FROM THE ACTIVITIES OF THE INSTITUTE Olga Nikolić, Deana Jovanović i Igor Cvejić.

A common understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) among students and practical users is often plagued by a number of “myths”, that is, widely accepted claims on which there is not really a general consensus among experts in foundations of QM. These myths include wave-particle duality, time-energy uncertainty relation, fundamental randomness, the absence of measurement-independent reality, locality of QM, nonlocality of QM, the existence of well-defined relativistic QM, the claims that quantum field theory (QFT) solves the problems of relativistic QM or (...) that QFT is a theory of particles, as well as myths on black-hole entropy. The fact is that the existence of various theoretical and interpretational ambiguities underlying these myths does not yet allow us to accept them as proven facts. I review the main arguments and counterarguments lying behind these myths and conclude that QM is still a not-yet-completely-understood theory open to further fundamental research. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify specific aspects of the impact of the brain-machine interface on our understanding of subjectivity. The brain-machine interface is presented as a phase of cyborgization of humans. Some projects in the field of brain-machine interface are aimed at enabling consensual telepathy - communication without symbolic mediation. Consensual telepathy refers to one of potential ways of transmission of information within singularity. Therefore, consensual telepathy is an important aspect of singularity. Singularity or human-machine symbiosis shows (...) some similarities with child-mother unity. Therefore, the psychodynamic perspective might be considered useful in thinking about human-machine symbiosis. Knowledge from developmental psychodynamic psychology combined with insights by Slavoj Zizek and Jean Baudrillard provides an additional perspective looking at human-machine symbiosis. The paper claims that if consensual telepathy becomes another way of communication, it will have the potential to annihilate subjectivity making it schizophrenic. At the same time, we look at the possibility of an escape from our inner world through the prism of addictions. (shrink)

Since Bohmian mechanics is explicitly nonlocal, it is widely believed that it is very hard, if not impossible, to make Bohmian mechanics compatible with relativistic quantum field theory. I explain, in simple terms, that it is not hard at all to construct a Bohmian theory that lacks Lorentz covariance, but makes the same measurable predictions as relativistic QFT. All one has to do is to construct a Bohmian theory that makes the same measurable predictions as QFT in one Lorentz frame, (...) because then standard relativistic QFT itself guarantees that those predictions are Lorentz invariant. I first explain this in general terms, then I describe a simple Bohmian model that makes the same measurable predictions as the Standard Model of elementary particles, after which I give some hints towards a more fundamental theory beyond standard model. Finally, I present a short story telling how my views of fundamental physics in general, and of Bohmian mechanics in particular, evolved over time. (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)

This essay discusses notions of community, commoning, and assemblage, in conjunction with new materialist and posthumanist onto-epistemologies and ethico-politics. The analysis is situated within, and applied to, current debates in ecological and community-oriented art, curating, and activism. The essay concludes with an articulation of what a “community of material-discursive commoning” may be constituted by, through, and with.

The aim of this research is to identify the success factors of music students and to find out what the success of primary and secondary school students in the Republic of Croatia looks like. For the research, 153 music teachers working in primary and secondary music schools in 38 cities and municipalities in Croatia were surveyed. The results show that students most often enrol in music schools because they want to learn to play an instrument or sing, then because of (...) parental encouragement or curiosity, and finally, as a rarer motivation for enrollment, the love of music or the influence of peers who attend the music school. Teachers working in Croatian music schools believe that the most important success factors for music students are family and parental support, the quality of communication between teachers and students, and the time and quality of students’ individual practicing. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the experiences of women who found refuge in Serbia during the war in the former Yugoslavia. I look at the women's experiences of both leaving home and coping with everyday life in refuge. The exploration of refugee women's experiences is mainly based on analyses of their own stories, which I collected while researching women and war. In spite of all the hardship of their lives, refugee women who fled to Serbia have been treated by Western (...) media, the public and aid organizations as ‘UNPEOPLE’ or as non-existent. Making their experiences visible as women, refugees and citizens is the main purpose of this article. (shrink)

Times of uncertainty and fear were brought on by Covid-19. The ongoing pandemic is a fruitful ground for fake news, as citizens try to find explanations that fit into their worldviews. This process polarizes society and creates echo chambers amplified by recommender systems. Our main goal is to detect anti-vaxxer echo chambers in Serbia by analyzing online reactions to the recent detention of prominent anti-vaxxer Dr. Jovana Stojkovic. A content analysis of online comments is deployed in anti-regime left-leaning, anti-regime right-leaning, (...) and pro-government media to explore attitudes towards a vaccination conspiracy theory, police action towards anti-vaxxers, and the government crisis response team. We clearly identify the anti-vaccine echo chamber among commentators of anti-regime right-leaning media (YouTube podcasts). Additionally, we describe attitudes expressed around issues related to vaccination. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show, contra the right-libertarian critique of social justice, that there are good reasons for defending policies of social justice within a free society. In the first part of the paper, we will present two influential right-libertarian critiques of social justice, found in Friedrich Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia. Based on their approach, policies of social justice are seen as an unjustified infringement on freedoms of individual members (...) of a society. In response to this critique, we will introduce the distinction between formal and factual freedom and argue that the formal principle of freedom defended by Hayek and Nozick does not suffice for the protection of factual freedom of members of a society, because it does not recognise (1) the moral obligation to help those who, without their fault, lack factual freedom to a significant degree, and (2) the legal obligation of the state to protect civic dignity of all members of a society. In the second part of the paper, we offer an interpretation of Kant's argument on taxation, according to which civic dignity presupposes factual freedom, in order to argue that Kant's justification of taxation offers good reasons for claiming that the state has the legal obligation to protect factual freedom via the policies of social justice. (shrink)

After Husserl?s transcendental turn and the discovery of the correlation between consciousness and the world the concept of the noema becomes one of the constant leitmotifs of Husserl?s philosophy. My paper will be devoted to the clarification of this concept and its implications for Husserl?s theory of sense. The leading question will be: How can the noema play the role of both the sense and the objective correlate of the intentional act? I will start with presenting the problematic of sense (...) in Husserl?s phenomenology from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas I. The central part of my paper will be devoted to the influential debate regarding the interpretation of the noema. Finally, I intend to point out the most important ways in which the notion of the noema becomes enriched in later Husserl?s philosophy, as well as the difference between linguisitic and non-linguistic sense, based on the Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis. I hope to show that Husserl?s phenomenological theory of sense offers a valuable alternative to the exclusively language-oriented theories of sense. (shrink)

Polazeci od jedne Fukoove opaske o vaznosti Kantovog razumevanja prosvetiteljstva za modernu filozofiju uopste, u ovom tekstu pokusavamo da sledimo trag veze izmedju pitanja o aktuelnosti, prosvetiteljstva i moderne kod Kanta. Ideje slobode i subjektivnosti uocavamo kao nezaobilazne za razumevanje kantovskog prosvetiteljskog projekta i njegove aktuelnosti. U tekstu pokusavamo da pokazemo kako se kod Kanta nailazi na specificno moderno shvatanje aktuelnosti koje ima dalekosezne ontoloske posledice, narocito u pogledu kategorije mogucnosti. Na osnovu sprovedenih analiza dolazimo do teze da se odgovor (...) na pitanje o aktuelnosti prosvetiteljstva ispostavlja kao ulog u borbi za ostvarenje nemoguceg. (shrink)

Even though the Bohmian trajectories given by integral curves of the conserved Klein-Gordon current may involve motions backwards in time, the natural relativistic probability density of particle positions is well-defined. The Bohmian theory predicts subtle deviations from the statistical predictions of more conventional formulations of quantum theory, but it seems that no present experiment rules this theory out. The generalization to the case of many particles or strings is straightforward, provided that a preferred foliation of spacetime is given.

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)

To relax the apparent tension between nonlocal hidden variables and relativity, we propose that the observable proper time is not the same quantity as the usual proper-time parameter appearing in local relativistic equations. Instead, the two proper times are related by a nonlocal rescaling parameter proportional to |ψ|2, so that they coincide in the classical limit. In this way particle trajectories may obey local relativistic equations of motion in a manner consistent with the appearance of nonlocal quantum correlations. To illustrate (...) the main idea, we first present two simple toy models of local particle trajectories with nonlocal time, which reproduce some nonlocal quantum phenomena. After that, we present a realistic theory with a capacity to reproduce all predictions of quantum theory. (shrink)

In this paper, which will be conceived in two units, we try to depict the form and content of those texts which could be marked as philosophical in intention. As we will see, that intention, in the first period of publishing, was determined by a strong influence of German and French Enlightenment. This influence was only natural, given the need for education for the newly-liberated population of Nis. The second period can be discribed as having a more partial interpretation of (...) philosophical problems. At the end of the account, the article is focused on the investigation of cultural and social reasons which caused such a tendency. In this sense, the founding and development of the Faculty of Philosophy in Nis was the main reason behind the progress in philosophical publishing. U ovom radu, koncipiranom kroz dve celine, nastojacemo da ukazemo na formu i sadrzaj onih tekstova cija se usmerenost moze oznaciti filozofskom. Kako ce se videti, ta usmerenost, u prvom periodu izlazenja casopisa, odredjena je uticajima nemackog i francuskog prosvetiteljstva. U drugom periodu, s razloga kojih cemo se tokom rada dotaci, primeticemo sve izrazeniju tendenciju ka izlazenju tekstova koji se mogu oznaciti striktno filozofskim. Otuda cemo ovaj casopis sagledavati, s jedne strane, u kljucu njegovog prosvetiteljskog nastojanja za obrazovanjem tek oslobodjenog niskog stanovnistva, s druge, obzirom na kulturne i drustvene okolnosti u drugoj polovini XX veka. Kako cemo na kraju pokusati da obrazlozimo, tendencija ka sve vecoj prisutnosti filozofskih tekstova, kao i njihova sve izrazenija intencija ka parcijalnom sagledavanju problema, bazirana je na zastupljenosti filozofije unutar obrazovnih institucija. (shrink)

Spontaneous intrusive recollections follow traumatic events in clinical and non-clinical populations. To determine whether any relationship exists between SIRs and enhanced memory for emotional events, participants viewed emotional or neutral films, had their memory for the films tested two days later, and estimated the number of SIRs they experienced for each film. SIR frequency related positively to memory strength, an effect more pronounced in the emotional condition. These findings represent the first demonstration of a relationship between SIRs occurring after an (...) emotional experience and subsequent memory strength for that experience. The results are consistent with the possibility that emotional arousal leads both to elevated SIR frequency and better memory, and that the covert rehearsal associated with SIRs enhances memory for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. Additional evidence of menstrual cycle influences on SIR incidence in female participants appears to merit consideration in future work. (shrink)

This chapter provides a brief history of the concept of emancipation and its applications in and relationship with education, starting with the Enlightenment and considering both the continuation and the critique of this tradition that has further shaped the relationship between education and emancipation. The tension between two meanings of emancipation—personal, intellectual emancipation on the one hand, and political emancipation of the oppressed and the entire society on the other—comes into view in the divergence between Kantian and Marxists paths to (...) emancipation. The chapter goes on to consider the ideas by notable classic thinkers who further developed the Enlightenment ideal of emancipatory education by democratizing it (Freire, Habermas, Dewey, Popper), but also outright questioned some of its main aspects (Peirce, Berlin, Rancière). Nevertheless, even the critics of the Enlightenment mentioned here stay faithful to the ideals of equality and freedom that were formulated in the Age of Reason. And here we are, facing “new” and “old” challenges and media. The chapter then presents the content of this volume, commenting on each chapter and reflecting on how the book Rethinking Education and Emancipation tackles the relationship between emancipation and education by considering contemporary struggles and crises, as well as rethinking and recontextualizing the classic ideas (authors), and building on more recent work. (shrink)

Deep-rooted political turbulence, along with the present hybrid regime, have resulted in an undesirable social, economic and political milieu in Serbia. Such an atmosphere is a fertile ground for a grey economy, corruption, nepotism and restrictions to media freedoms. These?unconventional? means of social functioning, have caused a decline in trust towards state institutions and proportionally, increase of citizen participation in non-institutional models of engagement. The aim of this paper is to analyse one such model of non-institutional engagement: the local activist (...) group Za nas Kej, operating in the area Savski blokovi in New Belgrade. The authors analysed local residents? perception of the activist group Za nas Kej in comparison to the group?s narratives and actions. By using a grounded theory approach authors explained the role of groups such as Za Nas Kej in the development of participatory and deliberative democracy within the local community. Our data indicates that Za nas kej, despite its local character, does not have a strong foothold in the community, and thus receives only passive support. Citizens perceive Za nas kej as mediator between local institutions and residents of the Sava apartment blocks. Despite the failure to mobilise a wider group of citizens for their cause, this activist group continues to be a relevant actor within the local community. (shrink)

Although Lermontov is traditionally viewed as Russia's “second greatest poet,” the bard of Russia's beauty and the critic of Russia's “superfluous men,” the philosophical content of his poetry and prose remains relatively unexamined. The article considers Lermontov's themes of the rebellious angel, freedom, and fate, and argues that although these themes were a product of his time, they are still relevant today.

Bosonic and fermionic particle currents can be introduced in a more unified way, with the cost of introducing a preferred spacetime foliation. Such a unified treatment of bosons and fermions naturally emerges from an analogous superstring current, showing that the preferred spacetime foliation appears only at the level of effective field theory, not at the fundamental superstring level. The existence of the preferred spacetime foliation allows an objective definition of particles associated with quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Such an (...) objective definition of particles makes the Bohmian interpretation of particle quantum mechanics more appealing. The superstring current allows a consistent Bohmian interpretation of superstrings themselves, including a Bohmian description of string creation and destruction in terms of string splitting. The Bohmian equations of motion and the corresponding probabilistic predictions are fully relativistic covariant and do not depend on the preferred foliation. (shrink)

Книга написана для думающих и критических мыслящих граждан, ответственных и национально ориентированных политиков, ученых, общественных деятелей и особенно - для целеустремленных и ищущих свой путь в жизни молодых людей.

A common understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) among students and practical users is often plagued by a number of “myths”, that is, widely accepted claims on which there is not really a general consensus among experts in foundations of QM. These myths include wave-particle duality, time-energy uncertainty relation, fundamental randomness, the absence of measurement-independent reality, locality of QM, nonlocality of QM, the existence of well-defined relativistic QM, the claims that quantum field theory (QFT) solves the problems of relativistic QM or (...) that QFT is a theory of particles, as well as myths on black-hole entropy. The fact is that the existence of various theoretical and interpretational ambiguities underlying these myths does not yet allow us to accept them as proven facts. I review the main arguments and counterarguments lying behind these myths and conclude that QM is still a not-yet-completely-understood theory open to further fundamental research. (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.