The aim of this study was to explore the effects of prosocial and antisocial personality tendencies and context-related state factors on compliance with protective behaviors to prevent the spread of coronavirus infections. Six types of prosocial tendencies and selfishness as the antisocial tendency were included as personality factors, while fear related to the pandemic and empathy toward vulnerable groups were context-related factors. Furthermore, mediation effect of empathy and moderation effect of fear were explored in relations between personality factors and protective (...) behaviors. The sample included 581 participants. The data were collected from March 28 to April 6, 2020, during the emergency state and curfew in Serbia. The results showed that tendency to help anonymously had a positive effect and selfishness had a negative effect on protective behaviors, over and above demographic characteristics and context-related factors. Among context-related factors, only fear related to the pandemic had a significant unique positive effect on protective behaviors, but it had no moderator effect in the relationship between personality traits and protective behaviors. However, empathy acted as a mediator and partly accounted for the negative effect of selfishness and positive effect of tendency to help anonymously on protective behaviors. The results revealed that compliance with protective measures could be seen as prosocial and unselfish form of behavior. Furthermore, these findings have practical implications for shaping public messages and they can help effectively promote health-responsible behaviors. (shrink)

Strategije Montserrat Sarto, namenjene spodbujanju branja, ki je ključna kompetenca, in doseganju avtonomne bralne pismenosti, temeljijo na igri, postopnosti in dialoškosti. V delo v skupini vključujejo vse udeležence (učence, dijake, študente, bralce). Izhajajo iz bralskega potenciala vsakega posameznega bralca ter njegovega notranjega doživljanja in odziva na prebrano besedilo. Postopno razvijajo razu­mevanje in užitek pri samostojnem branju. Spodbujajo komunikacijo z besedilom in o besedilu, učitelj je le usmerjevalec in posrednik.

Given the extent of using deep convolutional neural networks to model the mechanism of object recognition, it becomes important to analyse the evidence of their similarity and the explanatory potential of these models. I focus on one frequent method of their comparison—representational similarity analysis, and I argue, first, that it underdetermines these models as how-actually mechanistic explanations. This happens because different similarity measures in this framework pick out different mechanisms across DCNNs and the brain in order to correspond them, and (...) there is no arbitration between them in terms of relevance for object recognition. Second, the reason similarity measures are underdetermining to a large degree stems from the highly idealised nature of these models, which undermines their status as how-possibly mechanistic explanatory models of object recognition as well. Thus, building models with more theoretical consideration and choosing relevant similarity measures may bring us closer to the goal of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

Bojana Mladenovic offers a novel analysis of Thomas Kuhn's central philosophical project. Kuhn's Legacy demonstrates the vitality of Kuhn's philosophical project and its importance for the study of the philosophy and history of science today.

This article analyzes two traditional approaches to teaching military ethics, aspirational and functionalist approach, in light of the existing technological development in the military. Introduction of new technological solutions to waging warfare that involve dehumanization, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as employment of different technological tools to enhance humans participating in war and to improve military efficiency, not only bring to the surfaces the obviously existing weakness and inadequacies of the two traditional approaches to military ethics education, which (...) have been rendered suboptimal, but also raise new challenges. The paper argues that teaching military ethics solely from the two perspective does not meet the demands of the upcoming military technological revolution and that the future will demand a more profound and conceptual moral education of military personnel that will reassess the role of martial virtues, increase responsibility for killing in war and result in military professionals that resemble “a Renaissance man” in their philosophical outlook. Only by ensuring that all military professionals have been properly and adequately ethically educated, future armies, as well as entire societies, can actively aspire toward optimal armed forces structure, a more professional and efficient approach to military profession, and ultimately better and more responsible military personnel in total. (shrink)

: This paper analyzes the development of Kuhn's metaphilosophical position concerning the proper relationship between the history and the philosophy of science. I reconstruct Kuhn's model of scientific change presented in Structure as having the logical status of a Weberian explanatory theory; the philosophy of science and the history of science were of equal importance in its development and defense. However, Kuhn's metaphilosophical position changed in the 1990s, when he gave primacy to philosophy over the history of science in response (...) to the challenge new sociology of science presented to his views. I analyze Kuhn's seldom discussed 'first principles' and argue that the locution should be understood as marking this metaphilosophical shift. Kuhn's project in his last writings was to develop epistemology and metaphysics capable of withstanding relativism and of selecting cognitive internal historiography as the appropriate historiography for the philosophy of science. I sketch the contours of this project which Kuhn was unable to complete in his lifetime. (shrink)

Cervantesu antični klasiki niso bili tuji, z njimi se je seznanil v času šolanja in med bivanjem v Italiji. Da mu je bil klasični svet blizu, dokazuje z vpletanjem antičnih elementov, snovi in motivike. Huma­nistična nota v njegovem delu je najbolj opazna v nenehni obrambi svobode in človeškega dostojanstva oziroma vrednosti človeškega bitja samega po sebi v skladu z renesančnim konceptom človeka. Svoboda kot ključni pojem in temelj Cervantesove poetike navezuje njegov opus na renesančno tradicijo. Premiso o človekovi svobodi in (...) njeni temeljni vrednosti Cervantes izrazi na številnih mestih. Cervantesovo izrazito usmerjenost k svobodi in prežetost njegovega dela z njo pa je treba razumeti tudi skozi njegovo osebno izkušnjo in mučno ujetništvo v Alžiru, kjer je preživel pet let. Da bi preživel ter ohranil bistrost duha in razuma, je začel pisati. (shrink)

The Taktikon Escorialense, a list of functions compiled in the time of John I Tzimiskes, is an important source for studying the reform of the military organisation and state apparatus of Byzantium during the 10th century. Records of this reform, however, can also be found in other, literary and sigillographic sources, so its beginnings, principal stages and characteristics, and how the organisation of the provinces evolved in the 11th century, were reconstructed independently from the TE by Ahrweiler. Like many other (...) sources of this kind, the TE has particular characteristics that lead one to ask in what measure this list of functions really reflected the transformation of the state apparatus in the 10th century. The conclusion may be drawn that this taktikon was an unfinished list of Byzantine functions and honorary titles, and, as indicated by data from other sources (first of all, sigillographic ones), it testifies only to a temporary phase in the reform carried out in Byzantium in the course of the 10th century. There are certain illogical elements in the TE, in the sequence of mentioning the functionaries; some data about the creation of new appointments mentioned in other sources, were omitted from this list of functions, etc. Despite the said shortcomings, though, the TE makes it possible to pose fresh questions, and reactivates some earlier ones connected with the problem of the transformation of the Byzantine central and provincial system, especially in the domain of the Empire's military organisation. (shrink)

Humani razvoj je?proces povecavanja stvarnih sloboda koje ljudi uzivaju?. Shodno tome, povecanje mogucnosti izbora bi trebalo da bude cilj javnih politika koje u fokus stavljaju humani razvoj. Prilikom procene nivoa humanog razvoja, njegovog poredjenja sa dostignucima drugih zemalja, kao i analize razlicitih predloga prakticnih politika, donosioci odluka se moraju oslanjati na precizne pokazatelje nivoa humanog razvoja. Posto bruto domaci proizvod ne moze posluziti ovoj svrsi, javila se potreba za adekvatnijom merom i formiran je indeks humanog razvoja. Cilj ovog rada je (...) da utvrdi da li indeks humanog razvoja odrazava osnovna nacela koncepta humanog razvoja. Argumenti predstavljeni u okviru ovog rada upucuju na zakljucak da HDI ne odrazava u potpunosti sve ideje humanog razvoja. Buduci da je koncept humanog razvoja mnogo siri nego sto to bilo koji pojedinacni indikator moze da predstavi, nivo humanog razvoja bi trebalo ocenjivati pomocu nekoliko razlicitih indikatora. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47009: European integrations and social and economic changes in Serbian economy on the way to the EU i br. 179015: Challenges and prospects of structural changes in Serbia: Strategic directions for economic development and harmonization with EU requirements. (shrink)

Each of us makes a number of decisions, from the less important to those with far-reaching consequences. As members of different groups, we are also actors of group decision making. In order to make a rational decision, a choice-making procedure must satisfy a number of assumptions of rationality. In addition, when it comes to group decisions, those procedures should also be?fair.? However, it is not possible to define a procedure of choice-making that would transform individual orders of alternatives based on (...) preferences of perfectly rational individuals into a single social order and still meet conditions of rationality and ethics. The theory of deliberative democracy appeared in response to the impossibility of Social Choice theory. The basic assumption of deliberative democracy is that individuals adjust their preferences taking into account interests of the community. They are open for discussion with other group members and are willing to change their attitudes in order to achieve common interests. Ideally, group members come to an agreement during public discussion. Still, this concept cannot completely over?come all the difficulties posed by the theory of social choice. Specifically, there is no solution for strategic and manipulative behavior of individuals. Also, the concept of deliberative democracy faces certain problems particular to this approach, such as, to name but a few, problems with the establishment of equality of participants in the debate and their motivation, as well as problems with the organization of public hearings. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Kant?s moral theory and how it can guide our actions in philanthropy. Philanthropy is usually defined as a voluntary action aimed at relieving suffering and improving the quality of lives of others. It has been argued that, within the framework of Kant?s theory, it is our duty to be beneficent, sacrificing a part of our welfare for others. The duty of beneficence is a wide one. Interpreters of Kant disagree on what the wide duty of beneficence (...) requires. While a few argue that it only requires that we provide help sometimes, others hold that the duty of beneficence should be seen as more demanding, particularly in cases of emergency when help is urgently required. We are morally obliged to promote the happiness of others, but the duty of beneficence does not tell us whose happiness and how much of our resources to give. Other than emergency cases, in fulfilling the duty of beneficence, we can prioritize the ends of those near and dear to us who concern us more. Moreover, on condition that we are not indifferent to others, it is morally permissible to prioritize our ends. Finally, the paper argues that it is not always straightforward what kind of action is required in helping someone in need, and that beneficence in Kantian terms is not limited to the philanthropic sector. (shrink)

Pamala Wiepking and Femida Handy, The Palgrave Handbook of Global Philanthropy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Bojana Radovanović.

This paper discusses the relations between three forms of altruism: behavioural, evolutionary and motivational. Altruism in a behavioural sense is an act that benefits another person. It can range from volunteering to a charity and helping a neighbour, to giving money to a non-profit organisation or donating blood. People often dedicate their material and nonmaterial resources for the benefit of others to gain psychological, social and material benefits for themselves. Thus, their altruistic acts are driven by egoistic motivation. Also, the (...) final goal of an altruistic act may be the increase in the welfare of a group or adherence to a certain moral principle or a social norm. However, at least sometimes, the welfare of others is the ultimate goal of our actions, when our altruistic acts are performed from altruistic motivation. In evolutionary sense, altruism means the sacrifice of reproductive success for the benefit of other organisms. According to evolutionary theories, behaviour which promotes the reproductive success of the receiver at the cost of the actor is favoured by natural selection, because it is either beneficial for the altruist in the long run, or for his genes, or for the group he belongs to. However, altruism among people emerges as a distinctly human combination of innate and learned behaviours. Not only do we benefit the members of our own group, but we are capable of transcending our tribalistic instincts and putting the benefit of strangers at our own personal expense as our ultimate goal. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Sen?s concept of contrapreferential choice. Sen has developed this concept in order to overcome weaknesses of the rational choice theory. According to rational choice theory a decision-maker can be always seen as someone who maximises utility, and each choice he makes as the one that brings to him the highest level of personal wellbeing. Sen argues that in some situations we chose alternatives that bring us lower level of wellbeing than we could achieve if we had (...) chosen some other alternative available to us. This happens when we base our decisions on moral principles, when we act out of duty. Sen calls such action a commitment-based action. When we act out of commitment we actually neglect our preferences and thus we make a contrapreferential choice, as Sen argues. This paper shows that, contrary to Sen, a commitment-based action can be explained within the framework of rational choice theory. However, when each choice we make can be explained within the framework of rational choice theory, when in everything we do maximisation principle can be loaded, then the variety of our motives and traits is lost, and the explanatory power of the rational choice theory is questionable. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

Croatia’s accession to the EU brought changes in educational policies by introducing the concept of the European Dimension in Education. EDE has successfully found its way into the new Croatian national curriculum, however, there has been no comprehensive analysis of whether it has been introduced into teaching materials. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to determine if the European Dimension in Education is present in geography textbooks for primary schools, as well as to explore how it is represented in (...) them. The results of research show that the idea of the European Dimension in Education is most commonly present in terms of factual knowledge about Europe, which does not motivate teachers and pupils to actively and critically discuss issues related to Europe and the European Union. Pristupanje Republike Hrvatske članstvu u Europskoj uniji, donijelo je, između ostalog, promjene u obrazovnim politikama putem koncepta europske dimenzije u obrazovanju. Koncept europske dimenzije u obrazovanju uspješno pronalazi svoje mjesto u Nacionalnom okvirnom kurikulumu, međutim ne postoje detaljnije analize putem kojih bi se utvrdilo je li ovaj koncept prepoznat i u nastavnim materijalima, točnije u udžbenicima. Stoga je cilj ovog istraživanja utvrditi je li i na koji način europska dimenzija u obrazovanju prisutna u udžbenicima geografije za osnovnu školu. Rezultati istraživanja pokazali su da je ideja europske dimenzije u obrazovanju dominantno prisutna u obliku činjeničnog znanja o Europi što nastavnicima i učenicima ne pruža dovoljno mogućnosti za razvoj stavova i kritičkog osvrta na spomenute teme. (shrink)

Pristupanje Republike Hrvatske članstvu u Europskoj uniji, donijelo je, između ostalog, promjene u obrazovnim politikama putem koncepta europske dimenzije u obrazovanju. Koncept europske dimenzije u obrazovanju uspješno pronalazi svoje mjesto u Nacionalnom okvirnom kurikulumu, međutim ne postoje detaljnije analize putem kojih bi se utvrdilo je li ovaj koncept prepoznat i u nastavnim materijalima, točnije u udžbenicima. Stoga je cilj ovog istraživanja utvrditi je li i na koji način europska dimenzija u obrazovanju prisutna u udžbenicima geografije za osnovnu školu. Rezultati istraživanja (...) pokazali su da je ideja europske dimenzije u obrazovanju dominantno prisutna u obliku činjeničnog znanja o Europi što nastavnicima i učenicima ne pruža dovoljno mogućnosti za razvoj stavova i kritičkog osvrta na spomenute teme. (shrink)

Bioethics has paid surprisingly little attention to the special problems faced by women and to feminist analyses of current health care issues other than ...

Arguably no concept is more fundamental to science than that of causality, for investigations into cases of existence, persistence, and change in the natural world are largely investigations into the causes of these phenomena. Yet the metaphysics and epistemology of causality remain unclear. For example, the ontological categories of the causal relata have been taken to be objects (Hume 1739), events (Davidson 1967), properties (Armstrong 1978), processes (Salmon 1984), variables (Hitchcock 1993), and facts (Mellor 1995). (For convenience, causes and effects (...) will usually be understood as events in what follows.) Complicating matters, causal relations may be singular (Socrates’s drinking hemlock caused Socrates’s death) or general (Drinking hemlock causes death); hence the relata might be tokens (e.g., instances of properties) or types (e.g., types of events) of the category in question. Other questions up for grabs are: Are singular causes metaphysically and/or epistemologically prior to general causes or vice versa (or neither)? What grounds the intuitive asymmetry of the causal relation? Are macro-causal relations reducible to micro-causal relations? And perhaps most importantly: Are causal facts (e.g., the holding of causal relations) reducible to non-causal facts (e.g., the holding of certain spatiotemporal relations)? (shrink)

In this paper I argue that both defence and criticism of the claim that humans act ‘under the guise of the good’ neglects the metaphysical roots of the theory. I begin with an overview of the theory and its modern commentators, with critics noting the apparent possibility of acting against the good, and supporters claiming that such actions are instances of error. These debates reduce the ‘guise of the good’ to a claim about intention and moral action, and in so (...) doing have become divorced from the theory's roots in classical and medieval philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas’ ‘guise of the good’ is primarily a metaphysical claim resting on the equivalence between actuality and goodness, from which conclusions about moral action are derived. I show the reasoning behind their theory and how it forms the basis for the claims about intention and action at the centre of the modern debate. Finally, I argue that the absence of its original foundation is apparent in recent attacks on the ‘guise of the good’. It is unsurprising that modern action theory and ethics have not always been able to comfortably accommodate the ‘guise of the good’; they are only telling half of the story. (shrink)

This volume provides a philosophical introduction to and analysis of the study of metaphor. By proceeding from the concrete analysis of complex metaphors, White is able to identify a range of features which are incompatible with standard accounts of the way words function in metaphor.