The epistemic attitudes of scientists, such as epistemic tolerance and authoritarianism, play important roles in the discourse about rivaling theories. Epistemic tolerance stands for the mental attitude of an epistemic agent, e.g., a scientist, who is open to opposing views, while epistemic authoritarianism represents the tendency to uncritically accept views of authorities. Another relevant epistemic factor when it comes to the epistemic decisions of scientists is the skepticism towards the scientific method. However, the question is whether these epistemic attitudes are (...) influenced by their sociopolitical counterparts, such as the researcher’s degree of conservatism. To empirically investigate the interplay between epistemic and sociopolitical attitudes of scientists, we conducted a survey with researchers (N = 655) across different disciplines. We propose scales for measuring epistemic tolerance and epistemic authoritarianism, as well as a scale for detecting the participants' readiness to question the scientific method. Furthermore, we investigate the relationship between epistemic tolerance and epistemic authoritarianism on the one hand, and career stage and sociopolitical views on the other hand. Interestingly, our study found only small correlations between the participants' degree of conservatism and their epistemic attitudes. This suggests that political views, against common argumentation, actually do not play an important role in one’s scientific decisions. Moreover, social scientists scored higher on the epistemic tolerance and lower on the epistemic authoritarianism scale than natural scientists. Finally, the results indicate that natural scientists question the scientific method less than social scientists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The “diversity trumps ability” model is often interpreted as a mechanism supporting epistemic democracy. However, as a variety of empirical and mathematical studies have shown, if we attempt to test the realism of the model, it turns out that it points as much toward epistocracy as democracy. This might appear to leave epistocracy with an advantage, since its rationale is not usually thought to rely on the DTA but on the obvious relevance of expertise to making complex decisions. Yet (...) if we apply the same test to epistocracy that we should apply to epistemic democracy—the test of realism—we find that it, too, is unsustainable. This suggests that epistemic democracy and epistocracy alike are indefensible on the basis of the abstract assumptions about diversity and expertise on which the DTA is predicated. (shrink)

The subject matter of the essay is the autonomy of art, which will be analysed from a Jungian perspective. What Jung had in mind with his notion of the independence of the artistic process is its freedom from the conscious mind of an artist, rather than its independence from the current social, political or cultural conditions. Art, according to Jung, is autonomous if it comes from deeper levels of the human psyche, and that is unconsciousness. To test the validity of (...) Jung’s "autonomous complex", I will be checking the empirical reality of artistic creation, by providing professional artists’ accounts of the creative process. Also, I will challenge the categorically laid and the deeply rooted idea of a close link between artistic talent and mental illness, trying to see if the artistic process can be independent of an artist’s psychological state. In Jung’s view, art happens instead of and not because of potential illness of an artist. Additionally, I am going to contrast his view with Freud’s, for whom an artwork is a sublimation of sexual drive or a product of neurosis. This idea was not acceptable to Jung, as he believed in the existence of not only sexual but also art complex. Finally, I will try to argue that Jung’s view is more accurate in the depiction of artistic process than Freud’s and that his emphasis on the autonomy in art, although radical, deserves more attention from scholars in philosophy and psychology of art. (shrink)

Between the two World Wars, in Belgrade and Serbia, seven musical journals were published:?Musical Gazette?,?Music?,?Herald of the Musical Society Stankovic?,?Sound?,?Journal of The South Slav Choral Union?,?Slavic Music? and?Music Review?. The influence of marxism can be observed in?Musical Herald?,?Sound? and?Slavic Music?. A Marxist influence is obvious through indications of determinism. Namely, some writers observed elements of musical art and its history as consequences of sociopolitical and economic processes. Still, journals published articles of domestic and foreign authors who interpreted the relation between (...) music, society and economy in a much more moderate and subtle manner. Editors and associates of these journals also had proscriptive ambitions - they recommended and even determined regulations for composers about what kind of music to write according to social goals and needs. According to tendencies in Marxism, there was a follow up of musical work in the Soviet Union. Editors tried not to be one-sided. There were writings about the USSR by left orientated associates as much as emigrants from that country, and articles of Soviet authors were translated. Also, there were critical tones about musical development in the first country of socialism. Serbian musical periodicals recognized the enormous threat from fascism. Also, there were articles about influence of Nazi ideology and dictatorship on musical prospects in Germany. Since Germany annexed Sudetenland in 1938,?Musical Herald? expressed support to musicians and people of that friendly country by devoting the October and November 1938 issue to Czechoslovak music, along with an appropriate introduction by the editor, Stana Djuric-Klajn. (shrink)

Both young children and agrammatic aphasic speakers have difficulty interpreting pronouns, but not reflexive elements. This phenomenon is known as the delay of Principle B effect in language acquisition. The interpretation of pronouns is non-adult-like for children and disturbed in agrammatic aphasia, yet there is evidence that interpretation of pronouns is not always problematic for these populations and that it seems to be governed by linguistic principles. This chapter examines the linguistic principles underlying the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives among (...) children and agrammatic aphasic speakers whose native languages were Dutch, Spanish, and Italian by focusing on two types of sentences: simple transitive sentences and Exceptional Case Marking constructions. It first looks at earlier research on language acquisition and agrammatism before discussing two important linguistic theories, Government and Binding Theory and Reflexivity and Primitives of Binding. (shrink)