The key assumption behind evolutionary epistemology is that animals are active learners or ‘knowers’. In the present study, I updated the concept of natural learning, developed by Henry Plotkin and John Odling-Smee, by expanding it from the animal-only territory to the biosphere-as-a-whole territory. In the new interpretation of natural learning the concept of biological information, guided by Peter Corning’s concept of “control information”, becomes the ‘glue’ holding the organism–environment interactions together. The control information guides biological systems, from bacteria to ecosystems, (...) in the process of natural learning executed by the universal algorithm. This algorithm, summarized by the acronym IGPT (information-gain-process-translate) incorporates natural cognitive methods including sensing/perception, memory, communication, and decision-making. Finally, the biosphere becomes the distributed network of communicative interactions between biological systems termed the interactome. The concept of interactome is based on Gregory Bateson’s natural epistemology known as the “ecology of mind”. Mimicking Bateson’s approach, the interactome may also be designated “physiology of mind”—the principle behind regulating the biosphere homeostasis. (shrink)

In Liberating Oedipus?: Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory, Dr. Filip Kovacevic demonstrates how psychoanalytic theory can join political theory in designing alternative political norms and values. Kovacevic proves that political practice without an emancipatory psychology to guide it is potentially dangerous.

An assessment is offered of the recent debate on information in the philosophy of biology, and an analysis is provided of the notion of information as applied in scientific practice in molecular genetics. In particular, this paper deals with the dependence of basic generalizations of molecular biology, above all the ‘central dogma’, on the so-called ‘informational talk’ (Maynard Smith [2000a]). It is argued that talk of information in the ‘central dogma’ can be reduced to causal claims. In that respect, the (...) primary aim of the paper is to consider a solution to the major difficulty of the causal interpretation of genetic information: how to distinguish the privileged causal role assigned to nucleic acids, DNA in particular, in the processes of replication and protein production. A close reading is proposed of Francis H. C. Crick's On Protein Synthesis (1958) and related works, to which we owe the first explicit definition of information within the scientific practice of molecular biology. Introduction 1.1 The basic questions of the information debate 1.2 The causal interpretation (CI) of biological information and Crick's ‘central dogma’ Crick's definitions of genetic information The main requirement for (CI) Types of causation in molecular biology 4.1 Structural causation in molecular biology 4.2 Nucleic acids as correlative causal factors The ‘central dogma’ without the notion of information Concluding remarks This is a new version of this article as there were errors in the abstract and full text in the previous version. (shrink)

This book is the first to systematically develop, explain, and apply diagrammatic projection operators to construct all semi-simple Lie algebras, both classical and exceptional.

U ovom radu autor prvo analizira razlike i slicnosti izmedju rata i terorizma, a zatim argumentise da su i jedan i drugi duboko nemoralni. Njihove razlike su mnogo manje znacajne od njihovih slicnosti, o kojih je glavna ona koja se sastoji u negiranju stanovista da je svaki ljudski zivot jednako vredan. To negiranje otvara put ka nehumanom i nasilnom tretmanu onih (neprijatelja, drugih) koji nisu toliko vredni koliko i mi, sto karakterise i terorizam i rat. Pored neprihvatljivih moralnih implikacija proisteklog (...) iz takvog tretmana drugih ljudskih bica, dalja zajednicka i problematicna posledica terorizma i rata se sastoji u cinjenici da dehumanizacija drugih vodi, na kraju, i ka dehumanizaciji nas samih. (shrink)

U clanku je naznacen model za naucnu deskripciju stilova politickog liderstva u Srbiji u periodu od 1990. do danas, odnosno, ukazano na osnovne elemente koncepta koji je autor razvio u studiji?Stil politickih lidera u Srbiji: U periodu 1990-2006. godine?. Autor izlaze oceni analiticki instrumentarij koji pomenuti koncept obuhvata, istovremeno ukazujuci na korelativne teorijske pristupe koje u navedenoj studiji nije razmatrao, a mogu biti od znacaja za istrazivanje politickih elita u Srbiji. Doprinos u epistemoloskom delu metoda registruje se u definisanju pojma (...) stila politickog liderstva, kao i kategorijalnog aparata koji ga prati - pojmljenog sa aspekta politickog stila: stila gradjenja politicke moci, stila politicke komunikacije, stila gradjenja legitimiteta, stila ideologije, politickog jezika, politicke simbolike i rituala, neverbalne komunikacije i stila iskazivanja patriotizma. Polazeci od stanovista da politicki stilovi odgovaraju karakteristikama politickih kultura i da je potrebno koncipirati idealno-tipske modele stilova fokusnih politickih subjekata, u clanku se ocrtava tipologija stilova politickog liderstva primerena specificnostima delanja politickih lidera u Srbiji: autoritarni, republikanski, realisticki, populisticki, konformisticki, revolucionarni i stil politicara buntovnika. (shrink)

We investigate how people ascribe responsibility to an agent who caused a bad outcome but did not know he would. The psychological processes for making such judgments, we argue, involve finding a counterfactual in which some minimally benevolent intention initiates a course of events that leads to a better outcome than the actual one. We hypothesize that such counterfactuals can include, when relevant, epistemic intentions. With four vignette studies, we show that people consider epistemic intentions when ascribing responsibility for a (...) bad outcome. We further investigate which epistemic intentions people are likely to consider when building counterfactuals for responsibility ascription. We find that, when an agent did not predict a bad outcome, people ascribe responsibility depending on the reasons behind the agents’ lack of knowledge. People judge agents responsible for the bad outcome they caused when they could have easily predicted the consequences of their actions but did not care to acquire the relevant information. However, when this information was hard to acquire, people are less likely to judge them responsible. -/- . (shrink)

Enkulturacija u sociologiji označava uključivanje neke osobe, najčešće djeteta, u obrasce kulture u kojoj se razvija i odrasta. Stoga možemo reći da su i moralni obrasci koje je ta osoba stekla proizišli iz te kulture. Otuda je očevidno da ne postoji jedan univerzalan moral, već se on razlikuje od kulture do kulture. Teza enkulturacije uklapa se u govor o moralnom relativizmu, koji tvrdi da su moralne tvrdnje istinite samo u odnosu na neki standard ili okvir, a ujedno ni taj standard (...) nije isključivo moralno opravdan. Stoga se nameću sljedeća pitanja: smijemo li uopće moralne vrijednosti neke kulture proglasiti nemoralnima?; postoje li granice do kojih bi moral neke kulture bio prihvatljiv i gdje te granice prestaju?; pomaže li stav o prihvaćanju kulture koja ima drukčije moralne vrijednosti njegovanju tolerancije i smanjivanju napetosti među ljudima? U ovoj raspravi nezaobilazni su rezultati istraživanja antropologa koji su se putujući svijetom susretali s kulturama koje niti malo ne nalikuju njihovoj.Enculturation in sociology signifies the inclusion of a person, most often a child, into the patterns of a culture it is developed and grows up in. Thus, we can say that the moral patterns that person acquired are the product of this culture. Hence, it is obvious that there is no universal morality, but that it is different from one culture to another. The thesis of enculturation fits into the discourse about moral relativism, which claims that moral postulates are only true relative to a standard or framework, and that even this standard is not exclusively morally justified. So the following questions arise: can we even announce that the moral values of a culture are amoral; are there limits to which a morality of a culture is acceptable, and where those limits stop; does the attitude about the acceptance of a culture with different moral values helps cherishing of tolerance and the reduction of tensions between people? In this discussion the results of research by anthropologists who met with cultures unlike their own in their travel around the world, are unavoidable. (shrink)

Deklaracija o svjetskome ethosu, što su ju predstavnici velikih svjetskih religija i manjih duhovnih konfesija usvojili na drugom Parlamentu religija svijeta u Chicagu 1993., utrla je put prema onoj vrsti sporazumijevanja koju nije imala nikada do sada. Naime, pokušaji dijaloga među religijama, ekumenizam i tolerancija, koji su bili ključni pojmovi u drugoj polovini 20. stoljeća, imali su bazični nedostatak, a to je pokušaj prihvaćanja i uvažavanja tuđeg učenja, koje se razlikuje od vlastitoga, tj. sve se svodilo na »vježbanje tolerancije«. Naspram (...) navedenih nastojanja u međureligijskoj i međukonfesionalnoj suradnji, svjetski ethos nastoji doći do zajedničkih temelja, i to ne samo zajedničkih u religijama već i u nereligijskim etičkim sustavima, te se trudi pronaći i odrediti ethos na kojemu bi se zasnivale profesije koje čine bazu razvoja suvremenog društva.Declaration Toward a Global Ethic, adopted by representatives of great world religions and lesser spiritual confessions at II. Parliament of World Religions in Chicago 1993, have paved the way towards that kind of understanding that was never reached before. Namely, attempts of dialogue between religions, ecumenisms of tolerances, that were key terms in the second half of 20th century, all have basic failure, i.e., an attempt to accept and respect doctrines of the others, different from our own, i.e. everything was reduced to “practicing tolerance”. Against the above mentioned efforts in interreligious and interconfessional cooperation, the global ethic try to reach the common grounds, not just common in religion but also in unreligious ethical systems, and it attempts to find and determine the ethos which should serve as fundamentals for professions that make basics of contemporary society development. (shrink)

An assessment is offered of the recent debate on information in the philosophy of biology, and an analysis is provided of the notion of information as applied in scientific practice in molecular genetics. In particular, this paper deals with the dependence of basic generalizations of molecular biology, above all the 'central dogma', on the socalled 'informational talk'. It is argued that talk of information in the 'central dogma' can be reduced to causal claims. In that respect, the primary aim of (...) the paper is to consider a solution to the major difficulty of the causal interpretation of genetic information: how to distinguish the privileged causal role assigned to nucleic acids, DNA in particular, in the processes of replication and protein production. A close reading is proposed of Francis H. C. Crick's On Protein Synthesis and related works, to which we owe the first explicit definition of information within the scientific practice of molecular biology. (shrink)

Svaka djelatnost iskazuje identitet djelatnika. U autobiografiji se reprezentira pluralni identitet pisca autobiografije. U njoj otkrivamo ono što je neka osoba. U autobiografiji njen pisac traga za sobom, za svojim osobnim identitetom. U pitanju o identitetu osoba u autobiografiji zapravo pita što je događaj njenog života. Autobiografija je svijest o sebi. Sjećanje i iskustvo izgrađuje i oblikuje osobnu svijest, potvrđuje znanje o vlastitom identitetu, o identitetu koji nije dan nego nastajući, jer tek kroz sjećanje i iskustvo osoba istodobno gradi imaginarnu (...) stvarnost prošlog i postaje ono što jest. U svaku osobnu priču se utka sve što je iskustvo te osobe, iskustvo koje nikako nije samo osobno iskustvo, nego i iskustvo jedne kulture, jezika, obrazovanja, drugih… Autobiografija je tekst u kojem pisac gradi svoj identitet, pokazuje svoju »osobnu kartu« i retušira svoju sliku koju će u njoj priložiti. U pisanju autobiografije pisac ponovo izgrađuje svoj identitet, sebe sama. U svakom djelu stvaralac stvara i sebe samog. U svakoj biografiji je moguće raspoznati mnoga filozofiji relevantna pitanja, od pitanja identiteta do pitanja reprezentiranja subjekta. U onim koje su pisali filozofi posebno. U odluci da piše u prvom licu filozof iskazuje svoju senzibilnost, a iznad svega potvrđuje da je osobno odgovoran za ono što se u njegovom djelu tvrdi, da to nije neka apersonalna, božanska riječ ili kaza anonimnog narodnog mudraca, nego njegova temeljna riječ, filozof sam. Subjekt govori. Presudan je Ego Cogito, koji postaje Osobnost, Ja Pisanja, Autorstvo. Filozofsko djelo je osobna karta filozofa. U autobiografskom tekstu autor otkriva, potvrđuje i definira svoj identitet, ali na kraju ono njegovo uistinu osobno nije njegovo Ja, jer njegovo Ja zapravo postaje junak osobne priče. Pisac autobiografije na kraju postane Ja teksta.Every activity reflects the identity of the person who is engaged in it. In an autobiography a multiple identity of the autobigrapher is displayed. It discloses everything that a person is or was. And no other can do it better than the person in question. In an autobiography, the writer is searching for himself, his own identity. In the identity question of the autobiography , the person asks what has been the crucial event in his or her life. Autobiography is awareness of the self. Memories and experience develop and shape a personal conscience, they attest the awareness of the personal identity, identity which is not a given, but is ever evolving. It is only through remembering and experiencing that a person simultaneously develops the imaginary reality of the past and evolves into what he or she is. Every personal story consists of the experience of that particular person, experience that is not only a personal one, but also experience involving a particular culture, language, education, and contact with others… An autobiography is a text in which a writer develops his own identity, displays his “identity card” and retouches his own image. When writing an autobiography, the writer reinvents his own identity, his own self. In every creative work the creator creates himself, as well. In every biography it is possible to recognize many relevant philosophical issues, from the question of identity to the question of representation of a subject, especially those written by philosophers. By deciding to write in the first person singular, a philosopher expresses his sensitivity, confirming that the philosophy he embodies belongs to him, affirms that he is personally responsible for what he claims in his work, that is certainly not an apersonal, divine sentence or a tale of an anonymous folk sage, but his own quintessential sentence. A subject speaks. This is Ego Cogito that becomes personality, the I of the writing. Authorship. A philosophical work is an identity card of a philosopher. In an autobiographical text, the author discloses, develops, affirms and defines his own identity, but in the end his personal I is not his own I, because his I becomes a protagonist of a personal story. The writer of an autobiography becomes I of the text, in the end. (shrink)

U ovom tekstu pokusacu da protumacim promene kod Nea, glavnog lika trilogije Matriks, na zaledju Platonovih i Dekartovih ideja, kao i Hegelovih iz Filozofije istorije i Fenomenologije duha. Iako?filozofski?, Matriks nije razvucen niti dosadan film: umesto da beskrajno pricaju, likovi neprestano rade i taj ih rad menja. Suprotno rasirenom misljenju, ova interpretacija ne nalazi Dekartovu radikalnu sumnju u prvom delu trilogije, vec ga vidi kao dosledni platonizam. No, u njemu ima kartezijanskih motiva. Rezultat prvog dela jeste hegelovska nesretna svest. Sve (...) je to tek priprema za kljucni momenat cele trilogije, tj. dijalog Nea i Arhitekte. Neova odluka da odabere spas Triniti protumacena je u Hegelovim kategorijama beskonacnog prava subjekta da zadovolji sebe u onom sto radi; zbog toga je sesti Neo nov. Nakon pokazivanja razlika u ciljevima Nea i Agenta Smita, kao i preobrazaja ciljeva ljudi, treci deo teksta bavi se samim krajem Matriks revolucija i analizira ga koristeci Marksove ideje, s referencama na Platona i Nicea. (shrink)

The article analyzes Aquinas?s arguments for real distinction between essence and being as presented in the chapters 52-54 of the second book of the Summa contra gentiles, in the wider context of his metapyhsics. First, the paper analyzes the determinations of God on the basis of real distinction, and after that it analyzes the role of the act and potency, priority of act, separation of the act from the form in Aquinas?s understanding of esse, as well as the concept of (...) existential participation; in doing so, the difference among those concepts in Plato and Aristotle and in Aquinas is accentuated. At the end, the paper analyzes the role of two kinds of causality, efficient and formal in real distinction. (shrink)

The main idea behind this article is that in order to understand themeaning that Kant’s political philosophy is rendered to by the givensocio-historical context of a community we need to turn for help toartistic genius whose subjective “I” holds a general feeling of the worldand life. It is in this sense that authors of great novels can help us in twoways. First, their works summarise for our imagination artistic truth aboutman’s capacity for humanity, the very thing that Kant considers to (...) bethe scientifically improvable “fact of reason”. Second, works of greatwriters offer for our insight destinies of individuals who decide to pursuemoral dictate in a society, thus actualising the potential that lies hiddenin all of us, making us worthy of respect. As we lack objective scientificstandard of measurement, artist’s universal feeling of the world is impressedupon us through a narrative about a man who, in a given society and ina given moment, decides to exercise his autonomy and seek the divinein himself. Contemporary social scientists’ attempts to prove historicalprogress is characterised by the very lack of humbleness. Referring tothe great novelists’ works in this article is aimed to remind scientists ofrestraint and self-control demanded from them by the citizen of Konigsberg. (shrink)

The most recent resurgence of philosophical attention to the so-called ‘functional talk' in the sciences can be summarized in terms of the following questions: (Q1) What kind of restrictions, and in particular, what kind of evolutionary restrictions as well as to what extent, is involved in functional ascriptions? (Q2) How can we account for the explanatory import of function-ascribing statements? This paper addresses these questions through a modified version of Cummins' functional analysis. The modification in question is concerned with phylogenetical (...) restrictions on causal role functions, and it stems from an analysis of some primary areas in molecular biology. I examine how evolutionary consideration affects the so-called ‘function-analytical explanatory strategy' (Cummins [1975] 1998, 2002). Finally, I argue that the neo-functional analysis here proposed accounts for a certain convergence between the main rival theories of biological function. ‡I wish to thank David Davies, Eva Jablonka, Thomas Reydon, and Marcel Weber for their helpful comments. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Rijeka, Omladinska 14, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper aims to pave the way for religion’s potential revitalisation – outside of the ideological concept of the dialectics of contemporary society and within the historical context of the specific meaning of the secularisation of religion. Accordingly, in its understanding of religion, this paper’s discussion necessarily remains beyond the dialectics of secularity, since religion is not dependent on that kind of dialectics, but on the Sacred and its comprehension. Without the Sacred, we would be in a situation of ‘reoccurring (...) of the same’, as a result of which contemporary modern ideologies would negatively influence the life of the individual. The aforementioned then points to the need for multi-dimensional theoretical approaches resulting from the intricate social circumstances and various development courses of individual religions in the contemporary world. In this way the theoretical approaches to religion in contemporary society, primarily analysed based on prevalent theories of functionalism, phenomenology and the neo-Weberian tradition, exhibit diverse paradigms in their different explanations of the secularisation and revitalisation of religion. (shrink)

The paper examines the relationship between the sexual and linguistic and their mutual influence within the fields of political philosophy, linguistics, and theory of text, in selection from Adriana Cavarero’s work. First, we begin from the knowledge of poststructuralist text theory, psychoanalytic feminism and psycholinguistics, which are later expanded with the results from political philosophy with special emphasis on ancient texts. Cavarero’s texts are being analysed to describe the features through which the relationship between gender, sex and text is established. (...) Through a critical exploration of Cavarero’s texts and previous theoretical discussions and the analysis results, a conclusion about the influence of the sexual on language and culture and the influence of language and cultural symbols on social and gender roles is reached. (shrink)

Following the spread of Platonic anthropology, Christianity has started, already since the 2nd century A.D., to be dominated by dualism – a trend undisturbed by somewhat more holistic Thomism, and further strengthened by Cartesianism, which distanced Christian theology and soul even further away from the body. During the 1960s, theologians have become aware of the far more positive and inclusive attitude that the Bible has towards the body. Yet, a century before, the Adventist movement was born in conditionalism such as (...) presented by Hobbes in Leviathan (XLIV). Man does not have a soul; he is a “living soul” – a body vivified by the “breath of life” (Gen 2:7). Without the body, there is no life, nor, consequentially, eternal hell. To this Adventists have also conjoined a philosophy of health reform in which the care of the body has a key role, and upon which depends man’s intellectual and spiritual wellbeing. On this foundation, they have built a rich healthcare and educational practice. This physicalist version of Christian anthropology is a unique worldview contribution to philosophy of the body and a subject worthy of academic attention. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 1 Seiten: 157-168.

U članku se kritički promišlja predaja katoličkog ethosa iz vlastitih pretpostavki. Tematizirajući katolički ethos iz mišljenja bitka suvremenog čovjeka na temelju umjetnosti u modernom i postmodernom dobu pokušava se razumjeti katolički ethos u horizontu ljudske egzistencije post-modernog doba. Time nam je otvoren prostor za njegovo razumijevanje iz postojanja umjetnosti u post-modernom dobu. Problematizirajući katolički ethos i umjetnost u post-modernom dobu iz njihovog ontološkog statusa unutar položaja u bitku suvremenog čovjeka bilo je potrebno distingvirati i naznačiti razliku i korespondenciju ova dva (...) pojma kao jednih od temeljnih oblika ljudskog duha. Čovjek kao onto-antropološko biće logosa postoji jedino kao povijesno onto-antropološko biće koje ima potrebu za svetim koje određuje njegov izvorni odnos prema postojanju. Sveto kao sveto, naime, povezano je s egzistencijalnom biti čovjeka. Umjetnost se na temelju svetoga pruža kao otvoreno medijacijsko polje prema katoličkom ethosu, otvarajući mu istinu epohe, posredujući egzistencijalnu istinu s epohalnom istinom. Time umjetnost kao forma suvremenog čovjekovog duha, uz znanost, tehnologiju, filozofiju i religiju, otkriva i oblikuje jednu novu stvarnost, koja u svojim najvišem potencijalima korespondira s najdubljim pitanjima čovjekove povijesne egzistencije kao njegove istine.The article critically reflects upon the tradition of Catholic ethos from its own assumptions. Considering the Catholic ethos from the thought of Being of modern man based on art in modern and postmodern age, we are trying to understand the Catholic ethos in the horizon of human existence in the postmodern age. Through this we have open space for understanding it from the existence of art in the postmodern age. In raising the issue of the Catholic ethos and art in postmodern age from their ontological status inside modern man’s position in Being, it was necessary to distinguish and note difference and correspondence of these two notions as one of the ground forms of human spirit. Human as an onto-anthropological creature of logos exists only as a historical onto-anthropological creature which has the need for the sacred which determines his original relation towards existence. The sacred as sacred is connected to the human existential essence. Art grounded on sacred is extended as an open mediation field towards the Catholic ethos, revealing the truth of epoch, mediating the existential truth with the epochal truth. By this art as a form of modern human spirit, with science, technology, philosophy and religion, reveals and shapes a new reality which in its highest potentials corresponds with the deepest questions of human historical existence as his truth. (shrink)

During the 1960s, Herbert Marcuse was an invited lecturer at the Korčula Summer School organized by the group of Yugoslav Marxist philosophers known as the Praxis Group. The aim of this article is to explore the way Marcuse and his ideas were received in the Yugoslav intellectual milieu. The article is based on the close reading of the forewords and afterwords written by Yugoslav philosophers in the translations of Marcuse’s books. It also gives an account of Marcuse’s activities during the (...) proceedings of the Korčula Summer School. (shrink)