Résumé Le présent travail retrace le parcours intellectuel, dans la Serbie communiste, de Jovan Deretic, grand historien de la littérature serbe. L’analyse se fonde sur ses diverses lectures de l’œuvre de Dositej Obradovic. Elle présente d’abord l’importance de ce dernier pour la culture serbe à l’époque des Lumières. Elle montre ensuite que les premières analyses de son œuvre par Deretic sont ancrées principalement dans le matérialisme dialectique. Dans une deuxième étape, Deretic se tourne vers le structuralisme néo-positiviste pour offrir une (...) approche plus immanente de l’œuvre d’Obradovic. Il aboutit finalement à une prise de conscience des contradictions et des limites de l’analyse immanente tout autant que de l’interprétation idéologique d’une œuvre. (shrink)

Translated by Aleksandar B. Nedeljkovi? Since the end of the conflict in the Balkans in 1995, there has been an uneasy peace between the rival factions. What were the causes of the tragic disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and what is likely to happen next? Nenad Kecmanovi?, who witnessed and actively participated in many of the key events in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, offers a perceptive, seasoned analysis of the many challenges that threaten political stability in this powder keg region (...) of Eastern Europe. Both a professor of political science and a former politician who served in many high-ranking posts, Kecmanovi? brings rich, first-hand knowledge—theoretical and practical—to his discussion of the many explanations proposed for the troubles in the former Yugoslavia. Among the issues he considers are the renewal of ancient tribal hatreds, the emergence of nationalism as the last stage of communism, how the interests of outside powers have complicated the situation, whether the conflict represents a clash of civilizations, the difficulties of building democracy on the basis of an authoritarian political culture, and the possibility that democracy in this region acts as a great solvent that dissolves former political unions. Looking to the future, he discusses the rapid and potentially explosive developments in Serbia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there is continuing unrest among ethnic minorities. In conclusion, he assesses the chances that the European Union will someday incorporate the individual states of the former Yugoslavia vs. the potential for another outbreak of war. This sobering, in-depth overview of the current tense situation in the Balkans is must reading for anyone with an interest in the future of Europe. (shrink)

U ovom eseju autor ispituje jedan od mogucih puteva u postfilozofiju koja ne postoji.

Spontaneous intrusive recollections are known to follow emotional events in clinical and non-clinical populations. Previous work in our lab has found that women report more SIRs than men after exposure to emotional films, and that this effect is driven entirely by women in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. To replicate and extend this finding, participants viewed emotional films, provided saliva samples for sex hormone concentration analysis, and estimated SIR frequency following film viewing. Women in the luteal phase reported (...) significantly more SIRs than did women in the follicular phase, and SIR frequency significantly correlated with salivary progesterone levels. The results are consistent with an emerging pattern in the literature suggesting that menstrual cycle position of female participants can potently influence findings in numerous cognitive domains. The potential implications of these results for disorders characterized by intrusions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, are also discussed. (shrink)

Sake i ostali inkongruentni protivdelovi su dovoljni da odbacimo relacionizam, ili je bar tako mislio Kant, jos od nekih svojih prekritickih spisa. Argumenti sa inkongruentnim protivdelovima su elegantni i efektni, i privukli su prilicno veliku paznju kod odredjenog broja autora, koji su argumente kritikovali na razne nacine, ili ih branili. Rasprave su se pritom odaljile od originalnog Kantovog argumenta, i od duha tog vremena, i primila obelezja moderne filozofije i geometrije. U ovom tekstu bi trebalo da pokazem da Kant, kao (...) i oni koji su ga kasnije branili, nisu postigli svoj cilj - nije dat konkluzivan argument protiv relacionizma. (shrink)

Natural kind terms don’t have descriptive meanings, Devitt claims. The paper argues that this claim is tantamount to denying the existence of natural kind concepts, in the usual sense of “concept”, since concepts are predicate meanings. The denial is counterintuitive, and has bad epistemological consequences, since natural kind concepts are among the building blocks of our understanding of the world. The paper ends with a positive proposal, featuring a bold claim: if the standard Kripke-Putnam, line on semantics of natural kind (...) terms is correct, and if there are natural kind concepts, then propositions analyzing these concepts are not apriori knowable. Analyticity does not entail apriority. (shrink)

Measurements of the dimensionality of chaotic attractors obtained on behavioral data represent the task complexity and also could be hypothesized to reflect the number of synchronized neural groups involved in the generation of the data. The changes in dimensionality for different experimental conditions suggest that limited processing capacity, task complexity, demand, and synchrony in neural firing might be closely related.

In Devitt’s view, linguistic intuitions are opinions about linguistic production of products, most often one’s own. They result frorn ordinary empirical investigation, so “they are immediate and fairly unreflectiveernpirical central-processor responses to linguistic phenomena”, which reactions are, moreover, theory-laden, where the ‘theory’ encompasses all sorts of speaker’s beliefs. The paper reconstructs his arguments, places his view on a map of alternative approaches to intuitions, and offers a defense of a minimalistic “voice-of-competence” view. First, intuitions are to be identified with the (...) data, the minimal “products” of tentative linguistic production of naïve speaker-listeners, and not with their opinions about the data. Second, the data involve no theory and very little prototheory. Third, although there might be admixtures of guesswork in the conscious production of data, these are routinely weaned out by linguists. Finally, mere acceptance of the “voice of competence” does not land us in any objectionable Cartesianism: it is cornpatible with naturalism and with distrust of a priori philosophy. (shrink)

Psychological egoism is the doctrine that all of our actions are ultimately motivated by self-interest, even including seemingly altruistic actions. Although this view is commonly referred to as \vacuous" or \trivially true" because of its immunity to counterexamples, I argue that there are possible observations that can refute this thesis. I describe the experiments, identify the results that could in principle falsify the strongest possible version of psychological egoism and formulate a probabilistic argument against this view. Ultimately, I conclude that (...) a \trivially true" formulation of psychological egoism is an empirical theory that is in all likelihood false. (shrink)

This book offers a readable introduction to the main aspects of thought experimenting in philosophy and science. It presents the main options in understanding thought experiments, from empiricism to Platonism, and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. However, it also provides some original perspectives on the topic. Firstly, it provides a new definition and analysis of thought experimenting that brings it closer to laboratory experimenting. Secondly, it develops the author’s earlier theory of “mental modelling”, proposed some decades ago by him, and (...) some other researchers in the field as the crucial procedure in thought experimenting. The mental modelling approach links work with thought experimenting to cognitive science and to research on mental simulation which is a hot topic in present-day research. Thirdly, it proposes a principled way to respond to criticism of thought experimenting by “experimental philosophers” as they have been dominating the present-day debates. The response suggests a possible ameliorative, self-help project for thought experimenting. Finally, the book provides a way to systematize the history of important thought experiments in science and philosophy and thus connects, in an original way, the systematic investigation of experimenting to the historical work of famous thought experiments. It is of interest to scholars interested in history of ideas and philosophy of science. (shrink)

The evolution of belt conveyors, as an important type of continuous conveying machinery, is examined here in a historical perspective. For this purpose, the selected period is from the ancient time, i.e. occurrence of conveying equipment, and up to the end of the nineteenth century. The basic postulation of a modern machine, including conveyors, is often interlinked to that of its ancestor, which may be simple and primitive. Ancient machines and principles of their work were the basis for later improvements (...) which also brought the inventions in engineering. For instance, Archimedes lifted water to high altitude with a screw, which was regarded as the ancestor of today’s screw conveyor and essentially his design has not changed since then. Bucket elevators also have their predecessors dating back to ancient times. In the concrete case of belt conveyors, a first trace can be found in the beginning of the seventeenth century, even classified as primitive example. During the Industrial Revolutions, various machines, such conveyors, appeared. The first modern-like belt conveyors are dedicated to the late eighteenth century due to the invention of Oliver Evans in USA and to the nineteenth century, by Lyster in England, Lopatine in Russia and Thomas Robins in USA. The technical solutions developed by the end of the nineteenth century were forerunners of the today’s belt conveyors, while the key operational principles have not changed. (shrink)

T. Williamson argues against the thesis he recognizes as one of the inferentialist basic idea that he formulates as understanding/assent link, the claim that the assent to a sentence is constitutive for understanding it. This paper aims to show that appropriately articulated dispositional theory, could plausibly account for a weak version of inferentialism.

Democracy is in serious difficulties. Three features of the crisis stand out. First is the dominant culture of disillusionment in democracy, which transpires as the mistrust in constitutionalist institutions and values. Second, political authority, both at domestic and international levels, is largely substituted by the rule of non-transparent and unpredictable social powers. Third, democratic states are deprived of much of their capacity to govern, but they retain a non-negligible capacity to coerce.The article is structured as follows. Section I introduces Karl (...) Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness and juxtaposes it to the theoretical defense of market disembeddedness advanced by the classical political economy. It then points to the challenge that the complexity of the contemporary society poses to the idea of embeddedness and identifies the need for further analytical clarification of the idea. Section II tries to explain why the idea of embeddedness is intuitively suspect. One reason is found in the domi... (shrink)

In this article I ask how moral relativism applies to the analysis of responsibility for mass crime. The focus is on the critical reading of two influential relativist attempts to offer a theoretically consistent response to the challenges imposed by extreme criminal practices. First, I explore Gilbert Harman’s analytical effort to conceptualize the reach of moral discourse. According to Harman, mass crime creates a contextually specific relationship to which moral judgments do not apply any more. Second, I analyze the inability (...) thesis, which claims that the agents of mass crime are not able to distinguish between right and wrong. Richard Arneson, Michael Zimmerman and Geoffrey Scarre do not deny the moral wrongness of crime. However, having introduced the claim of authenticity as a specific feature of the inability thesis, they maintain that killers are not responsible. I argue that these positions do not hold. The relativist failure to properly conceptualize responsibility for mass crime follows from the mistaken view of moral autonomy, which then leads to the erroneous explanation of the establishment, authority and justification of moral judgments. (shrink)

Das Ziel dieses Textes ist, die Aufmerksamkeit auf einige Voraussetzungen, die als wichtig für besseres Verständnis des Denkens scheinen, das zusätzlich als „kritisches“ bezeichnet wird, zu richten. Zuerst wird einleitend konstatiert, dass die Rede vom „kritischen“ Denken im Kontext der Ausbildung aufgetreten ist, und es wird daran erinnert, dass „Kritisches“ ein wesentlicher Bestandteil des Denkens überhaupt ist. Deshalb werden verschiedene Vernunfttypen vorgestellt, aus denen sich verschiedene Rationalitäts- und Denktypen entwickeln. Dabei wird an zeitgenössische Kritik an der Absolutierung der westlichen dihairetischen (...) Rationalität erinnert, wonach es gezeigt wird, wie sich aus der Einheit der Vernunft die Pluralität von Rationalitäten entwickelt hat. Im folgenden Abschnitt wird die ursprüngliche Vernunft als Einheit von Logos und Mythos dargestellt, fortgesetzt von der Thematisierung dessen, was aus der Perspektive der dihairetischen Rationalität nicht als der Vernunft Zugehöriges anerkannt wird – das Andere der Vernunft. Darauf folgt die Darstellung der Anerkennungsmöglichkeit der Rationalität des Anderen der Vernunft, welche sich in der Metapher und der analogischen Rationalität zeigt. Nächstes Kapitel diskutiert einige Folgemanifestierungen der dihairetischen Rationalität und mit diesen Folgen verbundene Schwierigkeiten in Bezug auf Voraussetzungen der Fähigkeitsentwicklung des kritischen Denkens. Zum Schluss werden einige Bedingungen für kritisches Denken dargestellt. (shrink)

The main goal of this essay is to provide an in-depth analysis of the trajectory of the Colourful Revolution in North Macedonia as a social movement. From a more general perspective, the paper engages with the growing interest in the literature that explores the correlation between social movements and democratisation processes, especially in societies that fall into the category of hybrid regimes. The Colourful Revolution is a good example of a protest movement that has created effective regime change. It presented (...) a complex social movement encompassing many fragmented social and political groups gathered around the idea of a common adversary. Additionally, the Colourful Revolution has one particularity: it is a social movement that has undergone a full developmental circle - formation through utilization of political opportunity frameworks, a period of activity and success and dissolution. Drawing on literature of the political process, opportunity frameworks and cycles of social movements, the paper argues that social movements such as the Colourful Revolution are not just temporary and unstable structures but are also highly dependent on the existence of a common target of the social activism in question. The removal from power of political actors that have been the reason for mobilisation of a complex and diverse network of social and political activism resulted in an absence of an adhesive factor holding together all the parts of this complex system. The absence initiated gradual discord and dissolution of different factions within the social movement and reveals its true nature - temporary, ideologically diverse, conflictual, and even undemocratic in some respects. (shrink)

The paper considers a possible relevantist treatment, in the spirit of Wilson and Sperber’s work, of pejoratives and argues for three claims concerning them. On the level of synchronic issues it suggests that the negative content of pejoratives, at least in its minimal scope, is the normal part of their lexical meaning, and not a result of extra-semantic enrichment. It thus suggests an evaluative-content approach for the relevantist, in contrast to its neutral-content alternative. On the more general side, it suggests (...) that the relevance theorist owes us a clear story about what kind of material is normally encoded. Concerning the issues of diachronic behavior of pejoratives, the paper suggests primarily the application of relevantist theory of irony, and secondarily some links with theory of metaphor. A relevantist theory of echoic use, and proposed for irony, can be used to understand the appropriation of pejoratives by their original target group, and the reversal of valence that goes with it. There is an interesting parallel between the echoing-cum-reversal processes Wilson and Sperber propose for irony and the repeating-and-reversing process typicall of appropriation of pejoratives. Finally, a brief application of the relevantist understanding of metaphor is proposed as a tool for understanding the genealogy of pejoratives of fi gurative origin. The dynamics, history and development of pejoratives has not been systematically addressed by philosophical theories of pejoratives: a collaboration with relevance theory might prove a useful strategy. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of research on changes in attitudes towards music education among teacher education students who were exposed to vocal-instrumental lessons over the course of two semesters. The research was conducted among second-year students of teacher education at the Faculty of Education in Osijek, Croatia. The results have shown that students’ attitudes towards music education are relatively positive both before and after exposure to music lessons. Students with choir experience had more positive attitudes towards music education. Although (...) positive attitudes after music lessons are somewhat higher, there is no statistically significant difference between the attitudes of students before or after music lessons. Further research on attitudes towards music education is suggested across a larger population of teacher education students, over a longer period of time, and using a wider range of instruments. U radu su predstavljeni rezultati istraživanja mogućnosti promjena stavova studenata učiteljskoga studija o glazbenom obrazovanju nakon dva semestra vokalno-instrumentalne nastave. Istraživanje je provedeno sa studenticama druge godine učiteljskoga studija na Fakultetu za odgojne i obrazovne znanosti u Osijeku, Hrvatska. Rezultati su pokazali kako studentice imaju relativno pozitivne stavove o glazbenom obrazovanju prije i poslije nastave glazbe, a pozitivniji stavovi su zabilježeni kod studentica koje imaju iskustvo pjevanja u zboru. Iako se može uočiti trend pozitivnijih stavova nakon nastave glazbe razlika u stavovima studentica o glazbenom obrazovanju prije i poslije nastave glazbe nije statistički značajna. Sugerira se istraživanje stavova o glazbenom obrazovanju na većem uzorku studenata učiteljskoga studija, kroz duže vremensko razdoblje i to opsežnijim mjernim instrumentom. (shrink)

The Concept of Intrinsic Evil and Catholic Theological Ethics examines the origin and meaning of the concept of intrinsic evil and its use in sexual ethics in the teachings of the Catholic Church, and in the construction of a systematic approach to theological ethics. It concludes with a suggestion of how the concept might be used in future ethical discourse.

In this paper we shall concentrate on the issue of those ways of knowing in mathematics that have traditionally been taken to support apriorism. We shall do it by critizing pragmatic naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and in particular its historical approach in denying any role to apriority in mathematical epistemology. The version of pragmatic naturalism we shall be analyzing is Kitcher’s. In the paper we shall first set out a brief survey of the relevant features of Kitcher’s pragmatic (...) naturalism in the philosophy of mathematics and then indicate the points that provoke our disagreement.U ovome radu ćemo se koncentrirati na pitanje onih načina spoznaje u matematici za koje se tradicionalno smatralo da podržavaju apriorizam. To ćemo učiniti kritizirajući pragmatički naturalizam u filozofiji matematike, posebice njegov povijesni pristup u negiranju ikakve uloge apriorizma u matematičkoj epistemologiji. Verzija pragmatičkog naturalizma koju ćemo razmatrati je Kitcherova. U radu ćemo prvo iznijeti sažeti pregled relevantnih obilježja Kitcherovog pragmatičkog naturalizma u filozofiji matematike te potom naznačiti točke koje izazivaju naše neslaganje.Dans cet article, nous nous concentrerons sur la question des modes de la connaissance en mathématiques qui ont traditionnellement été considérés comme soutenant l’apriorisme. Nous le ferons en critiquant le naturalisme pragmatique dans la philosophie des mathématiques, notamment son approche historique de la négation de tout rôle de l’apriorité dans l’épistémologie mathématique. La version du naturalisme pragmatique que nous analyserons est celle de Philip Kitcher. Dans l’article, nous présenterons d’abord un court examen des aspects pertinents du naturalisme pragmatique de Philip Kitcher dans la philosophie des mathématiques, puis indiquerons les points qui suscitent notre désaccord.Im vorliegenden Paper konzentrieren wir uns auf die Problematik jener Wege der Erkenntnis innerhalb der Mathematik, denen traditionell Unterstützung des Apriorismus beigemessen wird. Wir verwirklichen dies, indem wir den pragmatischen Naturalismus in der Philosophie der Mathematik kritisieren, namentlich dessen historische Herangehensweise bei der Verneinung jeglicher Rolle der Apriorität in der mathematischen Epistemologie. Die Version des pragmatischen Naturalismus, der wir auf den Grund gehen, ist die von Kitcher. In der Abhandlung machen wir erstens einen Streifzug durch die relevanten Wesenszüge von Kitchers pragmatischem Naturalismus in der Philosophie der Mathematik und geben anschließend Anhaltspunkte an, die unseren Dissens hervorrufen. (shrink)

Many authors have argued that we should make a clear conceptual distinction between mononational and multinational states. Yet the number of empirical examples they refer to is rather limited. France or Germany are usually seen as mononational, whereas Belgium, Canada, Spain and the UK are considered multinational. How should we classify other cases? Here we can distinguish between (at least) two approaches in the literature: statistical (i.e., whether significant national minorities live within a larger state and, especially, whether they claim (...) self-government) and subjective (i.e., when citizens feel allegiance to sub-state national identities). Neither of them, however, helps us to resolve the problem. Is Italy multinational (because it contains a German-speaking minority)? Is Germany really mononational (in spite of the official recognition of the Danes and the Sorbs in some Länder)? On the other hand, is Switzerland the “most multinational country” (Kymlicka)? Let us assume that there is no definite answer to this dilemma and that it is all a matter of degree. There are probably few (if any) clearly mononational states and few (if any) clearly multinational states. Should we abandon this distinction in favour of other concepts like “plurinationalism” (Keating), “nations-within-nations” (Miller), “postnational state” (Abizadeh, Habermas), or “post-sovereign state” (MacCormick)? The article discusses these issues and, in conclusion, addresses the problem of stability and shared identity “plural” societies. (shrink)

The first, critical part of the paper summarizes J. R. Brown’s Platonic view of thought experiments (TEs) and raises several questions. One of them concerns the initial, particular judgments in a TE. Since they seem to precede the general insight, Brown’s Platonic intuition, and not to derive from it, the question arises as to the nature of the initial particular judgment. The other question concerns the explanatory status of Brown’s epistemic Platonism. The second, constructive descriptive-explanatory part argues for an alternative, (...) i.e. the view of TE as reasoning in, or with help of, mental models which can accommodate all the relevant data within a non-aprioristic framework (or, at worst, within a minimally “aprioristic”, nativist one). The last part turns to issues of justification and argues that the mental model proposal can account for justification of intuitional judgments and can also support the view of properly functioning intuition as an epistemic virtue, all within a more naturalist framework than the one endorsed by Brown. (shrink)

The paper defends causal explanationism concerning our modal intuitions and judgments, and, in particular, the following claims. If a causally explainable mirroring or “pre-established harmony” between our mind and modal reality obtains, we are justified in believing it does. We do not hold our modal beliefs compulsively and blindly but with full subjective and objective justification. Therefore, causal explanation of our modal beliefs does not undermine rational trust in them. Explanation and trust support each other. In contrast, anti-explanationists, claim that (...) causal explanation of intuitions and judgments undermines rational trust in them. They especially target causal explanation in terms of pre-established harmony between our mind, shaped by causal processes, and the underlying modal structure of reality. The paper argues against them. The argument builds upon the claim that the appeal to modal facts is indispensable for systematization and explanation of non-modal ones. Therefore, we should assume that modal facts exist and are not disjoint and isolated from actual facts. The modal structure of the universe intervenes in the non-modal reality. Causal processes indirectly carry information about deep modal structure. Any causal explanation of our intuitional modal beliefs should start from this indirect contact with and information about modal facts. Therefore, if our intuitional modal beliefs are true and causally explainable, they are true in virtue of the deep underlying modal structure. They are sensitive to modal reality and track it. We can come to know this fact, and thus strengthen our spontaneous trust in our modal intuitions. (shrink)

Virtually all epistemologists agree that truth is a necessary condition for knowledge. Assuming that our three-dimensional world is nested within a higher-dimensional space, I use multidimensional geometry to present a type of case which undermines this fundamental principle of epistemology. I further argue that we would be unlikely to revise our epistemic practices in light of new discoveries even if our world turned out to be substantially different and many of our beliefs turned out to be false.