependence, which problematizes the current ideas about the nature of knowledge, its historical and methodological premises. It shows both undesirable consequences of its uncritical acceptance (such as a possible gap between knowledge and understanding) and the possibility of its interpretation in a more general social context, as a conflict of epistemic interests. It also highlights the need to consider this phenomenon in the analysis of collective knowledge and collective rationality.

The paradox of the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” in the article is expressed as follows: according to the final theses of the Tractatus, we have to recognize its propositions as senseless, but at the same time, despite the conclusion that everything said in the Tractatus is senseless, we must remain committed to the ideas expressed in the body of the Tractatus, since we recognize its propositions as senseless on the basis of these ideas. The paradox is considered from the point of view of two conflicting interpretations – metaphysical and resolute readings of the book. Proponents of the resolute reading insist that the paradox under discussion is the consequence of the metaphysical interpretation, and that it can and should be eliminated. The article shows that the paradox appears in each of the considered readings.

Many contemporary researchers suggest rejecting Weber’s approach, linking the formation of modern capitalism to Protestantism, as completely false. In particular, they point out the complexity of periodization: in their opinion, capitalism did not arise in the Reformation era, but much earlier. The article substantiates the thesis that the attempt to refute the Weber thesis by pointing out the incorrectness of its periodization seems unconvincing. Rational capitalism really emerged after the Reformation and exactly where it achieved success, which gives certain grounds for the hypothesis of the connection between the Reformation and the formation of rational capitalism. Of course, this in itself does not prove the truth of the Weber hypothesis, but in any case we cannot consider it to be obviously incorrect.

The article examines the philosophical foundations of posthuman communication studies – a new branch of the science of communications aimed at studying the nature and structure of technobiomaterial interactions, communications of material and digital actors, their characteristic mechanisms and trends of mutual influence of forces and processes (both human and non–human), leading to the exchange of actions, affects, emotions and meanings, circulation of energy forces and intensities, material formation and discursive diversity, and, thereby, to material changes – multiplication of the possible through the implementation of its specific invariants. A number of changes that necessitate the institutionalization of posthuman communication studies are analyzed: a new understanding of the «human subject» (rejection of the idea of Cartesian subjectivity); revision of the understanding of information (information as a «formation» / procedural generation, rather than a fixed set of data); expansion of the specifics of understanding the processes of interaction and communication (from exchange of information between subjects to process formation and circulation of affects between bodies / objects). A number of philosophical, research and applied theoretical ideas that influenced the formation of the conceptual sphere of posthuman communication studies are considered.

The article analyzes the processes of universalization and localization of the Eurasian socio-cultural space, factors determining the transitive state of culture and sociality of local communities. The processes of socio-economic modernization have a dominant influence on the formation of socio-cultural meanings and motives formed in the course of evolution and changes in the life structure of local communities, determining the confrontation between tradition and innovation. In the process of interaction and mutual influence of locality and globality, a system of socio-cultural markers, archetypes, generating norms of behavior, goals, foundations, values, determining the processes of integration and disintegration is formed. The progressive unification of the socio-cultural environment becomes the prevailing trend in the development of local communities, being reflected on the evolution of socio-culture, programming a break with traditional norms and meanings and the dominance of innovations in the socio-cultural space.

The article explores the way in which new objects of study, such as dance performance and art–practice, emerge in algorithmic aesthetics. The advent of digital communicative practices shapes new means of formalization of dance performance scripts, which nowadays have various technological solutions, including algorithmic ones. Classical aesthetics is unable to describe the technological modernization of artistic expression. The author offers a general framework of algorithmic aesthetics to study of dance performance and art practice.

In modern philosophy, the status of the concept of the thing-in-itself and the history of its origin and transformation are being conceptualized. This article examines the conceptual shift that happened to the notion of the thing-in-itself in XIX century philosophy, because this notion still remains important in the context of the possibility of having knowledge about reality and the status of reality itself. The rethinking of the thing-in-itself in the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and neo-Kantianism of the Marburg school (Cohen, Cassirer, Natorp) is considered. A comparative analysis of the works of all these authors allows us to say that the primary orientation of all these authors is to the specific elimination of the concept of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself outside Kantian philosophy went through changes connected with an attempt to get rid of it or to define it in a non-contradictory (because the transcendent form of thing-in-itself gives us a contradiction) way for transcendental philosophy.

The key point of Laurence BonJour’s coherentist conception of the justification of empirical knowledge is the coherentist concept of observation, which (a) postulates that there is a special class of cognitively spontaneous beliefs with which the system’s beliefs must cohere in order to be considered justified; (b) their reliability is determined within the system as a consequence of our generalization on a set of facts when a belief appears, and it is highly likely to be true, and it is likely to appear in a situation in which it will be true; and (c) the subject has the ability to reflexively grasp the approximate content of his own belief system. Among the main sources of inspiration used by L. BonJour, one can find the conceptions of “language-entry transition” by W. Sellars and “truth-sufficiency” by W. Alston. Much of the material is devoted to arguing for the final argument for cognitively spontaneous beliefs. The review is a detailed analysis of the second part of L. BonJour’s book «The Structure of Empirical Knowledge» (chapters 5–6), dedicated to foundations for a coherentist theory of justification of empirical knowledge.