Twenty years since the onset of the traumatic wars of Yugoslav secession, the countries of the Western Balkans continue to nurture narratives of the past that are mutually exclusive, contradictory, and irreconcilable. The troubling ways in which states in the region remember their pasts provide continuing obstacles in the search for acknowledgment and justice. In this essay, I develop an argument for understanding the relationship between justice and remembrance of the past. To illustrate this relationship, I explore ways in which (...) education and memorialization projects contribute to justice efforts. I critically analyze a few ongoing education and memory projects in the region, and then present alternative ideas on mechanisms of public memory that would be more conducive to building the foundational blocks of justice based on trust, respect, and dignity. (shrink)

Recently, I have proposed an extension of the framework of the ethics of collegiality (Berber & Subotić, forthcoming). By incorporating an anti-individual perspective and the notion of epistemic competence, this framework can reveal the epistemic virtue/vice relativism, which, in turn, charts the tension between being a good colleague and an efficient, loyal employee. In this paper, however, I want to sketch how the ethics of collegiality could be applied to practical domains, such as the historical accountability and atonement of corporations (...) that participated in the anti-Semitic policies of the Third Reich and contributed to the Holocaust by using slave or forced labor. New studies suggest that corporations ought to engage in deeper historical reflection and ethical dialogue between Shoah survivors and top managers to address the issue of industrial compliance (Federman 2021), whereas most of the work on this topic traditionally focused on the issue of reparations litigation (Kelly 2016, Neuborne 2003). Through the notions of collective institutional epistemic vice and institutional ethos (Fricker 2021), the upshot is to assess whether it is feasible for corporations to be genuinely repentant regarding their role in the Holocaust thanks to the ethics of collegiality instead of merely offering compensation. I will argue that instead of emphasizing ethical leadership and the top-down approach to the (re-)implementation of values in corporate conduct, the spotlights should be on the bottom-up approach grounded in collegial solidarity among all employees. (shrink)

Unchosen transformative experiences—transformative experiences that are imposed upon an agent by external circumstances—present a fundamental problem for agency: how does one act intentionally in circumstances that transform oneself as an agent, and that disrupt one’s core projects, cares, or goals? Drawing from William James’s analysis of conversion and Matthew Ratcliffe’s account of grief, I give a phenomenological analysis of transformative experiences as involving the restructuring of systems of practical meaning. On this analysis, an agent’s experience of the world is structured (...) by practically significant possibilities that form organized systems on the basis of the agent’s projects and relationships. Transformative experiences involve shifts to systems of possibility, that is, changes to habitual meanings and to how an agent’s projects are situated in relation to one another. I employ the enactivist notion of sense-making to analyze how an agent rebuilds the meaning structures disrupted by a transformative experience. In an unchosen transformative experience, an agent adjusts to a significant disruption through a process of sense-making in precarious conditions. By establishing new patterns of bodily and social interaction with the world, one alters the practical meanings of one’s surroundings, and thereby reconstitutes oneself as an intentional agent. (shrink)

Deep learning (DL) is a statistical technique for pattern classification through which AI researchers train artificial neural networks containing multiple layers that process massive amounts of data. I present a three-level account of explanation that can be reasonably expected from DL models in cognitive neuroscience and that illustrates the explanatory dynamics within a future-biased research program (Feest Philosophy of Science 84:1165–1176, 2017 ; Doerig et al. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience 24:431–450, 2023 ). By relying on the mechanistic framework (Craver Explaining the (...) brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Clarendon, 2007 ; Stinson Eppuor si muove: Doing history and philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer. Springer, 2017, The Routledge Handbook of the computational mind. Routledge, 2018 ), I develop an account that corresponds to the stages of mechanism discovery, i.e., our shifting epistemic position and epistemic goals, and propose a representative model for each level. Generic, theoretical DL models at _Level 1_ address the general features of a cognitive phenomenon through exploration and provide us with how-possibly explanations. On the other hand, DL models at _Level 2_ either identify the interaction between the features or represent the epistemic stage when the researcher is still unsure if the modeled features are crucial or arbitrary. These models should provide us with how-plausibly explanations. Finally, specific DL models of specific brain areas, i.e., ersatz models filled with relevant cognitive and neuroscientific details, are at _Level 3_. At this level, a researcher can advance how-actually explanations of cognitive phenomena. The main strength of this account is that it elucidates both _global explanatory dynamics_ and _local explanatory dynamics_ (cf. Dresow Synthese 199:10441–10474, 2021 ). The former occurs when the transition between levels happens in accordance with the process of obtaining more details about a particular cognitive phenomenon through multiple DL models. The latter, meanwhile, involves cases in which the transition between levels takes place within a single DL model by elucidating internal mechanisms (e.g., using Explainable AI techniques for rendering models more transparent). (shrink)

The current coronavirus pandemic has presented many scientific disciplines, including philosophy, with various theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper, we deal with three philosophical issues related to the pandemic and specific approaches to them. The first part of the article is dedicated to the analysis of the term?expert,? whose significance was highlighted at the outbreak of the pandemic. By examining Plato?s ancient and Goldman?s modern understanding of this concept, we will try to emphasize the importance of expert opinion in (...) crisis circumstances. In the second part of the paper, we will deal with the issue of public mistrust of scientific authorities as well as the problem of the flourishing of so-called conspiracy theories. Goldenberg?s and Cassam?s approach to this topic will help us see where the source of these problems might lie and what potentially harmful consequences they can produce. In the third part of the text, we list some of the main moral dilemmas we have faced since the beginning of the pandemic. Special attention is paid to Kant?s moral philosophy in which we find advice on how an individual should act in times of crisis. (shrink)

Jelena Ćeriman, Rebellious Parents: Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2017).

Recently, Charles Goldhaber (2019) has argued that Tyler Burge’s (2005, 2010, 2011) arguments against disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception fail when juxtaposed with the literature in perceptual psychology. In addition, Goldhaber traces Burge’s motives for dismissing disjunctivism: his underlying theoretical assumptions vis-à-vis human rationality virtually force him to maintain that there is a genuine inconsistency between disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. While Goldhaber aims to defend epistemological disjunctivism à la John McDowell, my concern will be the other target of Burge’s (...) attack, namely John Campbell’s (2002a, 2002b, 2011a) relationism. I will reexamine the Burge/Campbell debate concerning the role of perceptual psychology in theorizing about the nature of perception and the status of perceptual beliefs so that I can support Goldhaber’s stance that Burge’s plan to put the kibosh on disjunctivism backfires in the end. Finally, by using the challenge of cognitive penetrability, I show how Burge’s argumentation strategy can be turned against him. (shrink)

Emotionally arousing events reach awareness more easily and evoke greater visual cortex activation than more mundane events. Recent studies have shown that they are also perceived more vividly and that emotionally enhanced perceptual vividness predicts memory vividness. We propose that affect-biased attention (ABA) – selective attention to emotionally salient events – is an endogenous attentional system tuned by an individual's history of reward and punishment. We present the Biased Attention via Norepinephrine (BANE) model, which unifies genetic, neuromodulatory, neural and behavioural (...) evidence to account for ABA. We review evidence supporting BANE's proposal that a key mechanism of ABA is locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC–NE) activity, which interacts with activity in hubs of affective salience networks to modulate visual cortex activation and heighten the subjective vividness of emotionally salient stimuli. We further review literature on biased competition and look at initial evidence for its potential as a neural mechanism behind ABA. We also review evidence supporting the role of the LC–NE system as a driving force of ABA. Finally, we review individual differences in ABA and memory including differences in sensitivity to stimulus category and valence. We focus on differences arising from a variant of the ADRA2b gene, which codes for the alpha2b adrenoreceptor as a way of investigating influences of NE availability on ABA in humans. (shrink)

A necessary first step in collaboration between hypnosis research and meditation research is clarification of key concepts. The authors propose that such clarification is best advanced by neurophenomenological investigations that integrate neuroscience methods with phenomenological models based on first-person reports of hypnotic versus meditative experiences. Focusing on absorption, the authors argue that previous treatments of hypnosis and meditation as equivalent are incorrect, but that they can be fruitfully compared when characteristic features of the states described by these concepts are examined. (...) To this end, the authors use the “phenomenological and neurocognitive matrix of mindfulness” (PNM), a multidimensional model recently proposed by Lutz and colleagues. The authors compare focused attention meditation and open monitoring meditation with hypnosis across the dimensions of the PNM, using it to interpret empirical research on hypnosis, and to shed light on debates about the role of meta-awareness in hypnosis and the role of suggestion in meditation. (shrink)

Unchosen transformative experiences—transformative experiences that are imposed upon an agent by external circumstances—present a fundamental problem for agency: how does one act intentionally in circumstances that transform oneself as an agent, and that disrupt one’s core projects, cares, or goals? Drawing from William James’s analysis of conversion and Matthew Ratcliffe’s account of grief, I give a phenomenological analysis of transformative experiences as involving the restructuring of systems of practical meaning. On this analysis, an agent’s experience of the world is structured (...) by practically significant possibilities that form organized systems on the basis of the agent’s projects and relationships. Transformative experiences involve shifts to systems of possibility, that is, changes to habitual meanings and to how an agent’s projects are situated in relation to one another. I employ the enactivist notion of sense-making to analyze how an agent rebuilds the meaning structures disrupted by a transformative experience. In an unchosen transformative experience, an agent adjusts to a significant disruption through a process of sense-making in precarious conditions. By establishing new patterns of bodily and social interaction with the world, one alters the practical meanings of one’s surroundings, and thereby reconstitutes oneself as an intentional agent. (shrink)

Polazeci od teorijskog problema tumacenja procesa izgradnje nacija u okviru kontinentalnih imperija, autor u ovom radu istrazuje razlicita znacenja?Sibira? u ru?skoj imperijalnoj i nacionalnoj imaginaciji. Analizom diskurzivnih praksi kojima se stvaraju razlicite predstave geografskog prostora prikazana je promena percepcije Sibira od?tudje zemlje? i?kolonije? do neotudjivog dela ruske nacionalne teritorije. Prateci nastanak?ruskosti? Sibira, autor taj koncept interpretira kao sastavni deo sirih debata o ruskom identitetu, tj. odnosu?evropske? i?azijske? Rusije. Stoga je osnovni cilj ove studije objasnjenje jednog vaznog aspekta procesa promene Rusije (...) od imperijalne do?nacionalizujuce? drzave. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179014. (shrink)

Tekst je drugi deo studije u kojoj je analizirano delo Aleksandra Radisceva vodeceg predstavnika Prosvetiteljstva u Rusiji XVIII veka. Polazeci od tumacenja 'prosvecenog apsolutizma' Katarine Velike, u radu su interpretirane politicke i socijalne ideje Radiscevljevog Putovanje od Petrograda do Moskve. Autor zakljucuje da je Radiscev rodonacelnik 'ruske inteligencije' ciji kriticki angazman anticipira fenomen 'disidentstva'.

The paper offers a critical discussion of the thesis about the revived philosophical and political significance of Lenin, as recently propounded by Slavoj Zizek. Analyzing Zizek's writings, the author argues that the call for a "return to Lenin" derives from Zizek's strategy of "textual provocation" and the frustrating position of the leftist, radical tradition of political thought after the collapse of communism. U radu je prikazana i kriticki interpretirana teza o filozofskoj i politickoj aktualnosti Lenjina koju je nedavno formulisao Slavoj (...) Zizek. Na osnovu analize Zizekovih tekstova, autor obrazlaze svoju ocenu po kojoj je zamisao "povratka Lenjinu " proizvod Zizekove strategije " tekstualne provokacije " i frustrirajuceg polozaja u kojem se, nakon sloma komunizma nasla leva, radikalna tradicija politickog misljenja. (shrink)

Inflectional morphology has been taken as a paradigmatic example of rule-governed grammatical knowledge (Pinker, 1999). The plausibility of this claim may be related to the fact that it is mainly based on studies of English, which has a very simple inflectional system. We examined the representation of inflectional morphology in Serbian, which encodes number, gender, and case for nouns. Linguists standardly characterize this system as a complex set of rules, with disagreements about their exact form. We present analyses of a (...) large corpus of nouns which showed that, as in English, Serbian inflectional morphology is quasiregular: It exhibits numerous partial regularities creating neighborhoods that vary in size and consistency. We then asked whether a simple connectionist network could encode this statistical information in a manner that also supported generalization. A network trained on 3,244 Serbian nouns learned to produce correctly inflected phonological forms from a specification of a word's lemma, gender, number, and case, and generalized to untrained cases. The model's performance was sensitive to variables that also influence human performance, including surface and lemma frequency. It was also influenced by inflectional neighborhood size, a novel measure of the consistency of meaning to form mapping. A word-naming experiment with native Serbian speakers showed that this measure also affects human performance. The results suggest that, as in English, generating correctly inflected forms involves satisfying a small number of simultaneous probabilistic constraints relating form and meaning. Thus, common computational mechanisms may govern the representation and use of inflectional information across typologically diverse languages. (shrink)

Rankings have dramatically proliferated over the past several decades. An often-overlooked impact of this proliferation is that it has facilitated the institutionalization of an imaginary of the modern world as a stratified order, whose actors are imagined as continuously striving to perform better than others. To better understand this impact, we need to take a closer look at rankings’ premises and the way these resonate with the broader institutional environment of which rankings are a part.

In this paper, we reconsider the notion of epistemic trespassing and attempt to explore possible scenarios in which it could lead to positive outcomes in scientific research and information dissemination. As we will point out, some of the significant discoveries in the history of science would not have been possible were it not for the epistemic trespassers, whose shift in paradigm changed the approach to specific issues for the better. Furthermore, we will present instances where individuals, often labeled as ‘trespassers’ (...) – those who venture into fields outside their expertise – can be considered trustworthy and reliable sources of testimony. Consequently, epistemic trespassing turned out to be essential for the advancement of science. Epistemic trespassing in our age is virtually inevitable – whether it be from a political perspective (to preserve democratic values) or due to purely practical reasons (i.e. searching for information online). There are interdisciplinary fields where a strictly negative characterization of epistemic trespassing would question their methodology since these disciplines rely on experts from various fields. For these reasons, we advocate for a more charitable approach to epistemic trespassing and greater public education to help them distinguish between correct and false information. (shrink)

Three decades ago, William Ramsey, Steven Stich & Joseph Garon put forward an argument in favor of the following conditional: if connectionist models that implement parallelly distributed processing represent faithfully human cognitive processing, eliminativism about propositional attitudes is true. The corollary of their argument (if it proves to be sound) is that there is no place for folk psychology in contemporary cognitive science. This understanding of connectionism as a hypothesis about cognitive architecture compatible with eliminativism is also endorsed by Paul (...) Churchland, a radical opponent of folk psychology and a prominent supporter of eliminative materialism. I aim to examine whether current connectionist models based on long-short term memory (LSTM) neural networks can back up these arguments in favor of eliminativism. Nonetheless, I will rather put my faith in the eliminativism of the limited domain. This position amounts to the claim that even though connectionist cognitive science has no need whatsoever for folk psychology qua theory, this does not entail the illegitimacy of folk psychology per se in other scientific domains, most notably in humanities, but only on condition that one regards folk psychology as mere heuristics. (shrink)

Cognitive scientists used to deem reasoning either as a higher cognitive process based on the manipulation of abstract rules or as a higher cognitive process that is stochastic rather than involving abstract rules. I maintain that these different perspectives are closely intertwined with a theoretical and methodological endorsement of either cognitivism or connectionism. Cognitivism and connectionism represent two prevailing and opposed paradigms in cognitive science. I aim to extoll the virtues of connectionist models of enthymematic reasoning by following means: via (...) the phenomenon of creative enthymeme, viz. the inference where one cannot even articulate the missing premise, I introduce a connectionist mechanism of pattern recognition as underlying expertise; via Gestalt switch or Gestalt click, I demonstrate how differences in pattern recognition of an expert and a novice can be construed as qualitatively different, and not merely a matter of faster reasoning. (shrink)

Both in opera studies and in most operatic works, the singing body is taken for granted. Jelena Novak reintroduces an awareness of the physicality of the singing body to opera studies. Arguing that the body-voice relationship itself is a producer of meaning, she furthermore posits this relationship as one of the major driving forces in recent opera. She takes as her focus six contemporary operas - La Belle et la Bête, Writing to Vermeer, Three Tales, One, Homeland and La (...) Commedia and dissects the singing body as a set of rules, protocols, effects, strategies. (shrink)

This paper argues that grieving a profound loss is a transformative experience, specifically an unchosen transformative experience, understood as an event‐based transformation not chosen by the agent. Grief transforms the self (i) cognitively, by forcing the agent to alter a large set of beliefs and desires, (ii) phenomenologically, by altering their experience in a diffuse or global manner, (iii) normatively, by requiring the agent to revise their practical identity, and (iv) existentially, by confronting the agent with a structuring condition of (...) their life. Grief is a disruption to one's identity that an agent addresses by making sense of the world after the loss, remaking the practical significance of various situations in their lives through their activity. Transformative grief is both an “activity” and a “revelation” (Callard, 2020): Some parts of the grieving process are active (the agent must actively work to become a new kind of person), while others are irreducibly passive (the agent passively undergoes them). (shrink)

This paper interprets and analyzes the debate having taken place in 1995 between E. Gellner and A. Smith concerning the problem of the emergence of nations. This discussion is used as an example to show the basic general features of two approaches in theories of nationalism - the modernist and the ethno symbolic ones. Pointing to the common assumptions shared by Gellner's and Smith's theories of nations, the author interprets ethno-symbolism as a sort of internal self-criticism of the modernist standpoint. (...) This polemic is therefore interpreted not as a debate between "creationist" and "evolutionist" solutions to the problem of the emergence of nations, but rather as a debate between two theoretical paradigms defining different research priorities in studying nations and nationalisms. From this perspective, the author concludes that the ethno symbolic approach to the genealogy of nations has broader heuristic capacities than the modernist paradigm, at least when the emergence of "peripheral nations" and the understanding of the dynamic of their nationalisms are concerned. U radu je interpretiran i analiziran spor koji su vodili E. Gelner i A. Smit 1995. godine o problemu nastanka nacija. Na primenu ove diskusije prikazane su osnovne opste karakteristike dva pristupa u teorijama nacionalizma modernistickog i etnosimbolickog. Ukazujuci na zajednicke pretpostavke Gelnerove i Smitove teorije nacija, autor je etnosimbolizam tumacio kao jednu vrstu unutrasnje samokritike modernistickog stanovista. Na taj nacin, ova polemika nije interpretirana kao spor izmedju "kreacionistickog" i "evolucionistickog" resenja problema nastanka nacija, vec prevashodno kao spor dve teorijske paradigme koje razlicito odredjuju istrazivacke prioritete u tematizaciji nacija i nacionalizama. Sa tog stanovista, autor je zakljucio da etnosimbolicki pristup genealogiji nacija ima vece heuristicke kapacitete od modernisticke paradigme, bar kada je u pitanju problem nastanka "perifernih nacija " i razumevanja dinamike njihovih nacionalizama. (shrink)

Hate speech is a phenomenon which has been in the focus of scholarly interest of linguists, philosophers, sociologists, human-rights advocates, legal and media experts. Much of this interest has been devoted to establishing criteria for identifying what constitutes hate speech across disciplines. In this paper, we argue that hate speech has profiled as a distinct subgenre of the language of politics with typical patterns and ways of addressing which can be recognized in political campaigns across the world. Therefore, we present (...) the findings of the case study of translation exercises of English and Serbian texts containing samples of hateful language during presidential campaigns in the USA and Serbia in 2016 and 2017. Our aim is to identify the linguistico-pragmatic commonalities of hate speech in Serbian and English and examine students’ attitudes towards ethically and morally challenging language contents in their mother tongue and English as their foreign language. The results indicate that in both English and Serbian the same groups are targeted with the hateful language which in both languages uses vulgarisms, taboo words, sexist and chauvinistic declarative expressions to achieve political goals. In addition, L1>L2 and L2>L1 translation data indicate that personal moral and ethical norms in translators are stronger in L1 thus restrictively affecting translational L2>L1 output. (shrink)

Predmet su rada rasprave o odnosu determinizma i slobode volje (tj. problem kompatibilnosti), odnosno implikacije koje imaju po moralnu odgovornost. Problemu se pristupa iz naturalističke perspektive iako se ne nudi odgovor na pitanje istine kauzalnog determinizma. Međutim, s ciljem da se ispita perspektiva za moralnu odgovornost, pretpostavlja se da je kauzalni determinizam potkrijepljen znanošću. Razmatra se pojam kauzalnog determinizma, a potom se ispituju izazovi koje argument konzekvenci postavlja pred slobodu volje shvaćenu kao mogućnost da se učini drugačije. Cilj je rada (...) pokazati da su u osnovi svakodnevne upotrebe pojma moralne odgovornosti slabiji uvjeti od slobode shvaćene kao mogućnosti da se učini drugačije. Na tim temeljima branimo zaključak da je moralna odgovornost kompatibilna s kauzalnim determinizmom. (shrink)

The topic of this dissertation is the nature of linguistic competence, the capacity to understand and produce sentences of natural language. I defend the empiricist account of linguistic competence embedded in the connectionist cognitive science. This strand of cognitive science has been opposed to the traditional symbolic cognitive science, coupled with transformational-generative grammar, which was committed to nativism due to the view that human cognition, including language capacity, should be construed in terms of symbolic representations and hardwired rules. Similarly, linguistic (...) competence in this framework was regarded as being innate, rule-governed, domain-specific, and fundamentally different from performance, i.e., idiosyncrasies and factors governing linguistic behavior. I analyze state-of-the-art connectionist, deep learning models of natural language processing, most notably large language models, to see what they can tell us about linguistic competence. Deep learning is a statistical technique for the classification of patterns through which artificial intelligence researchers train artificial neural networks containing multiple layers that crunch a gargantuan amount of textual and/or visual data. I argue that these models suggest that linguistic competence should be construed as stochastic, pattern-based, and stemming from domain-general mechanisms. Moreover, I distinguish syntactic from semantic competence, and I show for each the ramifications of the endorsement of a connectionist research program as opposed to the traditional symbolic cognitive science and transformational-generative grammar. I provide a unifying front, consisting of usage-based theories, a construction grammar approach, and an embodied approach to cognition to show that the more multimodal and diverse models are in terms of architectural features and training data, the stronger the case is for the connectionist linguistic competence. I also propose to discard the competence vs. performance distinction as theoretically inferior so that a novel and integrative account of linguistic competence originating in connectionism and empiricism that I propose and defend in the dissertation could be put forward in scientific and philosophical literature. (shrink)

The paper’s focus is on an age-long philosophical issue: man and power. It is analyzed in the frame of the basic philosophical paradigms: ontological, epistemological, axiological, anthropological and linguistic. From the analysis and comparison of the particular traits of each of these paradigms three approaches to human beings arise: essential, existential and interpretative. The power dominating over people or possessing them has various forms: universal law, God’s will, political order, the nature inside and outside us, etc., the most dangerous of (...) them being those we are unaware of. (shrink)

This article explores the activities of the Adult Shelter of the National Committee of the City of Zagreb since its foundation, from 1953 to 1978. The focus is on the consideration of the policy of taking care of vulnerable groups in social welfare institutions in the city of Zagreb, including persons with mental disorders. It seeks to illuminate the beginnings of the long-term care of the latter population in the homes for mentally ill adults, today known as homes for adults. (...) In connection to this, their social stigmatisation and tendency of placement into spatially segregated objects are discussed. The research showed that the strategies of social protection and mental health protection, despite the then-advocated idea of equality between social categories, were at the time oriented towards the protection of the majority of community from persons with mental disorders. (shrink)

Any deviation of speed in a traffic flow from a speed limit represents a potential risk of traffic accidents, so speed management appears as an imperative. However, an inadequately set speed limit often causes drivers’ noncompliance to it in the conditions of real traffic flow. By determining the value of exceeding the speed limit according to vehicle classes, it is possible to recommend a credible speeding value that can be considered credible up to a value above the speed limit. In (...) this paper, deterministic multistep mathematical models of speed deviation from the speed limit as a function of longitudinal gradient for the proposed vehicle classes were developed. A total of 11 measuring sections with different traffic flow types were analyzed. Based on a detailed analysis of speeding, models for the deviation of the 15th, 50th, and 85th percentiles were obtained, with the aim of adjusting the credible deviation to control measures. The results obtained in this study were compared with a survey of traffic flow speeding on two-lane roads conducted in Serbia. (shrink)

Starting with a short review of the postcolonial studies? origins, this paper considers the question of their application in the study of history and contemporary state of the post-Soviet societies. Aspirations of the leading theorists of postcolonial studies not to restrict their field of research on the relation of imperial metropoles and its colonial periphery have not met with the acceptance in post-Soviet societies? academia. With the exception of the famous debates on?the Balkans? that are not the subject of this (...) paper, the paradigm of post-colonialism is rarely used in the interpretation of past and present of the former socialist states. Rejecting the thesis of their own colonial status in most of Eastern European countries is usually based on a rejection of the assumption of the Soviet-style communism?s?civilizing mission?. From the same perspective, the Soviet Union is not considered a colonial metropole, but an occupying force, and the epoch of socialism is interpreted as externally imposed breach of the historical developments based on the European model. On the other hand, the concept of these countries? transition opens up the issue of their colonial status in relation to?Europe? as the center of economic, political and cultural power. Therefore, the postcolonial critique of post-Soviet societies is more often focused on the thematisation of neo-imperial domination and neo-colonial dependency phenomena, than on the explanation of their socialist past. The author?s opinion is that it doesn?t mean that a number of concepts of postcolonial theory - such as?internal colonialism? - cannot be productively used to a fuller understanding of the Soviet past, nor that in the interpretation of post-Soviet realities??hybrid forms? the postcolonial studies cannot be of use. (shrink)

The question of education is as old as life itself, and its elements, which have been questioned throughout history, still occupy the minds of many pedagogues, psychologists, philosophers and sociologists today. There are many different experts dealing with education, but one name is particularly important, the name that links the notion of contemporary education and education reform – John Dewey. The aim of this paper is to present his theory and its application in the domain of the philosophy of education, (...) emphasizing the importance of education as a social function in the service of civilizational survival and progress. Social and technological advancement prompted Dewey to the idea of education reform, with focus on practical work and experimental method and with the aim of achieving a balance between knowledge and skills. A significant part of Dewey's philosophy of education is devoted precisely to education. This paper presents general reflections on education, its goals, purpose and definition, and morals as a significant educational aspect, all combining pragmatic approach, making experience and knowledge gained with practical work a priority. (shrink)

Attempts at formulating a dichotomous classification of nations and nationalisms have proliferated in the relevant literature over a long period of time. In this study some of the most influential instances of dual typologies of nationalisms are selected for interpretation and analysis. The examples include Renan's under?standing of differences between the "French" and the "German" concepts of nation; Kohn's distinction between "eastern" and "western" nationalisms; a revision of Kohn's dichotomy suggested by J. Plamenatz; and a more recent version of dual (...) typology propounded by L. Greenfield. By reconstructing the views of the selected theorists of nationalism, at the basis of all these typologies a dichotomous division into "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism is identified. Critical objections to this fundamental dual division are articulated at two levels. At the first, historical level, a socio-political contextualization of dual typologies points to their practical, political-ideological purposes. At the second, conceptual level, and drawing on the ideas of R. Brubaker, the author discusses analytical and normative weaknesses of the usual distinction between "civic" and "ethnic" nationalism. Literatura o nacijama i nacionalizmu svedoci o istorijski dugotrajnim pokusajima formulisanja dihotomne klasifikacije proucavanih fenomena. Stoga je autor u ovoj studiji interpretirao i analizirao neke od najuticajnijih primera dualnih tipologija nacionalizma. Predmet njegovog istrazivanja su Renanovo shvatanje razlika izmedju "francuskog" i "nemackog" pojma nacije, Konovo razlikovanje "istocnog" i "zapadnog" nacionalizma, Plamenceva revizija Konove dihotomije, kao i novija verzija dualnih tipologija Lie Grinfeld. Rekonstrukcijom stanovista izabranih teoreticara nacionalizma, autor u osnovi svih prikazanih tipologija identifikuje dihotomnu podelu na "gradjanski" i "etnicki nacionalizam". Kriticke primedbe ovoj osnovnoj dualnoj podeli formulisane su u dve razlicite ravni: istorijskoj i konceptualnoj. U prvoj, socijalno-politickom kontekstualizacijom dualnih tipologija naglasena je njihova prakticna, politicko-ideoloska funkcija. Oslanjajuci se na stavove R. Brubejkera, autor je u drugoj, teorijskoj ravni, istakao analiticke i normativne slabosti uobicajene podele na "gradjanski" i "etnicki nacionalizam". (shrink)

This study examines how the match between personal and firm-level values regarding environmental responsibility affects employee job satisfaction and creativity and contributes to three literature streams [i.e., social corporate responsibility, creativity, and person–environment fit]. Building on the P–E fit literature, we propose and test environmental orientation fit versus nonfit effects on creativity, identifying job satisfaction as a mediating mechanism and regulatory pressure as a moderator. An empirical investigation indicates that the various environmental orientation fit conditions affect job satisfaction and creativity (...) differently. More specifically, environmental orientation fit produces greater job satisfaction and creativity when the employee and organization both demonstrate high concern for the environment than when both display congruent low concern for the environmental. Furthermore, for employees working in organizations that fit their personal environmental orientation, strong regulatory pressure to comply with environmental standards diminishes the positive fit effect on job satisfaction and creativity, while regulatory pressure does not affect the job satisfaction and creativity of employees whose personal environmental orientation is incongruent with that of the organization. (shrink)

U tekstu se razmatraju neki problemi sa kojima se suocava istrazivanje zivotne sredine. Osim pojmovne problematike, svojestvene srpskom jeziku, resavanje realnih problema okruzenja generalno treba da resi dihotomiju antropocentrizam - biocentrizam koja izvire iz suprotstavljajuce ljudske prirode a upravo se u ekologiji pokazuje neodrzivom. Izmedju ostalih tema preispituje se znacenje teze o ekologiji kao novoj velikoj prici, koja omogucava da nauka i demokratija nastave da napreduju i medjusobno se legitimizuju, sa stanovista univerzalnog vazenja. Takodje se preispituje delotvornost teorija iz kojih (...) se izvodi beznacajnost ljudske vrste za njeno oslobadjanje od antropocentrizma koji suzava perspektivu opstanka. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 43007: Istrazivanje klimatskih promena i njihovih uticaja na zivotnu sredinu - uticaji, adaptacija i ublazavanje. (shrink)

Cilj ovog rada je da razmotrimo zašto, i na koji način se Kvajn pozicionira između logičkih pozitivista i epistemoloških nihilista u pogledu shvatanja empirijskog svedočanstva. Naime, on će na nov način formulisati kriterijume opservacionalnosti s namerom da prevaziđe probleme koji su za logički pozitivizam bili nepremostivi, a da time ne žrtvuje objektivnost nauke poljuljanu krahom tradicionalnog pristupa epistemološkim pitanjima. Privučeni provokativnošću Kvajnovog istovremenog ispoljavanja radikalnih, ali i konzervativnih tendencija, odnosno namere da održi balans između stanovišta tradicionalne filozofije i epistemološkog nihilizma, (...) nastojaćemo da ispitamo koliko je Kvajn uspešan u svojoj zamisli. U zavisnosti od odgovora na to pitanje ocenićemo značaj i relevantnost kvajnovskog naturalističkog pristupa za empirističku epistemologiju. (shrink)

This paper outlines the key points of the debate concerning theoretical perspectives on knowledge which had unfolded in the time of the most prominent epicurean and skeptical thinkers. The research begins with a few historical indications about Epicurusʼ contribution to the establishment of the aforementioned disputes and his motivation to assign crucial importance to the problem of the criteria of knowledge. At the same time, to some extent, it will become clear how a rival, skeptical school of thought developed under (...) the influence of that teaching. The intention is not to depict these two philosophical approaches in full, nor to capture their main features, but to offer some insight into specific areas of their mutual influence that have contributed to their unexpected convergence. As a result, we will see that, although quite diverse, these two Hellenistic positions reflect certain similarities, above all when it comes to the understanding of the nature and goal of philosophical research, the illustration of a happy life, as well as the answer to the question of what criteria we should follow in order to lead such a life. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that to address structural injustice, individuals should participate in collective actions organized by civil society organizations, but the role and the normative status of CSOs are rarely discussed. In this paper, we argue that CSOs semi-perfect our shared obligation to address structural injustice by defining shared goals as well as taking actions to further them. This assigns a special moral status to CSOs, which in turn gives rise to our duty to support them. Thus, we do (...) not have full discretion when deciding whether to join collective actions or not. Under certain conditions, we can even be forced by others to do our share. (shrink)

Odgovornost pripisujemo sa namerom da postignemo neki cilj. Jedno od opših mesta u filozofskoj literaturi je da osobi možemo pripisati moralnu odgovornost ako su zadovoljena bar dva uslova: da subjekt delanja ima kontrolu nad svojim postupcima i da je u stanju da navede razloge u prilog svog postupka. Međutim, četvrtu industrijsku revoluciju karakterišu sociotehnološke pojave koje nas potencijalno suočavaju sa tzv. problemom jaza u odgovornosti. Rasprave o odgovornosti u kontekstu veštačke inteligencije karakteriše nejasna i neodređena upotreba ovog pojma. Da bismo (...) razumeli problem jaza u odgovornosti, njegove domete, kao i eventualna rešenja, u radu razmatramo različite vrste pojma odgovornosti. Identifikujući uslove primene ovih pojmova uviđamo da problem jaza u moralnoj odgovornosti dobija na značaju utoliko što nije očigledno na koji način bi mogao biti premošćen. (shrink)

What is the significance of asserting that certain agents, be they individual or collective ones, have a duty to create just institutions at a global level? It might appear none. For many agree that there is no global authority to coordinate compliance with the duty. Hence, it is up to individual agents to decide how to comply. If this is the correct account of the duty to create just institutions, then one can say that significant global justice projects depend on (...) insignificant duty to realize them. The state’s duty is indeterminate, however, only on the supposition that authoritative institutions are necessary to secure coordination among different agents. The dissertation challenges this fundamental assumption in two steps. First, I investigate the practical relevance of conventions for solving coordination problems. By building on the works of Hume and Lewis, I show how individuals in the state of nature could have coordinated their actions by conventions up until a point when a government could have emerged. I argue that similar considerations apply to relations among states. I identify relevant similarities between conventions creating a government and international customary law. Moreover, I argue that international customary law is a global governing convention since it prescribes how rules that bind all states are to be made. The second step in my argument concerns the normative assessment of conventions. I argue that conventions are essential for the demands of justice as long as they enable compliance with the demands. Not all conventions, however, do so. I put forward the principle of salience to identify those practices that play such a role. The salient practices determine the state’s duty to create a just world order. Ceteris paribus, the duty is not indeterminate after all. Consequently, current coordination problems that arise among states should not be seen as a normal consequence of states’ rational and self-interested behavior in the absence of a global authority; instead, the coordination problems amount to the violation of the duty to create a just world order. The major implication of the argument is that we should replace the Hobbesian framework for thinking about the nature of states as well as how they relate to one another by the Humean one. Thus, instead of insisting on states’ consent and necessity of a centralized authority to coordinate actions, we should pay more attention to the habitual behavior of states as well as the role conventions play in solving coordination problems among them. Importantly, the relevance of conventions to compliance with moral demands does not make authoritative institutions obsolete. The argument of this dissertation is modest – it only asserts that conventions can coordinate actions in the process of transitioning toward more centralized forms of global authority. As opposed to the pessimistic outlook of the Hobbesian framework, the Humean one makes room for hope that the change of the present unjust conditions is possible. (shrink)

Predmet ove disertacije se u najširem smislu može posmatrati kao odgovor na meta-epistemološko pitanje o zadatku epistemologije i načinu na koji bi epistemološki projekat trebalo voditi. U radu prikazujemo i kritički analiziramo debatu savremenih metafilozofa o ulozi, a posledično i prirodi intuicija u savremenoj analitičkoj filozofiji. Osnovni cilj našeg rada je da odbranimo stav da epistemičke intuicije igraju ulogu evidencije u okviru metoda analize pojma znanja. Ovaj stav deo je standardne slike o epistemološkoj metodologiji koja se poslednjih godina dovodi u (...) pitanje, kako od strane naučno orijentisanih filozofskih naturalista, tako i filozofskih tradicionalista. Kao ključni problem izdvajamo neuspeh zastupnika standardne slike o filozofskoj metodologiji da ponude odgovor na pitanje prirode intuicija. Prema našem mišljenju ovaj neuspeh posledica je propusta koji prave kako zastupnici, tako i kritičari pozivanja na intuicije u filozofiji kada pristupaju ovoj metafilozofskoj debati. Jednom kada uvidimo da moramo podrobnije razumeti metode u okviru kojih se pozivamo na intuicije, uočićemo da filozofske intuicije ne smemo posmatrati kao homogenu klasu, već da ispitivanju njihove prirode moramo pristupiti u okviru pojedinačnih filozofskih disciplina. Kada smo ovu strategiju primenili u našem istraživanju došli smo do zaključka da intuicije kao izraz pojmovne kompetencije igraju ulogu evidencije u metodima pojmovne analize i misaonog eksperimenta koji su karakteristični za savremenu analitičku epistemologiju. (shrink)