Purpose of the article is to describe purpose of symposia oriented at sustainable development, existing achievements of the Pan-European University in organization of such events and future plans. Methodologyused in this manuscript is simple observation. Manuscript discovers potential of the Pan-European University to come up with further similar events in the year 2015. Concluding remarks are that described activities fully conform into the vision of the Pan-European University to become a well-known institution within the Global Research Area, traditionally elaborating research (...) and scientific collaboration across national borders. Sustainable Development Symposium and follow-up events belong to top-rated international events bringing together scientists, professionals, and policymakers from many countries. (shrink)

This book presents a complex picture of the universe and man from historical and contemporary perspectives, including philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives. It consists of several papers by authors from various fields, and it is divided into three main parts. The first part addresses some interesting questions from the history of philosophy and theology; the second part focuses on contemporary astrophysics and astrobiology and the question of extraterrestrial life; the third part considers the ethical and environmental dimensions of these questions. (...) --------------------------- Received: 19/02/2023. Reviewed: 17/03/2023. Accepted: 30/03/2022. (shrink)

The growth of research ethics committees worldwide is now fairly rapid and new “markets” for research ethics are opening all the time. The market metaphor is appropriate, since a good deal of the impetus for research ethics review comes from the development of new pharmaceutical products, the globalisation of pharmaceutical research, development and marketing, and the internationalisation of regulatory standards for pharmaceutical R&D. The need for independent ethical review of research protocols by a committee drawing on a range of professional (...) and lay expertise is established as a moral, a quality-management and a regulatory requirement in many jurisdictions, and internationally in the Declaration of Helsinki, the Council of Europe’s Biomedicine Convention, and the International Committee on Harmonisation’s Tripartite Guideline on Good Clinical Practice. Central and Eastern Europe have for many years been sites …. (shrink)

In the study the author focuses on various aspects of bookselling in the late 18th century. The author seeks to describe the book market environment and the booksellers’ community in Bratislava at that time. She therefore documents communication channels between booksellers in Bratislava and their colleagues in Germany (mainly in Leipzig, Halle, and Berlin).

In this paper we investigate the relations between cross-border mobility, national categorization and intergroup relations in a changing Europe. It focuses on young adults (N=34) commuting on a regular basis between the city of Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) and the city of Vienna (the capital of Austria). Our study draws on the social identity perspective, however, we consider social identity as a discourse of (not) belonging, similarity and difference, which is continually (re)negotiated within a given social context. Semi-structured (...) qualitative interviews, focus groups and drawings of the border area were used as research instruments. We have identified different types of experience in various subgroups of participants framed by (1) age at the time of arrival in Austria; (2) different mobility motivations and goals; (3) interaction setting; (4) the political and economic situation in Slovakia at the time of arrival to Austria linked to perceived status differences. On the individual level, the motivation to integrate or its lack seems to be a crucial element in the ingroup construction and perception of intergroup relations. (shrink)

A Geographical Approach for Measuring the Creative Capital. Case Study: Creative Capital Index of Slovakia Calculation of creativity index is a part of a modern quantification wave, in some cases also formulation of the spatial differentiation of social and economic phenomena required from the academic sphere by the decisive sphere. Policy makers have interest by this means to help themselves in obtaining public for their objectives. The creative capital as a sum of quantifiable creativity indicators is in this contribution operationalized (...) including the social capital, which is out of accord with a traditional understanding of creativity following the Florida's concept of the creative class. Methods for creativity index formation are introduced at the global level of states as well as at the regional level of a given state. There are substantial differences among both indexes results and statistical data on export of creative goods that are well documented on example of USA and China. Terminological chaos associated with the concepts of creative class and economy is thus extended with a chaos in the interpretation of findings, what contributes to the critique of the Florida's concept of creative class. There arise doubts that the quantification of creativity indexes with correlation quantification with other economic and social factors as GDP, entrepreneurship, inequality, Index HDI1) ; is maybe right in terms of mathematics, but it does not reveal the casual connections. The research purpose of the contribution is a geographical approach to the creative capital. The case study incorporates the Slovak regions, creativity index calculation and its spatial differentiation in form of map expression. The scientific goal lies in a confirmation of hypothesis about a dominant position of Bratislava region, and thus the capital of Slovakia. A limit of calculation is the choice of indicators which were strongly determined by the accessibility of statistical data. (shrink)

Text prednáöky, pôvodne pripravenej pre medzinárodnú konferenciu Hispanizmus ako interkultúrny dialóg, Bratislava 199. preloûila Martina Sentálová. / Traducción de “Hispanismo filosófico. Problemas de su constitución,” en: El reto europeo: identidades culturales en el cambio de siglo. . I Jornadas de Hispanismo Filosófico [1992], Jose Luis Abellán (ed), Madrid: Editorial Trotta; Asociación de Hispanismo Filosófico, 1994, págs. 133-142.

An inseparable part of the history of the philosophical thought in Slovakia is also a short term existence of the year-book Philosophica slovaca. A scientific periodical published by the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, appeared for the first time in 1946, as the second Slovak philosophical periodical in a short period between two totalitarian regimes. Characteristic for this short intermediate period was the comeback and development of the principle of plurality and liberalism, making the existence of (...) various streams and tendencies od theoretical activity possible. The history of Philosophica slovaca gives us an example how a violent enforcing of totalitarianism can inhibit the creative thought in humanities and especially in philosophy. (shrink)

The paper is an introduction into the concept of intuition and intuitivism in the philosophy of N. O. Lossky, considered as a leading personality of the Russian philosophy of the first half of the XIXth century and who also has been affiliated with Slovakia: in 1941 – 45 he was the chair of the department of philosophy at The Slovak University in Bratislava. Nevertheless, the Slovak philosophers did not succeed yet in coming to terms with his philosophy and that (...) led to many misunderstandings. The background of Lossky’s philosophy was the specific character of Russian intellectual tradition. Among others in his philosophy this tradition reached its zenith. The argumentation of his monistic noetics was based on his belief, that all forms of valid knowledge are an immediate insight of objects in their originals. Due to this character of the theory of knowledge it is possible to preserve the vital, dynamic nature of reality and to conceive of subject as vital, living and creative being. Lossky tries to overcome the cleavage between knowledge and being, so characteristic for modern epistemology and science, by his doctrine of the noetic coordination of the subject and the object as the presupposition of the consciousness and knowing. The being, which determines the process of knowing, is not transcendent to this process, it is rather a part of it. (shrink)

From the late 1990s, Hasidism in Ukraine has increasingly become a means of attracting mostly secular Ukrainian Jewry, to religious and national values. Every year, Ukraine becomes a center of pilgrimage for religious Jews from all over the world. About 20,000 Bratislava Hasidim come to Uman for the grave of their spiritual leader Nachman Bratslavsky. The pilgrimage attracts the attention of the media, the public and the media. Talking about the Bratslav Hasidic, they draw attention to the external attributes (...) of this spiritual stream, to scandals related to burial and almost nothing - to the religious and philosophical meaning of Nachman Bratslavsky's teachings, to his socio-psychological and socio-cultural phenomenon. Elements of this doctrine have not yet been the subject of special studies by Ukrainian religious scholars. Meanwhile, in the West and in Israel, the spiritual heritage of Rabbi Nachman arouses the continued interest of philosophers, historians and anthropologists, and his works are intensively published and reprinted. (shrink)

"Syntaktika sa obmedzuje výlučně na skúmanie samotných výrazov ... Sémantika sa sústreďuje najmä na skúmanie vzťahov medzi jazykovými výrazmi a predmetmi, na ktoré sa tieto výrazy vzťahujú a na tie vlastnosti a vzťahy výrazov, ktoré súvisja a ich vzťahmi k týmto predmetom." (P. Cmorej: Úvod do logickej syntaxe a sémantiky, IRIS, Bratislava, 2001, s. 19.).

What are the ethical concerns among the growing populations of business people in Central & Eastern Europe, and how might they be dealt with practically in the course of business life? David Murray has been a management consultant since 1979 working primarily with the Hay Group in the area of strategic organisational change. Since founding Maine Consulting Services in 1991 he spends most of his time in the field of business and professional ethics, also holding a Visiting Fellowship at the (...) University of Central Lancashire. He is chairman of the Professional & Technical Board at the (British) Institute of Quality Assurance and a coordinating editor of the quarterly Organisations & People. Marek Kucia is a social researcher operating his own research agency (which organised the Polish part of this exercise) and an academic teaching sociology, and conducting and co‐ordinating Central European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He studied political science, sociology and philosophy at Krakow and studied for his PhD at Oxford. He has also worked for Gallup, London, in opinion and market research. This survey report is based on presentations made in April 1994 to the EBEN Research Centres Conference in Prague, and in June 1994 to the conference on “Ethics in Transition” organised in Gödöllö, Hungary, by the Democracy after Communism Foundation, Budapest. The authors wish to acknowledge the major contribution to this work of Mr Juraj Kusnierik of the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, who co‐ordinated the survey exercise. The project was sponsored by The Ethics Development Initiative, CARE, London; the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, Slovakia; SIS Ltd., Bratislava, Slovakia; and Maine Consulting Services, 16 Acrefield, Blackburn, Lancashire, England BB2 7BJ, to which all correspondence connected with this report should be addressed. (shrink)

The Czechoslovak-Soviet exhibition ‘Atoms for Peace’ was held in Prague and Bratislava in 1956. This exhibition became a symbol of Czechoslovak-Soviet ‘friendship’ and Soviet influence on the Czechoslovak nuclear programme. At the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 (Expo 58), one of the most popular Czechoslovak exhibits was the betatron, which would become a symbol of Czechoslovak nuclear pride. The article analyzes the planning, creation and reception of these two exhibitions, as well as the popular image of the Czechoslovak betatron (...) in the Czechoslovak press and literature of that time. It shows how, in Czechoslovakia, the paradigm of Czechoslovak-Soviet friendship and Soviet dominance converged and became entangled with the effort to present Czechoslovakia as an industrially developed country capable of building the nation’s nuclear industry (partly) on its own. One of the results of this entanglement was the betatron – a highly successful and celebrated Czechoslovak nuclear exhibit that captivated both domestic and international audiences. (shrink)

The present study explores the contribution of the Slovak philosophical school, which uniquely grasped the European and Czechoslovak heritage of phenomenology and existential philosophy. In the text, the authors present a congenial and undeniably up-to-date concept of syncriticism as developed by Jozef Piaček and analyse its contribution to Slovak philosophical discourse and more broadly, in the dialogue of phenomenology and existential philosophy in Slovakia. In the study, the authors also examine the cultural-philosophical starting points and specifics of Slovak modern philosophy (...) and postmodern thinking as phenomena of the Central European intellectual space in the context of thinking about the unique and inspiring project of perichronosophy as a thematic invariant developed at philosophical workplaces in Central Europe (Comenius University Bratislava, Trnava University Trnava, Charles University Prague, Masaryk University Brno). Jozef Piaček has been affiliated with the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University for many years, studied under Jan Patočka and is an expert on Husserl’s phenomenology. He has continuously developed a unique philosophical approach involving syncriticism and perichronosophy, which continues to resonate with his students at academic institutions in Slovakia and abroad. Piaček published several monographs and papers on the subject of syncriticism. The platform of living philosophy is his concept of a digital philosophical encyclopaedia, where he archives all publication outputs on the subject of the philosophy of syncriticism. This text will present Piaček’s concept of perichronosophy and concordance in Slovak philosophy, more broadly in phenomenology, as well as in the context of Patočka’s themes (philosophy as care for the soul in the village) with implications for the philosophy of education and philosophical therapy (dasein-analysis). (shrink)

A book review of Sallis, John (2024) Premeny. O pravom zmysle umenia. Bratislava: Vydavateľstvo Minor, Kapucíni na Slovensku. ISBN 978-80-89888-38-2.

Disgust and Intimacy The aim of the paper is to present the results of preliminary research into the relation between disgust and intimacy. The authors apply current psychological conceptions of the emotions relating to social behaviour, primarily the theory of disgust associated with Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt and Clark McCauley. The research was conducted in a community of students living in student halls in Bratislava. The authors argue that social relationships may influence expressions of core disgust and the animal-nature (...) disgust that is considered to be an earlier stage in the evolutionary development of this emotion. More specifically, people's representations of feelings of disgust towards elicitors linked to certain persons are conditioned by the social categories those persons belong to and the socio-cultural schemas distributed in the given environment. (shrink)

The following contribution is an overview of the gradual and systematic establishment of the institutional foundations of Slovak Slavistics. It looks at how the research focus and programme were developed and its coordination centre set up, beginning in 1988.Following that, the Slovak Committee of Slavists was established and its were statutes drawn up. Preparations then began for the 11th International Congress of Slavists in 1993. The Department of Slavistics at the Slovak Academy of Sciences was also established, becoming the Ján (...) Stanislav Institute of Slavistics in 2005. The article describes in detail the initial beginnings of the programmatic focus of research in Slovak Slavistics, highlighting the difficulties encountered and the various twists and turns that complicated the process of establishing the research programme and institutionalising Slovak Slavistics. It also stresses the results produced thus far and its future prospects. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey nasceu em 1833, na cidade de Wiesbaden na Alemanha, e faleceu em 1911, na cidade de Berlim. Viveu a segunda metade do século XIX e o início do século XX, momento de grande efervescência de construção do pensamento contemporâneo nas diversas áreas da Política, Economia, Filosofia e das Artes. Era filho de um teólogo da Igreja Reformada e estudou Teologia em Heidelberg e Berlim. Em seguida, orientou-se para a Filosofia, concluindo o doutorado na Universidade de Berlim. Foi professor (...) na Universidade de Basiléia, onde era bem expressiva a presença do positivismo que dominava a Filosofia alemã. Estudou Ótica e Psicofísica para fortalecer a sua fundamentação científica nas ciências da natureza e voltou-se para as pesquisas psicológicas e os estudos históricos e literários, com foco especial para a Pedagogia e a Ética. Após lecionar nas universidades de Kiel e Bratislava, assumiu, em 1882, a cátedra de Lotze na Universidade de Berlim, onde viveu até 1911. (shrink)

We introduce and discuss a knowledge-driven distillation approach to explaining black-box models by means of two kinds of interpretable models. The first is perceptron (or threshold) connectives, which enrich knowledge representation languages such as Description Logics with linear operators that serve as a bridge between statistical learning and logical reasoning. The second is Trepan Reloaded, an ap- proach that builds post-hoc explanations of black-box classifiers in the form of decision trees enhanced by domain knowledge. Our aim is, firstly, to target (...) a model-agnostic distillation approach exemplified with these two frameworks, secondly, to study how these two frameworks interact on a theoretical level, and, thirdly, to investigate use-cases in ML and AI in a comparative manner. Specifically, we envision that user-studies will help determine human understandability of explanations generated using these two frameworks. (shrink)