In this paper, the author considers five basic understandings of metaphysics as a philosophical discipline that 1) studies the most general characteristics of everything that is, 2) investigates beings as beings, 3) considers what goes beyond the framework of experience, 4) analyses the most general terms and 5) provides an explanatory theory. In addition, the author considers a number of relevant ideas and distinctions, the distinction between reality and appearance, the distinction between the apparent and scientific picture of the world (...) (Wilfrid Sellars), the idea that philosophy is the queen of science (Moritz Schlick), the distinction between descriptive and revisionist metaphysics (Peter Frederick Strawson), the synoptic view, the idea of naturalised metaphysics, etc. The author accepts the first point of view, the one according to which metaphysics is understood as a philosophical discipline that studies the most general characteristics of everything that is, and accordingly believes that categorical ontology best fits into that picture. After that, the author briefly presents the most famous criticisms of metaphysics (David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and logical positivists), as well as the positions that led to the formation of modern metametaphysics (Rudolf Carnap and Willard Van Orman Quine). Finally, the author considers verbalism and trivialism and tries to determine whether these two positions can represent a basis for the elimination of metaphysics. The author tries to show that these positions do not eliminate metaphysics, but rather set the framework for contemporary metaphysical discussions. (shrink)

In this article the author critically examines well-known arguments which purport to show that death is not something bad for the person who dies, and tries to show that these arguments are not sound, that is, the author tries to show that death really is something bad for person who died. The author believes that Williams did not show that eternal life would be unbearable and that death after sufficiently long life would be a relief. Furthermore, famous Epicurus ' argument (...) against the fear of death author splits into two related but nevertheless separated arguments, and tries to show that the first one is based on false or at least questionable theory of value, while the other one represents a serious intellectual challenge. Different answers to Lucretius' argument from the asymmetry of past and future nonexistence are examined; the author argues that none of these answers is completely satisfactory. Finally, the author examines and rejects "mathematical argument" against the fear of death as invalid. (shrink)

In this article the author criticizes Michael Devitt’s Naturalistic Moral Realism, as well as that program in general. The author argues the following: moral explanations do not work; the fact that moral featuressupervene on the non-moral ones does not support the thesis of Realism; moral principles can not be tested like factual ones; Moral Realists Naturalists water down their thesis so much that it ceases to be a form of realism; there are no moral observations in any interesting sense.

U ovome članku autor kritički razmatra ključne elemente etike vrlina. Odbacuje čest stav da je etika vrlina bolja, jer je u njoj djelatnik usmjeren na sebe, dok je u deontologiji ili konzekvencijalizu usmjeren na druge; u deontologiji postoje dužnosti prema sebi, konzekvencijalizam je simetričan u tom pogledu, jer je vlastito dobro jednako vrijedno kao i tuđe, štoviše, najvažnije vrline su upravo one koje su usmjerene na druge. Ipak, postoji vrsta situacije koja podržava ovaj stav, naime, u okviru konzekvencijalizma čovjek koji (...) postigne da drugi proizvedu 5 jedinica sreće bolji je od čovjeka koji sam proizvede 3 jedinice sreće, dok je u okviru etike vrlina bolji ovaj drugi. Vrlo je zanimljivo pitanje koji je bolji naprosto. Nadalje, pitanje je može li etika vrlina doista bolje objasniti činjenicu da imamo moralne uzore; mi im se divimo zbog njihovih postupaka, a ta se činjenica daleko bolje uklapa u deontologiju ili konzekvencijalizam. Pored toga, budući da vrline ne možemo odrediti neovisno o postupcima do kojih tipično dovode, divljenje prema vrlinama svodi se na divljenje prema postupcima. Ovaj uvid podupire opću tezu članka da su vrline svodive na postupke, to jest, da etika vrlina ne može biti postojati samostalno već da je svodiva na deontologiju ili konzekvencijalizam.In this article author criticaly examines the key elements of the virtue ethics. He rejects common claim that that virtue ethics is better because it is self-regarding while deontology and consequentalism are other-regarding; within deontology there are duties toward oneself, consequentialism is symmetrical in this respect because my own good counts just as anybody’s else’s good, moreover, crucial virtues are other-regarding. Although, there is a kind of situation that supports this claim, namely, within consequentialist framework man who makes others produce 5 units of good is better than the man who himself produces 3 units, while within the framework of the virtue ethics the second one is better. It is very interesting question which one is better man period. Further, it is questionable whether virtue ethics can better accomodate the fact that we have moral raw models, namely, we admire them because of their actions and this fact much better fits into deontological or consequentialist framework. Also, since we can not specify a virtue independently of the actions it typically brings about, our admiration to virtues ammounts to our admiration to actions. This insight supports the general claim of the paper that virtues are reducible to actions, that is, that virtue ethics can not stand on its own because it is reducible to deontology or consequentialism. (shrink)

This collection of articles is a tribute to Nenad Smokrović, our friend and colleague from the Philosophy Department. He has been working on human rationality for over 25 years. Consequently, articles in this collection are either directly or indirectly related to this subject matter. In this volume, 19 authors from Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Italy, Israel, USA, and GB write about human rationality. What human rationality consists in? What is the relationship between its normative aspect (logic) and its descriptive aspect (psychology)? (...) Do people in fact reason according to the laws of logic? What is the nature and the function of reasoning, argumentation, and inference? ... We are publishing this volume in the hope that it will provide further contribution to the research in the field. (shrink)

The author argues that the atheist does not commit the so called “philosophy fallacy” but rather simply answers the theist’s arguments. The principle that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, although very sound, is nevertheless context-dependent and cannot be accepted without further qualifications. Also, any systematic study of religiousness should explore its links to emotions (prophets often invite people to open their hearts, not their minds or reasons) and its role in the constitution of identity (people often (...) claim that they are Catholics, they are Moslems, etc). (shrink)

Autor raspravlja da pitanje o smislu života prvenstveno treba razumijeti kao pitanje o logičkoj strukturi razloga za djelovanje. Odnosno, pitanje o smislu života u prvome je redu potraga za racionalnom rekonstrukcijom naših praktičnih razloga. Činjenica da se veliki broj naših djelovanja može opravdati unutar okvira instrumentalne racionalnosti upućuje da na kraju lanca opravdanja mora postojati jedan ili više konačnih razloga za djelovanje. Uobičajeni kandidati su sreća, objektivna svrha, briga za druge i slično. Sve navedene odgovore autor odbacuje smatrajući da je (...) okvir instrumentalne racionalnosti u ovome kontekstu pogrešno shvaćen budući da mnoge stvari koje radimo u našim životima nemaju samo instrumentalnu već i intrinzičnu vrijednost. Autor se opredjeljuje za pluralizam vrijednosti odbacujući ideju da mora postojati jedan razlog za djelovanje. The author argues that the question about the meaning of life should primarily be understood asthe question about the logical structure of the reasons for acting. That is, the question about themeaning of life is primarily a quest for rational reconstruction of our practical reason. The fact thatmany of our actions may be justified within the framework of instrumental rationality naturallysuggests that at the end of the chain of justification there must be ultimate reason/s for acting.Usual candidates are happiness, objective purpose, care for others, etc. Author rejects all of theseanswers and argues that the framework of instrumental rationality is ill understood in this context,because many things that we do in our lives do not have only instrumental value but intrinsic valueas well. That is, the author rejects the idea that there must be a single reason for acting and finallyargues in favour of value pluralism. (shrink)

The concept of supervenience is highly important in the philosophy of psychology as a tool to elucidate the relationship between mind and body. it is a widely accepted view that mental properties (states, events) are supervenient over the physical; there is no mental difference without a physical difference. the aim of this paper is to explain what supervenience is, its significance and application in various fields of philosophy, to examine several definitions of supervenience, and finally, to define its four basic (...) forms. (shrink)

Nedostatak ljudskog kretanja u suvremenim uvjetima življenja je današnja stvarnost i nepobitna činjenica. Budući da je tjelesna aktivnost biotička potreba čovjeka, potreban je veći angažman društva u cjelini isto kao i svakog pojedinca koji je dužan voditi brigu o svom tjelesno zdravstvenom statusu. Tjelesna aktivnost ima nezamjenjivu instrumentalnu vrijednost jer predstavlja najbolje sredstvo za postizanje i održanje zdravlja. Pored toga, tjelesna aktivnost ima i intrinzičnu vrijednost zato što omogućava realiziranje i usavršavanje čovjekovih motoričkih znanja i dostignuća. Smatramo da zapostavljanje tjelesno-zdravstvenog (...) aspekta narušava cjelovitost ličnosti, te da stoga svatko ima razloga za redovito tjelesno vježbanje.It is an undeniable fact that nowadays people are insufficient physically active. Since physical activity is human biotic need, society as a whole, just as each individual should take care about his/her physical condition. Physical activity has indispensable instrumental value because it is the best means for achieving and maintaining health. Besides, physical activity has intrinsic value because it enables people to exercise and develop their motoric skills and achievements. We believe that physically inactive life is incomplete life and that therefore everybody has a reason for regular physical activity. (shrink)

U ovom članku autor razmatra osnovne inuticije za i protiv utilitarizma, prvenstveno probleme na koje utilitarizam nailazi u domeni distributivne pravednosti. Sukob intuicija razmatra se u idealiziranoj situaciji u kojoj dijelimo »manu s neba«, dakle, u situaciji u kojoj su po pretpostavci irelevantne zasluge, potrebe, vlasnički odnosi iz prošlosti, itd. Čak i u takvoj situaciji distribucija koju preferira utilitarizam izgleda problematična. Inuticije o jednakosti, prioritetu, apsolutno i relativno boljem položaju, marginalnoj korisnosti, itd. jake su i u situaciji u kojoj smo (...) apstrahirali od svih konkretnih okolnosti. Zanimljivo je da utilitarizam nije u svim mogućim situacijama u konfliktu s egalitarizmom; utilitarističke inuticije u konjunkciji s inuticijama o prioritetu i marginalnoj korisnosti zapravo daju egalitarističke posljedice.In this article the author examines basic intuitions for and aginst utilitarianism, primarily the problems that utilitarins face within the domain of distributive justice. The clash of intuitions is examined in the idealized situation in which we distribute “mana form haven”, that is, in a situation in which merits, needs, property relationships form the past, etc. are irrelevant by assumpition. Even in a such situation, distribution preffered by utilitarianism seems problematic. Inutitions about equality, priority, absolutely and relatively better position, marginal utility, etc. are strong even in the purely abstract situation. It is interesting that utilitarianism is not in conflict with egalitarianism in all possible situations; utilitarian inutitions in conjunction with intuitions about priority and marginal utility in fact have egalitarian consequences. (shrink)

The starting point of this article is the ontological question: What makes it true that2+2=4?, that is, what are the truth makers of mathematical propositions? Of course,the satisfactory theory in the philosophy of mathematics has to answer semantical question: What are mathematical propositions about? Also, epistemological question:How do we know them?, as well. Author compares five theories in the philosophy of mathematics, that is, five accounts of the nature of truth makers in mathematical discourse: fictionalism ; nominalism ; physicalism ; (...) conceptualism and Platonism. (shrink)

Boran Berčić, in the second volume of his recent book "Filozofija" , offers two responses to David Chalmers’s conceivability or modal argument against physicalism. This latter argument aims at showing that zombies, our physical duplicates who lack consciousness, are metaphysically possible, given that they are conceivable. Berčić’s first response is based on the principle of the uniformity of nature that states that causes of a certain type will always cause effects of the same type. His second response (...) is based on the assumption that the basic statements of physicalism in philosophy of mind are or should be contingently true. I argue that if Berčić’s first defence is aimed at the conceivability of zombies, it is unsatisfactory. Moreover, I argue that a quite similar argument, offered by John Perry in his book "Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness" , is afflicted by a similar problem. Nevertheless, under a more plausible interpretation, Berčić’s argument might be taken to attack the metaphysical possibility of zombies. This version of the argument might be effective and has the merit to point out a so far overlooked link between the discussion of the Chalmers’s conceivability arguments against physicalism and the modal strength of causal links and natural laws. Then, I argue that Berčić’s second defence of physicalism, which cannot be combined consistently with his first one, in any case, should not be formulated in the terms of contingent physicalism. (shrink)

Originally, the idea of interviewing Iris Marion Young in Barcelona came about after she accepted an invitation to give a public lecture at the Law School of Pompeu Fabra University in May 2002. I had first met Iris back in 1999, at a conference in Bristol, England, and I was impressed deeply by her personality and ideas. We kept in touch since then and exchanged papers and ideas. She was very keen to come to Spain (it seems that her mother (...) had lived some years in Mallorca) and she finally travelled to Barcelona with her husband and daughter in spring 2002. The lecture, which she entitled "Women, War, and Peace," was meant to be the closing session of a course on Gender and the Law, and was also part of a series of seminars annually organized by the legal philosophy department (the Albert Calsamiglia Seminar). Her work was quite well-known among several Catalan philosophers and political scientists and professor Angel Castiñeira-who, at the time, was the director of Idees (Ideas), a Catalan journal published by the Centre d'Estudis de Temes Contemporanis (Center for the Study of Contemporary Issues)-suggested that she could give a second lecture, which they would publish together with an interview I could prepare. She accepted both proposals, and I started to think of a questionnaire for the interview while I was at Queen's University in Canada earlier that year. Idil Boran, a philosopher and good friend who did her doctorate at Queen's, offered to help me with this endeavour, since she also admired Iris as both a scholar and a person. Together we prepared the questions and sent them to her once she was back in Chicago, as there was not time to conduct the interview in person while she was in Barcelona. In fall 2002, she sent some answers to our questions, but the document was unfortunately incomplete. She was busy at the time, so we didn't want to pressure her to finish the interview. Eventually, the editors of Idees decided to publish the manifest about the war in Iraq subscribed by a large number of American Intellectuals together with fragments of Iris's (antiwar) lectures and an article that she wrote together with Daniel Archibugi, "Envisioning a Global Rule of Law." The interview was thus left unpublished. Both Idil and I thought it would be worthwhile to publish it somewhere else, but, for one reason or another, Iris didn't have the time to complete it and we kept postponing the project. At some point, she said that the questions she left unanswered were too complex or challenging to give a short or quick answer, and that she would need to reflect on them to provide detailed responses. Later, we learned she was ill and we didn't feel it was right to insist on those questions being answered. The issue came up again when she accepted to participate as a keynote speaker at the World Congress of Legal Philosophy held in Granada in June 2005. She then said she would come first to Barcelona (where she and Nancy Fraser had been invited to a workshop by the Catalan Women Institute) and suggested we could sit in a cafe and talk about the issues left out in those unanswered questions. Unfortunately, she had to cancel this trip because of her medical treatment, and I did not have the privilege of sharing time with her again. The following series of questions and responses are the product of this rather extended interview process. (shrink)

From around the world, cities and regions, civil society networks and businesses, nongovernmental organizations and institutions for research and learning, and many others, are taking action on climate change. The role of these nonstate and substate actors is increasingly being recognized in the new facilitative climate regime. Political theory to date has been surprisingly silent about the scale and prospects of these actions for low-carbon, climate-resilient, and sustainable transformations. Idil Boran argues provocatively for the need for a widened scope (...) of vision, one that has a broader public life of climate action at its centre. While acknowledging the role of the state and the multilateral process, Boran maintains that social transformation is as deeply and more continuously influenced by the engagement of a wide range of actors below and above the state, whose actions are often locally anchored and inescapably interwoven across borders. Bringing concepts of the public sphere from political theory into contact with leading scholarship on transnational climate governance, Political Theory and Global Climate Action launches an exploration sensitive to changing patterns of practice, focused on diversity of actors, driven to explore historically contingent conditions of possibility, and responsive to questions of equity and justice in the context of transformations. The result is a repositioning of political thought on climate change, engaging political philosophers, scholars of politics and governance, and drivers of climate action worldwide at nonstate and substate levels interested in the social and political meaning of their engagement. (shrink)

In December 2014, 196 Parties convened in Lima for the 20th session of the Conference of the Parties. The meeting in Lima was, in many respects, a turning point in the history of climate n...

This paper is concerned with the moral concept of harm in the context of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. This paper delineates between two concepts of wrongful harm: interactional versus architectural. It then examines these options with an eye toward developing a satisfactory normative approach for policy. While the interactional view of wrongful harm supports powerful arguments about moral responsibility, it has some clear limitations. This paper makes a case for the architectural view by underlining that it (...) is not only compatible with the features of the Paris Agreement but also supports a distinctive conception of justice. (shrink)

Until recently, climate scientists were unable to link the occurrence of extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change. In recent years, however, climate science has made considerable advancements, making it possible to assess the influence of anthropogenic climate change on single weather events. Using a new technique called ‘probabilistic event attribution’, scientists are able to assess whether anthropogenic climate change has changed the likelihood of the occurrence of a recorded extreme weather event. These advancements raise the expectation that this branch (...) of climate science can contribute to climate adaptation efforts. This paper examines the normative underpinnings of these policy discussions. To date, the debates revolve around whether the findings of attribution science can be used to establish moral liability for harms resulting from climate change. On close analysis, this normative framework has serious shortcomings. The paper rejects the moral liability framework and suggests, through a review of the international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, that the science of event attribution can inform adaptation policy within a risk-pooling and climate risk insurance framework. The proposed framework is defended both on normative grounds and on the basis of its potential application within the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage under the Cancun Adaptation Framework. (shrink)

In its simplest form, the principle of fairness tells us the following. If a number of people are producing a public good that we benefit from, it is not morally acceptable to free ride on their backs, enjoying the benefits without paying the costs. We owe them our fair share of the costs of the production of that good. The principle of fairness, defended by Rawls in A Theory of Justice and widely discussed subsequently, is sometimes invoked in various areas (...) of applied ethics, such as environmental ethics, social ethics, etc.As it stands, the principle of fairness offers an account of a particular type of moral obligation that obtains if certain conditions are satisfied. For example, the good produced must be a particular type of good, the scheme in which it is produced must itself be fair, and so on. This account inspired a wave of discussions, which set the tone for the debate on the principle of fairness, about two decades ago. (shrink)

Rationale: High-frequency oscillations in intracranial EEG are used to delineate the epileptogenic zone during presurgical diagnostic assessment in patients with epilepsy. HFOs are historically divided into ripples, fast ripples, and their co-occurrence. In a previous study, we had validated the rate of FRandRs during deep sleep to predict seizure outcome. Here, we ask whether epileptic FRandRs might be confounded by physiological FRandRs that are unrelated to epilepsy.Methods: We recorded iEEG in the medial temporal lobe MTL in 17 patients while they (...) performed cognitive tasks. The three cognitive tasks addressed verbal working memory, visual working memory, and emotional processing. In our previous studies, these tasks activated the MTL. We re-analyzed the data of these studies with the automated detector that focuses on the co-occurrence of ripples and FRs.Results: For each task, we identified those channels in which the HFO rate was modulated during the task condition compared to the control condition. However, the number of these channels did not exceed the chance level. Interestingly, even during wakefulness, the HFO rate was higher for channels within the seizure onset zone than for channels outside the SOZ.Conclusion: Our prospective definition of an epileptic HFO, the FRandR, is not confounded by physiological HFOs that might be elicited by our cognitive tasks. This is reassuring for the clinical use of FRandR as a biomarker of the EZ. (shrink)

Since 2011, the focus of international negotiations under the UNFCCC has been on producing a new climate agreement to be adopted in 2015. This phase of negotiations is known as the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The goal has been to update the global effort on climate for long-term cooperation. In this period, various changes have been contemplated on the design of the architecture of the global climate effort. Whereas previously, the negotiation process consisted of setting mandated targets exclusively for (...) developed countries, the current setting requests of each country to pledge its contribution to the climate effort in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions. The shift away from establishing negotiated targets for rich countries alone towards a universal system of participation through intended contributions raised persistent questions on how exactly the new agreement can ensure equitable terms. How to conceptualize equity within the 2015 climate agreement, and beyond, is the focus of this paper. The paper advances a framework on equity, which moves away from substantive moral conceptions of burden allocation toward refining principles of public reason specially designed for the negotiation process under the UNFCCC. The paper outlines the framework’s main features and discusses how it can serve a facilitating role for multilateral discussion on equity on a long-term basis capable of adapting to changing circumstances. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs the window of opportunity to limit global average warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels is narrowing, the impacts of climate change are already being experienced around the world. No longer of merely theoretical interest, the issue of ‘loss and damage’ has become central to climate politics. Against this backdrop, old concepts of responsibility and wrongful harm are being revisited. Boran proposed moving away from an interactional conception of harm to an architectural one. The former supports the widely (...) shared view that wrongful harm results from actions. The latter turns the spotlight on complexity and social practices. In response to critical appraisals, this short essay revisits key components of an architectural conception of harm. An architectural approach is not an analytic tool to answer the epistemic challenges in singling out those who are causally responsible as a discrete problem. It is an encompassing theoretical framework drawing a picture of a world where vulnerability is inseparably tied to a complex web of social, political, and institutional interrelations. Wrongful harm resulting from climate impacts is inextricable from the constructed environment and everyday practices forming a complex web of social and political interconnections. (shrink)

In her article,?Beyond the Cultural Argument for Liberal Nationalism?, Margaret Moore provides a critique of this argument, and commends, as an alternative, an identity?based approach to liberal nationalism. Moore draws a distinction between identity and culture, and suggests that liberal nationalism should be founded on the former rather than the latter. This article argues, by contrast, that although identity and culture need to be distinguished, they are not as dissociable as Moore contends. It argues that the distinction between identity and (...) culture is of a kind resembling that between types and tokens? between abstractions and their instances. In so far as culture and language are tangible means by which we express our identity, then identity can be viewed as a type, which cultural components? like language? can instantiate as tokens. A defence of liberal nationalism, even if its starting point is identity, has to incorporate in its main argument an appeal to culture and language to make a case for the right to self?determination of peoples. (shrink)

Le présent article examine une objection contre le conséquentialisme provenant de ce que l’on peut appeler « le problème de prédiction ». Le conséquentialisme nous demande de choisir l’action qui apporte la meilleure conséquence. Or, il n’est pas toujours facile, ou même possible, de prédire le futur et de savoir quelles seront exactement les conséquences de nos actions. Il n’est pas raisonnable d’attendre l’action juste de l’agent moral si le critère de justice requiert de celui-ci une prédiction qu’il n’est pas (...) en position de faire avec précision. Cette objection est relativement moins souvent discutée. Elle présente tout de même un défi important au conséquentialisme car ce qui est suggéré c’est que le conséquentialisme nierait le principe du « devoir faire implique pouvoir faire ». Cet article propose une version du conséquentialisme qui évite ce problème. Ce qui est offert, cependant, n’est pas un argument pour le conséquentialisme, mais plutôt un argument dont le but est de montrer que le conséquentialisme est capable de répondre à ce problème spécifique. (shrink)

Some philosophers, such as Kai Nielsen, view Rawls's rejection of metaphysical claims, encapsulated in his method of avoidance, as being compatible with the "anti-philosophical" stance, the view that metaphysical debates are sterile and should be abandoned to be replaced by practically viable forms of thinking. This paper shows that this reading of the method of avoidance is incorrect and argues that the method of avoidance is in fact comparable to Carnap's higher-order standpoint of neutrality with regards to different frameworks. This (...) sheds new light on Rawlsian theory and situates it within the empiricist tradition. (shrink)