In order to show the validity of here proposed conception of social ontology and its advantages over descriptive theories of social reality, which in the analysis of the socio-ontological status of human rights find only legally understood normativity as present in social reality, we will first lay out Searle’s interpretation of human rights. In the second step, we will introduce the methodical approach and basic concepts of our socio-ontological position, and explain the structure of the relationship between justice, law, morality, (...) social institutions and collective intentionality. At the end we will show how our theory of social ontology is better than Searle’s legal positivism in examining the ontological status of human rights. At the end, we show in what ways such a theory of social ontology more intuitively and with wider arguments explains the ontological status of institution of human rights than Searle’s legal positivism. (shrink)

This article lies at the intersection of two problems: the one concerning the potential of fictional works to inform us about our social reality and foster our understanding of its various aspects, and the one concerning their potential to engage with philosophical issues. I bring these two together by analyzing the hit television series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. According to my interpretation, the series is informative about our social world, and it raises philosophical concerns about it. This makes (...) it well-equipped to fulfill the educative function attributed to mass art by Noël Carroll, and to stand out as an example of what he calls popular philosophy. To support this interpretation, I rely on contemporary views regarding the nature of our engagements with fictional narratives. I then explore how philosophical concerns are generated and I elaborate on the role they have in deepening one’s understanding of one’s social circumstances. I further show how the series provides innovative and independent philosophical knowledge by means specific to the medium of generic serialized fiction. The central part of my argument is an analysis of the narrative strategies which enable the informative and philosophical aspects of the series to generate the series’ educative function. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to defend the view that art is a relevant source of knowledge, including moral knowledge, in the absence of empirical evidence corroborating this view. In the first part, I discuss what is known as the causal question, that is, the question regarding art's impact on spectators. I argue that the alleged failure of art to impact us may be a matter of moral motivation and the particular circumstances of moral reasoning more than the cognitive (...) and ethical character of a work. To support my claim, I rely on contemporary research on moral reasoning. I conclude by sketching a wider context within which we should consider art's impact, stressing the relevance of cognitive sciences and moral psychology. (shrink)

[MAGA thought process: We must punish evil China for sending this horrible virus that is just the common cold and we don’t need masks but Trump was a hero for wearing one that one time and God bles...

Supportive peer relationships are crucial for mental and physical health. Early adolescence is an especially important period in which peer influence and school environment strongly shape psychological development and maturation of core social-emotional regulatory functions. Yet, there is no integrated evidence based model of SPR in this age group to inform future research and practice. The current meta-analysis synthetizes evidence from 364 studies into an integrated model of potential determinants of SPR in early adolescence. The model encompasses links with 93 (...) variables referring to individual and environmental potential influences on SPR based on cross-sectional correlational data. Findings suggest the central importance of identity and social–emotional skills in SPR. School environment stands out as a compelling setting for future prevention programs. Finally, we underscore an alarming gap of research on the influence of the virtual and online environment on youth's social realm given its unquestionable importance as a globally expanding social interaction setting. Hence, we propose an integrated model that can serve as organizational framework, which may ultimately lead to the adoption of a more structured and integrated approach to understanding peer relationship processes in youth and contribute to overcoming marked fragmentation in the field. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the cognitive value of certain generic television series. Unlike media and television scholars, who have been appreciative of the informative capacity of television fiction, philosophers have been less willing to acknowledge the way in which these works contribute to our understanding of our social reality. My aim here is to provide one such account, grounded in aesthetic cognitivism, that is, the view that fiction is a source of knowledge. Focusing on crime and courtroom dramas, I (...) start by offering some examples of the cognitive benefits available in some of these series and I argue that the more beneficial cases establish superior mimetic relations with reality, enhancing their capacity to present ethically challenging issues. I then examine whether the fictional dimension of these works presents an obstacle to their informative potential and I conclude that it does not. A central aspect of my account is the claim that the degree of cognitive benefit depends on the underlying narrative strategy of the series. Specifically, there are clues in any given show, including the treatment of ongoing characters, which signal the extent to which it can be taken as mimetically reliable and thus, cognitively valuable. I complete my account by addressing anti-cognitivists’ arguments which call to doubt the informative aspect of television series and their capacity to address ethical concerns. (shrink)

Background The rapidly growing quantity of health data presents researchers with ample opportunity for innovation. At the same time, exploitation of the value of Big Data poses various ethical challenges that must be addressed in order to fulfil the requirements of responsible research and innovation (Gerke et al. 2020 ; Howe III and Elenberg 2020 ). Data sovereignty and its principles of self-determination and informed consent are central goals in this endeavor. However, their consistent implementation has enormous consequences for the (...) collection and processing of data in practice, especially given the complexity and growth of data in healthcare, which implies that artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly be applied in the field due to its potential to unlock relevant, but previously hidden, information from the growing number of data (Jiang et al. 2017 ). Consequently, there is a need for ethically sound guidelines to help determine how data sovereignty and informed consent can be implemented in clinical research. Methods Using the method of a narrative literature review combined with a design thinking approach, this paper aims to contribute to the literature by answering the following research question: What are the practical requirements for the thorough implementation of data sovereignty and informed consent in healthcare? Results We show that privacy-preserving technologies, human-centered usability and interaction design, explainable and trustworthy AI, user acceptance and trust, patient involvement, and effective legislation are key requirements for data sovereignty and self-determination in clinical research. We outline the implications for the development of IT solutions in the German healthcare system. (shrink)

An influential view about the relationship between publicity and linguistic meaning is brought into question. It has been thought that since public languages are essentially public, linguistic meaning is subject to a kind of epistemic cap so that there can be nothing more to linguistic meaning than can be determinately known on the basis of publicly available evidence (Epistemic Thesis). Given the thinness of such evidence, a well-known thesis follows to the effect that linguistic meaning is substantially indeterminate. In this (...) paper, we consider the sort of reasons offered for the Epistemic Thesis and uncover an unexamined presupposition about the epistemic requirements of communication and the establishment of meaning conventions. We show this presupposition is undermined by independently motivated considerations about communication and convention, giving us good reason to reject the Epistemic Thesis and its corollary about indeterminacy. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit berücksichtigt die Philosophie und Poetik der Geschichte und der Sprache a priori im poetischen und literarischen Werk von Peter Handke, in seinem poetologischen Essay Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms und seinem Drama Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder das Stück zum Film vom Krieg, und zwar im Ausgang von der kantianischen Idee der Apriorität der Geschichte. Die Geschichte a priori ist, laut Kant, möglich, „wenn der Wahrsager die Begebenheiten selber macht und veranstaltet, die er zum voraus verkündigt“. (...) Die identische Idee vom Subjekt, das vor der Geschichte besteht, finden wir auch im poetischen Werk von Peter Handke, sowohl in seinen poetologischen Schriften, als auch in seinem dichterischen Werk. Das Ziel der Arbeit ist, durch eine immanente, phänomenologisch-hermeneutische Deutung der Werke des Philosophen und des Schriftstellers die unumstrittene enge Beziehung zwischen ihren geschichtsphilosophischen, bzw. – poetologischen Ideen aufzuweisen und einen allgemeinen philosophisch-dichterischen Rahmen für die Erklärung aller Geschichtsphilosophien ohne Ausnahmen zu geben. (shrink)

A major goal of the Republic of Serbia's foreign policy since 2000 has been the country's integration into the EU. In this respect, in 2012, Serbia became a candidate for EU membership. However, there has been a growing skepticism among the Serbian people about this objective. This ambivalence can be correlated not only with the recent economic crises in some EU countries but also with what are regarded as profound differences in cultural and religious values between Serbia and the EU. (...) This is particularly significant since the majority of Serbia's population are adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is widely regarded as the defender of traditional values, as well as a staunch opponent of Kosovo's independence, secularization and “so called’ modern Western values. Nevertheless, my recent research among a sample of Serbian Orthodox believers regarding their attitudes about the cultural ramifications of Serbia’s EU integration is far more nuanced than these attitudes might otherwise appear to be. (shrink)

Information, knowledge and understanding, history/tradition and novelty, fashion and science, show business and intellectual product are the contexts to review in order to answer the question why humanities have been losing credibility and have come under the hammer. The present article, informed by philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Mary Midgley, authors like Charles K. Ogden and Ivor A. Richards, semioticians like Algirdas Greimas and Roland Barthes and classical English literature, argue that the problem originates between the continuity of thought and (...) indoctrination, between the stance of Rectors of universities and henchmen in the politics of market economy, and it is best exemplified by the caricature of humanities in some universities resulting from the implementation of the courses of technical skills. Knowing that humanities have been prized for intellectual attainment (Lincoln Barnett, Paul Goodman), their precarious state seems to depend on unbalanced philosophical, ethical, educational and economic principles. With economy being the factor which is hard to dispute, political and ethical principles tend to invite a revision because of a traceable tendency to promote the production of the manageable rather than the enlightened. (shrink)

In telling the utterer enters into a relationship with an addressee. This relationship appears to be a normative one, i.e., it entails that an utterer has certain obligations to the addressee. But how can an act of telling create such obligations? In this paper, I propose what I call a collectivist account of telling. On this account, the core notion of telling is that of an utterer’s contribution to a joint action. Margaret Gilbert’s rich work on joint action emphasizes the (...) obligations agents of joint action have to one another. This normatively robust view of joint action, coupled with the conception of core telling as a participatory act, points toward the possibility of explaining the obligations speakers have to their addressees as, at least in some cases, the sort of obligations participants in joint action quite generally have to each other to act in a way appropriate to the joint activity. (shrink)

In this paper, the mode in which the self reveals itself in the contemporary world-historical situation will be analysed. Hence, the focus will be on a particular form of technological mediation of the self by examining a recent phenomenon commonly referred to as the s e l f i e. Unlike most psychological studies suggest, it will be argued that selfies enable a human epistemological need to realize self-knowledge. Thus, they are not a mere result of narcissistic disorder. Furthermore, I (...) will claim that the self-knowledge achieved via the selfie does not necessarily offer a lower level of aesthetic perfection as a means of self-knowledge gained via other “classical” art forms, and that the prejudice that this is the case is a result of a surpassed dualistic view of human nature. In the conclusion of the paper the investigation will be extended to the question of what the selfie can teach us about the essence of technology and, inversely, what from technology we can tell about the self. In doing so, Gehlen’s and Heidegger’s views on the essence of technology will be employed. Finally, to answer the question of whether the self can be revealed in the selfie, Heidegger’s criticism of modern technology will be emphasized and the difference between technology as a way of revealing and technology as a purpose will be underlined. (shrink)

Тhe text outlines Tertullian’s stances on the catastrophic unification (by way ofmarriage) of the daughters of men with the sons of God from the story about the fallenangels. The offspring produced by this merger is horrifically dangerous to the humanrace on earth, and therefore, Tertullian’s aim is to prevent any sort of reactualizationof such a disastrous event. He communicates this through his positions on the primordialsinfulness of the woman, and the blame cast onto the beautiful daughters of men,who, with their (...) unhumble and uncovered beauty tempted the angels so strongly, thatthey caused them to abandon their celestial abodes and functions, and descend to earth,thus disrupting the order in the world, and bringing people problematic knowledge andvarious problematic capabilities, of which the еvilest were those most appealing to thewomen.Tertullian’s aim is to insist on the necessity of the covering of women, especiallyvirgins, since those were the errant daughters of men from the story, so that they do notpose a danger to the chastity of men, and more importantly, to the innocence, moralityand the ontological stability of the angels, and with this, the structure and functioningof the religious community. These objectives are overviewed through his polemic withMarcion, and through his strong opposition to the customs of uncovering by a part ofthe women within the church(es). Through chosen examples from Tertullian’s opus,the instances in which he mentions the motif of the fallen angels through the blame andsin of the daughters of men, and the need to prevent any such transgression are shown. (shrink)

Strawson style counterexamples to Grice’s account of communication show that a communicative intention has to be overt. Saying what overtness consists in has proven to be difficult for Gricean accounts. In this paper, I show that a common explanation of overtness, one that construes it in terms of a network of shared beliefs or knowledge, is mistaken. I offer an alternative, collectivist, model of communication. This model takes the utterer’s communicative intention to be a we-intention, a kind of intention with (...) a distinctive content that cannot be reduced to an intention in favor of an individual action. I show that the collectivist model can explain overtness in terms of a general feature of we-intentions, namely the requirement that the participants in a shared activity are to intend to act in accordance with meshing subplans. (shrink)

The notion of the Anthropocene is founded on the premise that traces of human activity on the earth will remain legible in the geological strata for millions of years to come, showing evidence of an anthropogenic 'signature' inscribed in the rock by the human species. Spectrality and Survivance shows how embedded in this understanding of the Anthropocene is a speculative and specular gesture that transforms the notion of the future into an anthropocentric reflection of the present, prohibiting any true engagement (...) with the possibility of a non-anthropocentric and post-anthropocenic world. In this volume, Marija Grech develops an alternative conceptual paradigm from which to think the Anthropocene beyond any limited notion of human language, human thought, human systems of meaning, or even a human world. Grech considers how the geological trace of the Anthropocene might be said to 'survive' outside of the possibility of any human readership, and how the very survival of the human in and beyond the Anthropocene might necessitate such thought. (shrink)

In this paper I follow Ted Nannicelli in the project of establishing boundaries of television works. I focus on serialized television works pertaining to a particular genre and I set out to provide an account of their identity. My claim is that external identity of such works is determined by their specific genre-affiliation, given the way in which generic norms determine the content of the series, namely, its characteristic storylines and regular set of characters. From the internal perspective, a series’ (...) identity is determined by the particular way in which it implements abstract generic norms. I describe the process of such implementation as creation of series-specific formulaic patterns, and I analyze different layers of works where such patterns are evident. My central claim is that series-specific formulaic patterns create a coherent set of norms which, through repeated instantiation in the series’ episodes, become associated with that particular series. The function of this set is to establish the series’ boundaries, and to maintain its identity when different modifications to the patterns are made. (shrink)

Stanley and Williamson :411–444, 2001) argue for intellectualism—the thesis that knowing how is a type of knowing that—in part by defending a thesis about the semantics of English ascriptions of knowing how. But ascriptions of practical knowledge seem to exhibit significant crosslinguistic variation. This observation has been invoked to argue that S&W’s analysis reflects a quirk of English rather than a general feature of the concept of knowledge. I argue that the type of argument employed by both S&W and their (...) critics presupposes that the categories of denotational semantics correspond to those of the theory of mental content. But the relation between the semantic theory and the theory of content is more complex than this. Specifically, a closer look at ascriptions of practical knowledge and other obligatory control constructions in various languages shows that semantic theory needs distinctions that are redundant from the perspective of the theory of content, and that important distinctions in the theory of content may fail to correspond to any distinctions in semantic theory. It follows that we may not be able to read off as much about mental states as S&W and their critics try to from the structure of their ascriptions. (shrink)

Marija Velinov, Foucault/Derrida Fifty Years later: The Futures of Genealogy, Deconstruction, and Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, 2016).

This article is an introduction to the special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy dedicated to aesthetic education and philosophy of screen stories.

While pragmatism as a philosophy and intellectual movement has been gaining inroads in international ethics and international political theory scholarship, feminist pragmatism is not yet as widely regarded. This paper explores the intellectual contributions of feminist pragmatism to international political thought, particularly Jane Addams’s social ethics which is largely overlooked in the literature on women’s contributions to international normative theory. Here I add to efforts to reconsider Addams as a thinker that was concerned with the multiplicity and diversity, features of (...) social life that make a foundational premise of international normative thought. In the paper, I explore how feminism and pragmatism challenge ideas about normatively constitutive communities. The nexus of the two philosophies come clearly in Addams’s progressive communitarianism and her ideas on the significance of settlement to social ethics. In addition to Addams’s pacifist thought and international humanism, I argue that her practice in Hull House draws attention to the site as a normatively significant category. The paper casts Hull House as an international social space that sustained social connections, instrumental to social ethics. Hull House serves as an exemplar that can inform further thinking about the international community and more democratised global governance structures. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the question of engaged philosophy with an emphasis on aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Referring to some specific problems discussed in these areas – in particular climate change, ecological crisis and immoral art – I demonstrate that philosophy can be engaged in two ways: (i) in its aspiration to question social reality, culture, human experience and the strategies for making sense of and finding value in that experience; (ii) in the aspiration to contribute to (...) the well-being of individuals and society through its contribution to understanding that reality and experience. First, I point to the connection between the philosophical questions and the fundamental intellectual aspirations of human beings as social and cultural beings, but also as autonomous knowers and valuers. Second, I respond to two objections that can be directed against engaged philosophy: (i) one that points to a lack of consensus among philosophical responses (the problem of disagreement), and (ii) one that highlights the irrelevance of philosophical debates to our social practice. (shrink)

Ovaj tekst, kao nastavak našega promišljanja o dispozicijama za pedagogično djelovanje, kritička je refleksija vlastite profesionalne svakodnevice u kojoj detektiramo brojne dileme vezane za svrhu pedagoške profesije. Točke prijepora, poput – biti neutralna ili angažirana, graditi distanciran ili prisan pedagoški odnos, prioritizirati vlastitu ili tuđu dobrobit, odbijati ili prihvaćati sukob kao potencijalni agens promjene – izmještamo iz hodnika, predavaonica i učionica u kojima bivamo te, izlazeći time iz komforne zone nepromišljanja o njima, apostrofiramo ambivalentnu pojavnost dihotomije javno–privatno u skrivenome kurikulumu (...) tih prostora. Promatrajući dispozicije kao za autonomno pedagogično pedagoško djelovanje prediktivna uvjerenja i osobine razvijajućega karaktera, u radu zagovaramo napuštanje shvaćanja pedagoginja kao neutralnih profesionalki apstrahiranih od osobnih uvjerenja, kvaliteta i ograničenja te u fokus stavljamo etičnost, refleksivnost i autentičnost kao temeljne dispozicije za pedagogično djelovanje usmjereno k podupiranju mogućega i transformativnoga u pedagoškome odnosu. Rad zaključujemo promišljanjem odgovornosti studijā pedagogije i samih pedagoginja za kultiviranje opisanih dispozicija. This text, as a continuation of our reflections on dispositions for pedagogical practice, is a critical reflection on our everyday working life, in which we detect numerous dilemmas related to the goal of the pedagogical profession. We move points of contention – such as being neutral or engaged, building a distanced or close pedagogical relationship, prioritising one’s own benefit or that of others, rejecting or accepting conflict as a potential agent of change – out of the halls and classrooms in which we spend time and, breaching the comfort zone of not thinking about them, accent the apparently ambivalent dichotomy of public and private in the hidden curriculum of these spaces. By conceptualizing dispositions as evolving predictive beliefs and personal traits, the paper advocates abandoning the view of pedagogues as neutral professionals devoid of personal beliefs, qualities, and limitations, instead focusing on ethics, reflexivity, and authenticness as the basic dispositions for pedagogical practice directed towards supporting the possible and transformative in the pedagogical relationship. The paper concludes with a consideration of the responsibility of pedagogy programmes and pedagogues themselves in cultivating the aforementioned dispositions. (shrink)

The main purpose of the article is to highlight the anthropological principles of human research in the creative legacy of Mykola Shlemkevych, a philosopher, teacher, publicist, editor, public figure, and to outline their relevance for the present. In his concept, the man is represented in two aspects – a spiritual being and a social being. He reveals the spiritual manifestation of the man through his ability to reflect on life, to organize it, to distinguish between beautiful and ugly in life. (...) The philosophical-reflexive interpretation by Mykola Shlemkevych’s of the man as a social being is presented in different models. The purpose of anthropology is to harmonize the spiritual and material aspects of a person’s life in the society. Accordingly, the purpose of education is to improve the human nature. Achieving this goal is possible by studying the cultural origins of educational phenomena, knowledge and perception of the man as a unique spiritual, physical and socio-mental phenomenon. This can be related to any modern trend in the philosophy of education that seeks to truly reform the education. We believe that the importance of Mykola Shlemkevych’s conclusions goes far beyond those systems contemporary to him, because they are relevant today. (shrink)

The problem I wish to address here is how Edith Stein‘s theory of shared empathy and psychotherapeutic group therapy are required condition for any successful work with patients in medical and clients in philosophical praxis. Moreover, a theory of shared empathy must also account for the arguably more intricate issue of how group members might properly share an own mental domain with its distinctive phenomenology, and its distinctive attitudes toward one another, so that the necessarily self-testimonies of clients does not (...) rest on a previous pathological state. In the following, I aim to offer some steps towards solving this problem. I will do so by outlining what methodology lies behind the theory of shared empathy, and showing how, on the results of a case study, it can be applied in a way whereby it still accommodates all requirements for what counts as valid coherence of self-testimony and successful client’s healing. (shrink)

Angesichts der konstitutiven Bedeutung der Symbolisierung sowohl für die individuelle Entwicklung des Menschen als auch für die historische Entwicklung der Menschengattung wird die Frage nach den Wandlungen der Symbolisierung in der Postmoderne gestellt. Es wird gezeigt, dass hinter dem postmodernen Karneval der Zeichen und Ekstase der Kommunikation eine tiefgreifende Desymbolisierung sowohl des Subjektiven als auch des Sozialen sich vollzieht. Als Folgen dieser Prozesse werden Bedingungen der Möglichkeit der Reflexion und gesellschaftlicher Kritik abgeschafft. Das animal symbolicum hat sich im Zuge der (...) Postmoderne schrecklicherweise in ein animal desymbolicum verwandelt, das in einer verwüsteten Gesellschaft lebt, das seine lokale Erfahrung nicht transzendieren kann, weil es die Begriffe aufgelöst hat und die symbolische Ordnung in Gefahr gebracht hat und nach allem, was es begangen hat, in eine tiefe historische und soziale Amnesie gefallen ist. (shrink)

We analysed all journals from two Journal Citation Reports categories: ‘Dentistry, Oral Surgery and Medicine’ and ‘Otorhinolaryngology’ published in 2018 for their policies on publishing facial photographs and actual practices of publishing these photographs in articles. We extracted the following data for each journal: JCR category, impact factor, volume, issue, instructions for authors regarding ethical issues, instructions for photograph deidentification, journals’ references to standard research and publishing policies, presence and type of published clinical images, separate informed consent for the publication (...) of patient photograph and methods of deidentification. The sample included 103 journals, which published 568 articles with 1404 clinical images. Around a half of the journals had a policy on clinical images, however, the only predictor of having a journal policy on clinical images was reference in the policy to International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations. Identifiable patient photographs were found in 13% of the articles, constituting 9% of the total sample of images. Only 16% of articles publishing recognisable patient facial images included a statement about consent for publication of the image. From the total sample of articles, 34% contained deidentified but recognisable patient photographs and only 22% of them had a statement about patient consent for photograph publication. The patients’ consent was more likely stated in the article in cases of recognisable facial images. Journals publishing clinical research involving the face and neck region need to establish and enforce policies on publishing clinical images. (shrink)

Suvremene bioetičke rasprave reaktualizirale su pitanje smjene epoha. Bioetika je nastala upravo kao moralna i civilizacijska reakcija u novostvorenoj povijesnoj situaciji. U tom kontekstu, potrebno je analizirati, s jedne strane, promišljanje prijeloma epoha i predviđanje »novog srednjovjekovlja« u djelu ruskog filozofa N. A. Berdjajeva te, s druge strane, pojavu bioetike. Hoćemo li zaista zakoračiti u novu epohu, kakva će ona biti te što ćemo i u kojem obliku prenijeti iz sadašnje epohe – najviše ovisi o tome kakvog će duha biti (...) čovjek. Stanje čovjekova duha možemo iščitati iz čovjekova odnosa prema tehnici, odnosno s obzirom na snažnu interaktivnu ulogu tehnike u našem životu. Kako je pitanje odnosa čovjeka i stroja jedno od ključnih bioetičkih pitanja, problem tehnike nužno je analizirati iz perspektive Berdjajevljeva odnosa čovjeka i stroja, ali i u sklopu Heideggerova promišljanja biti tehnike. Jednako kao i Berdjajev, Heidegger smatra da ne treba poricati tehniku, već tražiti izmjenu uloge tehnike i podlaganje čovjekovu duhu na kojem leži zadatak dokučiti ono spasonosno. Duh današnjeg čovjeka duh je bogolikog čovjeka koji, uz pomoć uznapredovalog stroja, izaziva prirodu , ali taj isti stroj, koji njemu služi kao sredstvo, toliko je uznapredovao da je sada u mogućnosti izazivati njega. U tom je kontekstu nužno okrenuti se bioetici. Upravo je bioetika sa svojom pluriperspektivnom metodologijom zaslužna za pokušaj okupljanja različitih sustava vrijednosti kako bi se zajedno usmjerio sadašnji sustav vrijednosti i zaštitio budući, ali i budućnost uopće. No, hoće li bioetika ostati samo na razini rijetkog pozitivnog primjera u nizu negativnih znakova dolaska nove epohe ili ćemo ozbiljno shvatiti princip odgovornosti što nas dovodi na prag bioetičke epohe te hoće li promjena duha sadašnjeg čovjeka, prema kojem nas vodi bioetičko promišljanje, doista dovesti do podvrgavanja tehnike čovjekovom duhu – ostaju otvorena pitanja.The problem of the turn of epochs is debated once more nowadays. Contemporary discussions on bioethics once again pose this very question. Bioethics as such was created as a moral and civilisational response to the new historical situation. In that context one needs to analyze, on the one hand, both the problem of the turn of epochs and the prediction of the new Middle Ages proposed by Russian philosopher N. A. Berdyayev and, on the other hand, the emergence of bioethics which raised the question of the turn of epochs for the second time. Will we really reach the new epoch, what will it look like, what and in which form shall we transmit from the present epoch? These questions ultimately depend on the state of the human spirit which can be deciphered from man’s relation to technology, taking into account the strong interactive role which technology plays in our daily lives. Bearing in mind that the relation between the man and the machine is one of the crucial bioethical issues, this question of technology should be analyzed from Berdyayev’s relation between the man and the machine, but also within Heidegger’s analysis of the essence of technology. Similarly to Berdyayev, Heidegger states that technology must not be contradicted or denied, but rather, changed in a way to serve the human spirit – which is entrusted with the task of understanding the saving elements. The spirit of the modern man is the spirit of the divine-like creature . It is the spirit of a man who, with the help of a developed machine can challenge nature , but this same machine, which serves him as a means, has evolved to the point that it can challenge the man. In this context it seems essential to turn to bioethics. It is precisely bioethics which, thanks to its pluri-perspective methodology, takes credit for covering different systems of values to direct the present system in the right way and protect the future system and the future in general. However, the questions remain whether bioethics will stay the only positive example among the multitude of negative signs and predictions, whether it will lead us to a new, yet unknown, epoch and whether we will take seriously the principle of responsibility which leads us to the threshold of the bioethical epoch and whether the change in the spirit of the present-day man, triggered by the bioethical thinking, can change technology to make it subordinate to the human spirit. (shrink)

Tema ovog rada je afera iz 2001. godine u vezi sa finansijskim transakcijama izmedju Srbije i Kipra tokom devedesetih. U radu se analiziraju strategije koje politicari, drzavni sluzbenici i strucnjaci u oblasti borbe protiv korupcije primenjuju kako bi kroz javne debate odbranili svoje interese. Rezultati ukazuju da se vecina ucesnika opredeljuje za jedno od sledeca dva nacina: javno objavljivanje informacija o aferi kako bi se stekla legitimnost za anti-korupcijsko delovanje, ili koordinisano izbegavanje rasprava o aferi kako bi se umanjila moguca (...) politicka steta. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on collective action and intention, and their relation to conventions, status functions, norms, institutions, and shared attitudes more generally. Collective action and shared intention play a foundational role in our understanding of the social. -/- The three central questions in the study of collective intentionality are: -/- (1) What is the ontology of collective intentionality? In particular, are groups per se intentional agents, as opposed to just their individual members? (2) What is the psychology of (...) collective intentionality? Do groups per se have psychological states, in particular propositional attitudes? What is the psychology of the individuals who participate in collective intentional behavior? What is special about their participatory intentions, their we-intentions, as they are called (Tuomela and Miller 1988), as opposed to their I-intentions? (3) How is collective intentionality implicated in the construction of social reality? In particular, how does the content of we-intentions and the intentional activity of individual agents create social institutions, practices and structures? -/- We first discuss collective action and shared intention in informal groups. Next we discuss mechanisms for constructing institutional structures out of the conceptual and psychological resources made available by our understanding of informal joint intentional action. Then we extend the discussion of collective action and intention to institutional groups, such as the Supreme Court, and explain how concepts of such organizations are constructed out of the concepts of a rule, convention, and status function. Finally we discuss collective attitudes beyond intention. (shrink)