The novelty of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is that it is occurring in a globalized society enhanced by digital capabilities. Our aim was to analyze the psychological and emotional states of participants in different pandemic-related contexts, with a focus on their digital and physical distancing behaviors. The online survey was applied during the ascending phase of the pandemic in March 2020 in two neighboring EU countries: Italy and Croatia. The study subjects involved four groups, two directly affected by (...) epidemiological measures and two serving as controls—(1) participants from Italy who were in lockdown (Italy group), (2) participants from Croatia who were not in lockdown but who were in direct contact with an infected person and underwent epidemiological measures (CRO-contact group), (3) participants from Croatia who were in an analogous situation but not near the same infected person (CRO-no contact group), and (4) participants from Croatia who were not aware of any infected person (CRO-unrelated group). The survey consisted of validated scales of psychological and emotional states, and custom-made questionnaires on the digital (online) and physical (off-line) behavior of the participants. The Italy group in lockdown had higher self-perceived scores for depression, stress, post-traumatic intrusion, and avoidance, as well as the highest digital activity and physical distancing than the not-in-lockdown Croatian groups. The insight into the extent of online activities and off-line isolation allowed for the introduction of Digital Activity and Physical Distancing Scores. Self-perceived post-traumatic avoidance was higher in both the Italy and CRO-contact groups than the control CRO-no contact and CRO-unrelated groups, and higher avoidance correlated with higher Digital Activity and Physical Distancing Scores. Being in direct contact with the infected person, the CRO-contact group had no other alterations than unexpectedly lower post-traumatic hyperarousal when compared with the Italy group. The Italy group in lockdown demonstrated higher self-perceived psychological toll together with higher digital activity and physical distancing than Croatian groups not in lockdown, even when compared with the affected CRO-contact group. The study outcomes suggest that the general emergency measures influenced citizens in lockdown more than exposure to the virus through direct contact with an infected person. (shrink)

Inference versus consequence , an invited lecture at the LOGICA 1997 conference at Castle Liblice, was part of a series of articles for which I did research during a Stockholm sabbatical in the autumn of 1995. The article seems to have been fairly effective in getting its point across and addresses a topic highly germane to the Uppsala workshop. Owing to its appearance in the LOGICA Yearbook 1997 , Filosofia Publishers, Prague, 1998, it has been rather inaccessible. Accordingly it is (...) republished here with only bibliographical changes and an afterword. (shrink)

This paper examines the intertextual relations between Bertolucci’s film The Conformist and Plato’s allegory of the cave. The importance of interpretation for the Plato’s allegory is emphasized: it is central in the thematic, in its form, and in the way it is communicated. The interpretation of the world is inseparable from self-interpretation. By using elements from Plato’s allegory of the cave, Bertolucci’s film becomes the interpretation of Plato. At the same time, the reality of the film is interpreted in Plato’s (...) terms and images. The concepts of conformism, knowledge and liberation are explored. (shrink)

Modernity is better defined as a time orientation, instead of as a set of institutions, which usually smuggles in some provincial or other aprioristic assumptions. A time conception of modernity also gives a precise meaning to postmodernity. Modernity in this non-Eurocentric sense, entails several different, competing master narratives, different social forces of, and conflicts between, modernity and anti-modernity, and different cultural contextualizations of the past-future contrast. But these different varieties do not simply coexist and challenge each other, they are entangled (...) with each other in various ways. Starting from observing how different time warps were interwoven in vanguard modernist art, an analytical framework for grasping, understanding, and explaining the entanglement of modernities is spelled out. (shrink)

Globalisation involves both promising potentials and risks. It has the potential – through the spread of human rights, the migration of people and ideas, and the integration of diverse economies – to improve human wellbeing and enhance the protection of human rights worldwide. But globalisation also incurs risks: global environmental risks (such as global warming), the creation of new centres of power with limited legitimacy, a ‘race to the bottom’ regarding workers’ safety and rights, risky journeys of thousands of migrants (...) and not least growing global inequalities. Globalisation, therefore, is a key factor for today’s discussions of justice. -/- As globalisation connects people, it also raises associated responsibilities between them. Until recently, the interest in justice among political philosophers and social ethicists was mainly focused on the nation state. However, this is no longer feasible. Since economic globalisation affects how wealth and power are distributed globally it has become indispensable to discuss social ethics in a global context and to develop principles of global justice. Global justice, therefore, entails an assessment of the benefits and burdens of the structural relations and institutional arrangements that constitute and govern globalisation. -/- The academic discussion of global justice is vibrant and expanding. In my introduction I provide an overview of the discussions on global poverty, justice, cosmopolitanism and statism, migration, the capability approach and different dimensions of global justice. (shrink)

The paper discusses certain aspects of Buddha’s and Confucius’ philosophy that could be relevant for the general philosophical discussion on the problem of freedom, free action and related philosophical themes. Although their philosophical thinking was shaped in a rather different linguistic, cultural and philosophical milieu and background, both thinkers are in agreement at least twofold. Firstly, the possibility of freedom and free action is not opposed to the natural order of things, quite contrary, it is enabled by this order. Secondly, (...) this possibility is being realised through never-ending self-cultivation and attunement to the world as it is. In the context of contemporary discussions on the problem of the relationship between free will and determinism, it could hence be said that both thinkers are on the position of “compatibilism”, nay, on the position that free action is possible only in the context of determinism that sees nature as ever-changing and conditioning circumstances and “patterns”, and not bound to strict and linear deterministic causality. (shrink)

he paper highlights the formal aspects of the educational process that are structurally ignored by contemporary pedagogical ideology. Pedagogy as the endeavour to realise certain specific goals through formation has become the constitutive essence of social reality. Yet, in the same sense that we are unknowingly embedded in ideological reality through shared social practises, we are also blind to the formal aspect of our conscious educational activities, regardless of their actuality. While we strive to establish order, logic, and meaning, we (...) simultaneously recognise the reason, which does not lead to adequate knowledge of content, but to what the cognising subject does not know. It arises only through the realisation of the unsuccessful search for knowledge and truth, which is precisely what the formal aspect of pedagogy fails at. Genuine self-reflection, therefore, can be neither the starting point nor the goal since it occurs rather incidentally in the shaping of the individual. Hegel’s contribution to pedagogy is not that he imparted true knowledge or an appropriate way of teaching, but that his commitment to reason gave prominence to this unreflected ideological core of the contemporary social arrangement. (shrink)

The difference in attitudes, interests and influences of the great powers contributedto greater uncertainty and fear for the future of nations and states. In the pastdecade, revisionist and autocratic countries such as Russia and China have sought toshift the focus from the West to the East and build a “post-Western world order” thatwill reshape the world against American values and interests. In this new period of transition,which resembles the time of the Cold War, the traditional security-military issuesof the balance of (...) power, the arms race, the struggle for territories and the strengtheningof alliances are being emphasized again. A possible confrontation between the greatpowers, where the United States of America is still the leading power in the world, whilethe PRC is the second economic and military power, and Russia is one of the two mostpowerful nuclear powers, could threaten global and regional security and stability.The sharpened geopolitical rivalry between the “big three” will increase tensionsin their spheres of interest, that is, in the regions and countries that are locatedon the strategic lines of separation. The focus of attention is on Eastern Europe and theIndo-Pacific region, which are of great geostrategic importance for the great powers andtheir alliances. Due to the historical connection with these “exclusive zones of interest”,there is a possibility that the previous “competitive coexistence” will escalate into anintense security rivalry. (shrink)

A detailed chronology is offered for the writing of Frege's central philosophical essays from the early 1890s. Particular attention is given to (the distinction between) Sinn and Bedeutung. Suggestions are made as to the origin of the examples concerning the Morning Star/Evening Star and August Bebel's views on the return of Alsace-Lorraine. Likely sources are offered for Frege's use of the terms Bestimmungsweise, Art des Gegebenseins and Sinn und Bedeutung.

In the sense of phenomenology, actions are special cases of acts of consciousness. Within semiotics, first Jan Mukařovský and then A. J. Greimas have established, in different terms, a distinction between instrumental actions and actions which carry their meaning in themselves. But this is insufficient to account for the variety of actions which comprises everything from the creation of artefacts, dance, sporting events, theatre, rituals, and much else. Already those actions mentioned relate in different ways to instrumentality and intrinsic meaning, (...) as well as to iconicity and plasticity. In this paper, I will be particularly concerned with dancing, especially classical ballet, trying to delimit it from sporting events and theatre. Apart from the sign function and the spectacular function, I will notably have recourse to what I have elsewhere term secondary iconicity as well as to plasticity. In the process, I hope to be able to throw some light also on the nature of sport, by comparing and contrasting it to dance, as well as to the theatre as well as, more incidentally, to some other types of action. In a wider perspective, my ambition is to contribute to a general inquiry into the semiosis of actions. (shrink)

In his Grundgesetze, §32, Frege launched the idea that the meaning of a sentence is given by its truth condition, or, in his particular version, the condition under which it will be a name of the True. This, indeed, was only one of the many roles in which truth has to serve within the Fregean system. In particular, truth is an absolute notion in the sense that bivalence holds: every Gedanke is either true or false, in complete independence of any (...) conative activity, whether by God or man. Thus various epistemological notions, such as the correctness of an assertion made, or judgement passed, are reducible to this absolute notion of truth: an assertion made through the utterance of a declarative sentence is correct when the proposition expressed by the sentence in question is true. Given this absolute status of truth it is not surprising that Frege is of the opinion that truth is a sui generis notion which has to be left unanalyzed and, indeed, which is indefinable. (shrink)

In the present paper I wish to regard constructivelogic as a self-contained system for the treatment ofepistemological issues; the explanations of theconstructivist logical notions are cast in anepistemological mold already from the outset. Thediscussion offered here intends to make explicit thisimplicit epistemic character of constructivism.Particular attention will be given to the intendedinterpretation laid down by Heyting. This interpretation, especially as refined in the type-theoretical work of Per Martin-Löf, puts thesystem on par with the early efforts of Frege andWhitehead-Russell. This quite (...) recent work, however,has proved valuable not only in the philosophy andfoundations of mathematics, but has also foundpractical application in computer science, where thelanguage of constructivism serves as an implementableprogramming language, and within the philosophy oflanguage.\footnote{Nordstr\"{o}m et al. give an overview of the work in computerscience, whereas Ranta provides an impressiveconstructivist alternative to Montague Grammar usingthe richer type structure of Martin-L\"{o}f in placeof the simple classical type theory of Church.} Mypresentation will be carried out through a contrastwith standard metamathematical work.\footnote{Troelstra and van Dalen give an encyclopedictreatment of the metamathematics of constructivism.}In the course of the development I have occasion tooffer some novel considerations on thenature of proof and inference. (shrink)

The lecture spells out the difference between the validity of inference (-figure)s and validity applied to demonstrations (‘proof acts’). The latter notion is not an ordinary characterizing one; in Brentano's terminology it is a modifying one. A demonstration lacking validity is not a real demonstration, just as a false friend is no true friend. Throughout, the treatment makes crucial use of an epistemological perspective that is cast in the first person. Furthermore, the difference between (logical) consequence among propositions and the (...) validity of inference from judgement to judgement is explained. Particular attention is paid to alleged issues of circularity in the definition of the validity of inference, and to the ‘explosion’ validity of inference from contradictory premisses. Drawing upon a version of the dialogical framework of Per Martin-Löf, namely, ‘When I say Therefore, I give others my permission to assert the conclusion’, while stressing also the importance of the first person perspective, both difficulties can be neutralized. (shrink)

Truth-maker analyses construe truth as existence of proof, a well-known example being that offered by Wittgenstein in theTractatus. The paper subsumes the intuitionistic view of truth as existence of proof under the general truth-maker scheme. Two generic constraints on truth-maker analysis are noted and positioned with respect to the writings of Michael Dummett and theTractatus. Examination of the writings of Brouwer, Heyting and Weyl indicates the specific notions of truth-maker and existence that are at issue in the intuitionistic truth-maker analysis, (...) namely that of proof in the sense of proof-object (Brouwer, Heyting) and existence in the nonpropositional sense of a judgement abstract (Weyl). Furthermore, possible anticipations in the writings of Schlick and Pfänder are noted. (shrink)

Is it possible to communicate ethics across cultural borders? Not according to representatives of “the incommensurability thesis”, who claim that values and norms are culturally bounded. This article argues against this thesis. A first problem is that cultures and traditions are seen as comprehensive, delimited, and exclusive. Normally, however, a culture develops from and is in dialogue with other cultures. Further, the inner diversity of cultures and traditions opens the possibility of communication and shared understandings across cultural borders. Finally, the (...) teaching and discussion of cross-cultural ethics provide practical evidence of the possibility of dialogue and mutual understanding. *. (shrink)

This paper seeks to chart a concept of historical experience that French Romantic writers first developed to describe their own relationship to historical time: the notion of the “transitional period.” At first, the term related strictly to the evolving periodic conception of history, one that required breaks, spaces, or zones of indeterminacy to bracket off periods imagined as organic wholes. These transitions, necessary devices in the new grammar of history, also began to attract interest on their own, conceived either as (...) chaotic but creative times of transformation, or, more often, as slack periods of decadence that possessed no proper style but exhibited hybrid traits. Their real interest, however, lies in their reflexive application to the nineteenth century itself, by writers and historians such as Alfred de Musset, Chateaubriand, Michelet, and Renan, who in their effort to define their own period envisioned the “transitional period” as a passage between more coherent and stable historical formations. This prospective self-definition of the “age of history” from a future standpoint is very revealing; it shows not just the tension between its organic way of apprehending the past and its own self-perception, but it also opens a window on a new and paradoxical experience of time, one in which change is ceaseless and an end in itself. The paper also presents a critique of the way the term “modernity” has functioned, from Baudelaire’s initial use to the present, to occlude the experience of transition that the Romantics highlighted. By imposing on the nineteenth-century sense of the transitory a heroic period designation, the term “modernity” denies precisely the reality it describes, and sublimates a widespread temporal malaise into its contrary. The paper concludes that the peculiarly “modern” mania for naming one’s period is a function of transitional time, and that the concept coined by the Romantics still governs our contemporary experience. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the impact of Machiavellian rhetoric on fundraising within the increasingly important context of online crowdfunding. The “all-or-nothing” funding model used by the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, may be an attractive context in which entrepreneurs can utilize Machiavellian rhetoric to reach their funding goal, lest they get no funding at all. This study uses data from 76,847 crowdfunding projects posted on kickstarter.com and develops a dictionary for computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of Machiavellian rhetoric to measure (...) the relationship between the frequency of Machiavellian rhetoric use and crowdfunding performance, operationalized as either reaching a funding goal or the number of backers who funded the project. Machiavellian rhetoric is segregated into eight facets, which are categorized into hard and soft influence tactics. Hard tactics include revenge, intimidation, betrayal, and manipulation. Soft tactics include ingratiation, supplication, self-disclosure, and persuasion. Results reveal that signals of revenge, self-disclosure, and intimidation have negative effects, whereas signals of ingratiation and persuasion have mixed positive effects on crowdfunding performance. Ingratiation is found to increase the number of backers, but not funding success. Conversely, persuasion is found to increase funding success, but not the number of backers. Surprisingly, betrayal rhetoric is positively related to both measures of crowdfunding performance. Thus, this article complements the literature on backer decision-making, entrepreneurial methods, reward-based crowdfunding, and ethics in entrepreneurship by demonstrating how the displays of potentially negative phenomena, such as Machiavellianism, have complex consequences for entrepreneurial outcomes. (shrink)

Both interpersonal and mass media communication is demanding for competence of communicators. The aim of this study was to determine the dimensions of interpersonal communicative competence. First, a total of 23 skills and traits were identified that are by various authors related to interpersonal communicative competence. Then, a research instrument named Interpersonal Communication Competence Inventory (ICCI) was developed for the measurement of those skills and traits. After evaluation of the ICCI scales, their total scores were factor analyzed in an attempt (...) to identify the possible dimensions of interpersonal communication competence. The results of the factor analyses are presented in a schematic model and theoretically elaborated. Finally, more insight is given into various aspects of competent interpersonal communication, and the potential uses of the model presented in this study are outlined. (shrink)

In this article, consultation via the Internet and the use of the Internet as a source of medical information is examined from an ethical point of view. It is argued that important ethical aspects of the clinical interaction, such as dialogue and trust will be difficult to realise in an Internet-consultation. Further, it is doubtful whether an Internet doctor will accept responsibility. However, medical information via the Internet can be a valuable resource for patients wanting to know more about their (...) disease and, thus, it is a means to enhancing their autonomy. (shrink)

When putting semiotics and phenomenology in juxtaposition, the first task necessarily is to find out what a study of meaning, conceiving of itself as an empirical science, has to do with a philosophical school, the business of which it is to secure the epistemological foundations of all the sciences (broadly understood). Our answer, in short (but we will go at some length to show it), is that since all results of phenomenology also count as contributions to phenomenological psychology, the phenomenological (...) method constitutes a part of the panoply of methods offered to semiotics. Our second task will be to review the fragmentary semiotics proposed, originally employing that term, by Edmund Husserl, to gauge its value for contemporary semiotics. Since our investigation of Husserl’s semiotics will demonstrate that it sometimes concerns the sign in a narrow sense, and sometimes broadens up to a study of meaning in general, our third and final task, in this paper, will be to consider a proposal made by a close follower of Husserl, Alfred Schütz, whose idea of a system of relevancies, wedded to Husserl’s notion of sedimentation, might be amended when considered in connection with Umberto Eco’s idea of the encyclopaedia. (shrink)

Practically all theories of iconicity are denunciations of its subject matter. My own theory of iconicity was developed in order to save a particular kind of iconicity, pictoriality, from such criticism. In this interest, I distinguished pure iconicity, iconic ground, and iconic sign, on one hand, and primary and secondary iconic signs, on the other hand. Since then, however, several things have happened. The conceptual tools that I created to explain pictoriality have been shown by others to be relevant to (...) linguistic iconicity. On the other hand, semioticians with points of departure different from mine have identified mimicry as it is commonly found in the animal world as a species of iconicity. In the evolutionary semiotics of Deacon, iconicity is referred to in such a general way that it seems to be emptied of all content, while in the variety invented by Donald the term mimesis is used for a particular phase in the evolution of iconic meaning. The aim of this article is to consider to what extent the extension of iconicity theory to new domains will necessitate the development of new models. (shrink)

Semiotics is generally conceived as being opposed to phenomenology, but such an opposition can only result from taking too much for granted, about both phenomenology and semiotics. While recognising that semiotics and phenomenology are historically different traditions, the present essay suggests that these traditions have a lot in common and that their very differences may give rise to fruitful phenomenological explorations. In the first part, we look at the similarities between Husserlean and Peircean phenomenology, and then proceed to consider the (...) different approaches of these two scholars to the nature of propositions, where the discoveries of one can be used to rectify the neglect of the other. In the second part, we ponder Derrida’s critique of phenomenology, considered as an out-growth of structuralist semiotics, showing that, while Derrida’s remarks are pertinent, they miss the real issue. In so doing, we first scrutinize the Husserlean notion of sign, as understood by Derrida, as opposed to how it emerges from Husserl’s total work, and then we embark on the grander issue of presence, which, to Husserl, is never really divorced from absence. (shrink)

Drawing upon Martin-Löf’s semantic framework for his constructive type theory, semantic values are assigned also to natural-deduction derivations, while observing the crucial distinction between consequence among propositions and inference among judgements. Derivations in Gentzen’s format with derivable formulae dependent upon open assumptions, stand, it is suggested, for proof-objects, whereas derivations in Gentzen’s sequential format are proof-acts.

The Essay on Freedom represents a milestone in the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling. Although Schelling already deviated from a strictly idealistic framework with his philosophy of nature, notably from that of Kant and Fichte, because he was seeking a moment of self-positing activity of the absolute subject in the object itself, it was only with The Essay on Freedom that he stepped out of that framework. The central point considered is an introduction of the second principle that was (...) complementary, but irreducible to the standard idealist principle of self consciousness. It was about the ground or nature in God. Only through that duality of principles, it was possible to grasp the positive notion of freedom as the possibility for good and evil. In such manner comprehended, the fact of human freedom in its entirety became relation with the whole of beings. The purpose of such explanation was an attempt to solve the problem that was spanning through Schellingʼs entire philosophy – the problem of the relation between finite and infinite. (shrink)

The late Victorian novelist George Gissing wrote: “I hate and fear ‘science’ because of my conviction that for a long time to come if not forever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under the mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts; I see it bringing a time of vast conflicts which will pale (...) into insignicance ‘the thousand wars of old’, and, as likely as not, will whelm all the laborious advances of mankind in blood-drenched chaos”. The German philosopher Schelling protested against “that blind and thoughtless mode of investigating nature which has become generally established since the corruption of philosophy by Bacon and of physics by Boyle and Newton”. (shrink)

This paper discusses the future of migrants with acute heart problems and without permanent permission to remain in the country where they are seeking asylum. What does the country they have traveled to owe them? Specifically, what healthcare services are they entitled to? This may seem a niche problem, but numbers of migrants with acute heart problems could increase in the future. Besides, similar problems could be raised by, for instance, traumatized migrants with acute needs for healthcare services for other (...) serious conditions. The paper identifies the issues and some positions on them. Arguments for and against these positions are explored. This particular set of problems in healthcare ethics creates several challenges, at both national and international levels, concerning access to transplantation, public willingness to donate organs, optimal use of organs, justice and fairness, and potential conflicts of law, politics and ethics, as well as issues revolving around interaction and communication between agencies and professions. (shrink)

The present trend of resource depletion and environmental destruction is related to a lack of morals in society. Available tools like exergy, ecology and democracy are ignored. This not only makes us unaware of reality but also of the possibilities of avoiding a catastrophe. Instead, economics and politics are often based on myths. The most dangerous threat to humankind is new, unknown diseases, fostered by environmental pollution. This knowledge is suppressed. The author concludes that too much attention has been given (...) to the body of society, that is, its metabolism. Therefore, the focus should now be directed to the soul of society, especially morals and love. (shrink)