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THE LIMITS OF APPLICABILITY FOR VISUAL INFORMATION PERCEPTION’S PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2015. Issue 1 (3). P. 140-146

The possibility to the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception are investigated. The perception of visual information is seen as a part of the information process (generation, coding, storage, transfer of information, etc.). The information process interpreted within the context of post-non-classical paradigm (V.S. Stepin). This kind of perception interpretation corresponds to the methodology of information-synergetic approach developed by I.V. Melik-Gaykazyan. Therefore, the main theses and models of informationsynergetic approach are chosen as bases for the classification and the limits of applicability for psychological theories of visual information perception.

Keywords: visual information, the perception of visual information, post-nonclassical paradigm, syner-getic, information-synergetic approach

VISUALIZATION OF SYMBOLS EUTHANASIA IN MODERN MASS MEDIA // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2017. Issue 1 (11). P. 66-75

Sociocultural transformations caused by the active development of convergent and biomedical technologies manifest themselves in changes in visual symbolism. The rapidly developing biomedical technologies have resulted to the fact that on the one side maintaining of the vital functions in a human can implemented for quite a long time, on the other side a person acquires a certain power over death and can choose the time, place and method of leaving the life. Because these technologies are connected with convergent technologies, they cover a wide range of spheres of a person life. This is the sociocultural transformation that is so obvious and unprecedented, it is impossible to overlook them. Bioethics become a sociocultural response to the biomedical technologies development. Bioethics is intended for protect the individual. So the changes in the symbolism are able to fix objectives of bioethics, that allows talk about designing of a desired future. In this regard, the reference to visualization of symbols euthanasia in modern mass media allows to achieve its goals in bioethics.

Keywords: biomedical technologies, bioethics, euthanasia, synergetic, attractor, sociocultural transformations

PEDAGOGICAL BIOETHICS: A SEMIOTIC ASPECT // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 186-201

Education is permanent and not always purposeful process in which the brain changes physically. It is important which information people get and how they do it. At the same time, the interrelation of cognitive and corporeal impacts of information invokes a bioethical aspect of the problem. Bioethics as a form of modern culture emphasizes the right of an individual to be what one wants, and the duty of society is to provide an individual with this opportunity. Currently, bioethics protects the individuality of a person in the medicine field but not in fostering and education. The specific characteristics of modern times make it necessary to use bioethics in the field of pedagogy. Firstly, visual presentation of information largely replaced the verbal one. Secondly, life itself became a product of technology, so it turned into an artefact. Thirdly, the pace of innovation reveals how frail intellectual traditions are. Fourthly, the innovations of convergent and biomedical technologies create new risks. And, finally, existence in the environment of new risks requires a new degree of responsibility for choice made by an individual. In this case, an individual must make both bodily and mental choices on a constant basis. Bioethics is placed at the intersection of some trends: it protects individuality from the arbitrariness of biomedical operations, assesses new risks, retains the moral positions of philosophical traditions for determining the permissible limits of intervention of the artificial into the natural. Since education deals with different personalities, different situations, a high-quality usage of visual teaching aids requires relying on cultural traditions of perception and individual characteristics of the perceiver. Effectiveness cannot always be achieved using only one point of view. Therefore, it is possible and necessary to use different approaches and methods. This allows speaking about the need to combine different approaches and designate limits of their applicability, and the very combination of different approaches makes sense since each of them is focused on a single aspect. The understanding of the scope of these aspects is fundamental, which is clearly demonstrated by the research model of an information-synergetic approach chosen by the authors. The research position presented in this work opens up opportunities to categorize theories of visual information perception, which is undoubtedly relevant for a methodological regulation of their application in pedagogical bioethics.

Keywords: pedagogical bioethics, bioethics, synergetic, perception of visual information, symbolism of bioethics, information-synergetic approach

A SEMIOTIC DIAGNOSTICS OF STUDY KITS IN THE ERA OF NEUROPEDAGOGY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2019. Issue 4 (22). P. 194-205

People are compelled to change their approach to education because of the current trends: the uncertainty in the world of the future occupations, the idea of education throughout life, education for the purpose of personal growth. These trends allow one to navigate in a rapidly changing world and to easily learn a new specialization; they force a person to receive a more “extensive” education, on the one hand, and a more “compact” education, on the other. In any case, in a short period of time, a person needs to learn a large amount of information, to acquire new skills. It is necessary to use time effectively. Therefore, it becomes very important to increase the effectiveness of education, the methods of transmission and perception of information that must be learned. All this together makes it appropriate to use educational technologies related to personality development and students’ active inclusion in the educational process. The complex of these factors requires the creation of study kits that would competently organize visual education on the basis of neuroscience research. Semiotic diagnostics of these kits shows how to correctly combine and use them without harm to the individual, taking into account the physiological, cultural characteristics, and personal needs. For effective training, it is necessary to take into account the individual characteristics of the brain, the individual needs of a person, especially the transmission and perception of information. The purposeful organization of the educational process is the embodiment of knowledge about how the brain learns: writing lecture notes by hand, the need for periodic repetition of information. Modern man’s overload with information makes them return to reading paper books, writing lecture notes on paper, using markers and studying in a library for successful effective learning. Visual information is remembered better. Much of the information in the learning process is represented visually, at least in the form of lecture notes. Thus, it is relevant to determine the optimal ratio in the use of types of visual educational aids and study kits.

Keywords: semiotics diagnostics, neuroscience, neuropedagogy, synergetics, perception of visual information, education

PROSPECTS OF EDUTAINMENT IN PEDAGOGICAL BIOETHICS // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 312-325

Currently, animation technologies have become the leading element of edutainment. Since edutainment is intended more for children’s education, the preference of this technology becomes clear. Entertaining and surprising forms have also found their application in adult education, in particular, in the creation of various resources for “digital” education. Such a spectrum of implementation of edutainment (from the education of children to the education of adults) poses the problem of determining the boundaries of the application of the visualization methods used. The diagnosis of these boundaries has a semiotic essence. Positions and methodological initiatives of pedagogical bioethics are relevant for the diagnosis of these boundaries. These positions and initiatives are dictated by the definition of the relationship between ethical, communicative, and value limits of various loci in the educational space. The limits are established in order to protect individual life orientations of subjects of training and education. The noted circumstances correspond to the directions of modernization in education: the development of modern children with their own view of the world, with their peculiarities of perception and assimilation of new experience, knowledge, and skills. The circumstances also meet the social needs of modern education: the formation of individuals with unique abilities, first of all, the ability for unique reception, acceptance, and interpretation. The development of these abilities and, consequently, the formation of the skills of playing different communicative roles and the independent choice of one’s role becomes a way of adaptation to the conditions of uncertainty in social scenarios, that is, to the conditions of the present and the predicted future, in which the life of a modern person takes place. As an element of edutainment, animation is a universal educational tool maximally adapted to broadcasting game interactive teaching methods. Animation is very important to improve the effectiveness of visual learning. In addition, it is rather difficult to choose a type of visual art that overlaps the thesauri of students, their legal representatives, future teachers, and teachers as much as animation does. The presented accents in the established resonances of edutainment and pedagogical bioethics made it possible to determine the conditions for the development of educational visualization technologies. These conditions are: (1) visualization serves only for clarification, but not for evidence; (2) competing theories should be at the core of development; (3) the design result embodies the consensus of theoretical competition.

Keywords: animated cartoon, animation, reception, acceptance, interpretation

Construction of the semiotic optimum in students’ notes (on the example of an open lecture on ethics in a philosophy course) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 2 (40). P. 120-144

The beginning and end of this article record two literary examples, the meanings of which are conceptually interpretated. The first example – the Unseen University – captures the problem of domestic education caused by ignoring the essence of education. According to the authors, the essence of education is that education systems (of any scale) are self-organizing systems; the mechanisms of their self-organization are information processes (they represent an invariant sequence of stages); each stage of the information process expresses the result of its “work” in a semiotic form. The invariant sequence of stages strictly distributes the characteristics of information by which it is possible to judge the achievement of a “semiotic optimum” (a concept proposed by the authors) in the structure of the educational process at a particular university. These characteristics lead not so much to some kind of pedagogical innovation but rather serve to define the application boundaries for many techniques – those application boundaries that often remain “unseen”. To a first approximation, these characteristics represent the dependences of education results on the interpretation of what the goals of education subjects’ actions express. Therefore, the condition for achieving the semiotic optimum is the effectiveness of managing the goals of the subjects of education. Secondly, the effectiveness condition is the concision of the method of goal achieving. However, in the reality of life, the concision of a method is never a straight line segment connecting the “start” and “finish” points. The characteristics of information are presented in graphical and analytical form, which is not the simplest but the most concise way. A similar method – laconic graphics of conceptual schemes – is chosen to construct a semiotic optimum in lecture notes. The pursuit of this optimum determines the way the lecture itself is prepared. The lecture preparation by an educator is subordinated to the construction of the optimal balance of goals stated in the work program of the discipline, in the curriculum of a particular program, and in the potential range of students’ life aspirations. From the standpoint of the authors’ concept “pedagogical bioethics”, this range of students’ life aspirations should be accepted by the educator in a modality similar to the doctor’s acceptance of the suffering of patients. For this reason, the content of a lecture is not a moralistic sermon but an explanation of the distribution of communicative formats and communicative roles within the scope of a specific idea of morality. The construction of a semiotic optimum in the circumstances of the Unseen University meets the potential of visual semiotics: finding unseen reasons for actual visibility. The second literary example in the article is Hogwarts School since its structure contains a magical instrument – the Sorting Hat – for determining those inclinations and life aspirations of students that students are yet to know how to recognize. The role of the Hat can be played by the optimal relationship between the actual goals of all subjects of education (students and their parents; teachers and developers of training programs; managers of the educational process and potential employers). Hogwarts ghosts serve as a marker of possible errors in recognizing individual goals. With sad irony, the ghosts express possible deviations within the scope of a specific idea of morality. The chosen topic of the lecture most fully corresponds to the research problem: elucidating the potential of the syntax of the goals of the main subjects of education for constructing an optimum in fixing the content of the lecture (translation in synchrony) and the content of the student’s individual work (translation in diachrony), in particular, fixed in students’ notes. It is such notes that can become a textbook created by students for themselves, that is, in awareness of the limits of personal autonomy.

Keywords: Unseen University, Hogwarts ghosts, characteristics of information, communicative formats, pedagogical bioethics

A thought experiment for constructing a semiotic optimum in the classroom (based on the ethics lesson in the philosophy course) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2024. Issue 3 (41). P. 37-57

The article begins with two literary examples from the works of one author. One example is a quote from Harper Lee's first published book. The content of the quote suggests a way to understand another person (“… climb inside of his skin and walk around in it”). The second example is the title of the author”s last book, Go Set a Watchman, which quotes a biblical exhortation. These examples are interpreted in the context of the lesson topic. The actions expressed by the words climb into, walk around, go, and set are emphasized. These emphases and interpretation illustrate the formulation of the research problem: identifying the conditions under which changing the classroom configuration is effective. The search for relevant ways to solve the problem is based on two circumstances. The first is the interpretation of each idea of morality as an impulse that organizes social structure, in particular, the structure of educational space. The paper focuses on such a semiotic result of ethics as the name “classroom” for one of the types of the room layout for holding parliamentary debates. The second is the concept of semiotic diagnostics (Irina Melik-Gaykazyan), which establishes correspondence between self-organization phases, information process stages and forms of the sign. A relevant methodological solution to the declared problem is a conceptual model of information generation that demonstrates the correspondence between the stages of transformation of two different spaces. In the phase space, scenarios of nonlinear dynamics of the system are competing. In another space, these same scenarios compete in the sizes and configuration of the distribution of their supporters (information carriers). Within the framework of a thought experiment, we present a “point” proposed to be interpreted as a locus of a potential “semiotic optimum”. At this point, there is an intersection of phase trajectories, while the intersecting trajectories refer to alternative scenarios. This optimum point creates an illusion of coincidence of positions; however, it is precisely overcoming this illusion that creates the basis for understanding and mastering different positions. We conclude that the first condition (1), under which a change in the configuration in a classroom is effective, is the need to discuss questions leading to alternative but equally correct given answers. Such a necessity arises during discussions on moral issues and when students master the essence of ethical dilemmas. The model demonstrates its sensitivity to a change in positions (a transition from one distribution to another), which reveals the second condition (2): the necessity of training for proactive socialization. The same sensitivity reveals analogies between the change in the configuration in a classroom and the syntax of ethical positions, between the organizational context and discursive strategies in discussions. The validity of this analogy is confirmed when comparing the author results and the results obtained in research fields of “language and learning”, “language and education”. We find that the problem we have set and the solutions we have proposed are pertinent for fulfilling another condition (3): the necessity of gaining experience in recognizing the ethical differences between educational strategies and acquiring professional skills within them. Configuration examples are provided as an illustration. We conclude that the use of the information generation model serves as a basis for thought experiments when designing lessons which educational goals include compliance with the conditions (1–3). The proposed model enables its role of a constructor for “reproducing” – in real classroom time – of intellectual history fragments in which a change of paradigms took place and specific teachings were created as a continuation of those paradigms; as well as enables also a retrospective tracing of shifts in the meanings of morality ideas on stable and unstable trajectories of social history.

Keywords: conceptual model of information generation, semiotic diagnostics, proactive socialization, learning space configuration, educational strategies