The authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are widely accepted in biomedical journals, but many studies in large and prestigious journals show that a considerable proportion of authors do not fulfill these criteria. We investigated authorship contributions in a small medical journal outside the scientific mainstream, to see if poor adherence to authorship criteria is common in biomedical journals. We analyzed statements on research contribution, as checked by the corresponding author, for individual authors of 114 (...) research articles, representing 475 authors, submitted to the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) from 1999 to 2000. Only 40% of authors fulfilled the ICMJE authorship criteria. The authors listed first on the by-line were more likely to fulfill the authorship criteria than all other authors on the by-line. The percentage of authors fulfilling the ICMJE criteria of authorship decreased with the increase in the number of authors listed on the by-line. These results indicate that poor adherence to ICMJE authorship criteria is poor across biomedical journals, regardless of the size of the scientific community. Authorship and contributorship in biomedical journals, as well as editorial ethical responsibilities towards authorship criteria need critical redefinition and education of both editors and authors. (shrink)

In medicine, professional behavior and ethics are often rule-based. We assessed whether instruction on formal criteria of authorship affected the decision of students about authorship dilemmas and whether they perceive authorship as a conventional or moral concept. A prospective non-randomized intervention study involved 203s year medical students who did (n = 107) or did not (n = 96) received a lecture on International Committee of Medical Journal editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria. Both groups had to read 3 vignettes and answer 4 (...) questions related to the distinction between conventional and moral domains. Written justification of student’ choices whether the authorship in a vignette was right or wrong was rated by 4 independent raters as based on justice or a rule. Formal instruction had no effect on students’ decisions on authorship in the vignettes (44, 34 and 39% ICMJE-consistent answers for 3 vignettes, respectively, by students receiving instruction vs. 38, 42 and 30% for those without instruction; P > 0.161 for all vignettes). For all dilemmas, more students decided contrary to ICMJE criteria and considered their decisions to be a matter of obligation and not a choice and to be general across situations and sciences. They were willing to change their decision if a rule was different only for peer situations but not for mentor–mentee situations. The number of students who used rule-based justification of their ICMJE criteria-consistent decisions was significantly higher in the instructed than in the uninstructed group. Instruction about formal authorship criteria had no effect on student’s decisions about authorship dilemmas and their decisions were related to the moral rather than a conventional domain. Teaching about authorship and other professionalism and integrity issues may benefit from interventions that bring intuitive processes into awareness instead of those fostering rule-based reasoning. (shrink)

As bibliographical classification of published journal items affects the denominator in this equation, we investigated how the numerator and denominator of the impact factor equation were generated for representative journals in two categories of the Journal Citation Reports. We performed a full text search of the 1st-ranked journal in 2004 JCR category “Medicine, General and Internal” and 61st-ranked journal, 1st-ranked journal in category “Multidisciplinary Sciences” and journal with a relative rank of CMJ. Large journals published more items categorized by Web (...) of Science as non-research items : 63% out of total 5,193 items in Nature and 81% out of 3,540 items in NEJM, compared with 31% out of 283 items in CMJ and only 2 out of 126 items in AABC. Some items classified by WoS as non-original contained original research data. These items received a significant number of citations: 6.9% of total citations in Nature, 14.7% in NEJM and 18.5% in CMJ. IF decreased for all journals when only items presenting original research and citations to them were used for IF calculation. Regardless of the journal’s size or discipline, publication of non-original research and its classification by the bibliographical database have an effect on both numerator and denominator of the IF equation. (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)

Use of patient clinical photographs requires specific attention to confidentiality and privacy. Although there are policies and procedures for publishing clinical images, there is little systematic evidence about what patients and health professionals actually think about consent for publishing clinical images. We investigated the opinions of three stakeholder groups at 3 academic healthcare institutions and 37 private practices in Croatia. The questionnaire contained patient photographs with different levels of anonymization. All three respondent groups considered that more stringent forms of permission (...) for were needed identifiable photographs than for those with higher levels of anonymization. When the entire face was presented in a photo only 33% of patients considered that written permission was required, compared with 88% of the students and 89% of the doctors. Opinions about publishing patient photographs differed among the three respondent samples: almost half of the patients thought no permission was necessary compared with one-third of students and doctors. These results show poor awareness of Croatian patients regarding the importance of written informed consent as well as unsatisfactory knowledge of health professionals about policies on the publication of patients’ data in general. In conclusion, there is a need for increasing awareness of all stakeholders to achieve better protection of patient privacy rights in research and publication. (shrink)

We determined the prevailing ethical climate at three different schools of a single university, in order to explore possible differences in the ethical climate related to different research fields: the School of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Naval Architecture; the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; and the School of Medicine. We used the Ethical Climate Questionnaire to survey the staff at the three schools, and used the research integrity and organizational climate survey for early-stage researchers at the three schools. (...) The dominant ethical climate type perceived collectively at the three university schools was Laws and professional codes, which is associated with the cosmopolitan level of analysis and the ethical construct of principle. Individually, the same climate predominated at the schools for engineering and humanities, but the School of Medicine had the Self-interest ethical climate, which is associated with the individual level of analysis and the egoism ethical construct. In the RIOC survey, early-stage researchers from the three university schools did not differ in their perceptions of the organizational research integrity climate, or in their perceived individual, group or organizational pressures. Our study is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to show differences in perceived ethical climate at a medical school compared to other schools at a university. Further studies are needed to explore the reasons for these differences and how they translate to organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction, commitment to the institution and dysfunctional behaviour, including research misconduct. (shrink)

We argue that intentions are beliefs—beliefs that are held in light of, and made rational by, practical reasoning. To intend to do something is neither more nor less than to believe, on the basis of one’s practical reasoning, that one will do it. The identification of the mental state of intention with the mental state of belief is what we call strong cognitivism about intentions. It is a strong form of cognitivism because we identify intentions with beliefs, rather than maintaining (...) that beliefs are entailed by intentions or are components of them. (shrink)

Do people hold robots responsible for their actions? While Clark and Fischer present a useful framework for interpreting social robots, we argue that they fail to account for people's willingness to assign responsibility to robots in certain contexts, such as when a robot performs actions not predictable by its user or programmer.

In The Borderline Culture: Intensity, Jouissance, and Death, Željka Matijašević examines contemporary culture through psychological borderline theory.

Locke seems to hold that we have knowledge of the existence of external objects through sensation. Two problems face Locke's account. The first problem concerns the logical form of knowledge of real existence. Locke defines knowledge as the perception of the agreement or disagreement between ideas. However, perceiving agreements between ideas seems to yield knowledge only of analytic truths, not propositions about existence. The second problem concerns the epistemic status of sensitive knowledge: How could the senses yield certain knowledge? This (...) essay argues that the key to solving both problems is Locke's claim that simple ideas are all real, adequate, and true. This explains why, on Locke's view, we have certain knowledge through the senses. It also explains how sensitive knowledge can consist in perceiving an agreement between ideas: perceived agreements among simple ideas of sensation are guaranteed to track relations that obtain among really existing things. (shrink)

The article defines the problem of the nature of ideas in Descartes’s philosophy according to the ontology of substances. First, it illuminates Descartes’s relation to antecedent theories of ideas (as platonic forms or as corporal images) and demonstrates that, in opposition to them, Descartes conceives ideas as modes of thinking substance. Then, it develops two possible explanations of his theory. The first one understands an idea as a complex consisting of perception and its necessary internal object, which enables the representation (...) of external objects. The second one understands it as an act with intrinsic representative structure. By using Arnauld’s analysis of Descartes’s texts, it demonstrates that in accordance with the second model, an idea is a singular mode of thinking substance, which should at the same time be understood as an act of mind and as a representation of objects. (shrink)

Nella problematica generale dei rapporti tra Dio e l'uomo rientra il problema del diritto naturale. Tale problema si e manifestato in modo particolare nel secolo XVII come dimostra lo studio di Ugo Grozio (1583-1645). L'attualita delle sue idee e vivo anche oggi sia in Italia che all'estero; Grozio e ricordato soprattutto dai giuristi, nonostante la sua attivita si sia svolta anche in altri campi come dimostra l'opera bibliografica di Meulen J. Ter e Diermanse. Molti studiosi elogiano le sue impostazioni giuridiche (...) come per esempio G.B. Vico che lo chiama iurisconsultus generis humani. D'altra parte ci sono anche molti critici poco entusiasti del suo pensiero e che anzi lo accusano considerandolo l'iniziatore di una nuova corrente dottrinale che rompe la vera linea del diritto naturale iniziata dai greci, perfezionata dai romani e ripresa dalla scolastica. Da tutto questo appare chiaro che non e facile entrare nel pensiero del giurista di Delft. Questo lavoro vorrebbe dare una risposta al problema del diritto naturale e del suo rapporto con Dio. Si vuol vedere come si puo accordare la famosa affermazione una sola volta nel Prolegomena 11 del De iure belli ac pacis, che le norme del diritto naturale alocum aliquem haberent etiam daremusanon esse Deum, aut non curari a beo negotia humanaa la quale sembra separare il diritto dalla Divinita con la convinzione veramente religiosa di Grozio e con i suoi continui richiami all'autorita delle Sacre Scritture, dei Padri della Chiesa e dei teologi. (shrink)

The law giveth and the law taketh away. The question ‘Who is law for’ has of late received increased attention in mainstream jurisprudence.1 Whether at a general, conceptual level o...

How should a machine intelligence perform unsupervised structure discovery over streams of sensory input? One approach to this problem is to cast it as an apperception task [1]. Here, the task is to construct an explicit interpretable theory that both explains the sensory sequence and also satisfies a set of unity conditions, designed to ensure that the constituents of the theory are connected in a relational structure. However, the original formulation of the apperception task had one fundamental limitation: it assumed (...) the raw sensory input had already been parsed using a set of discrete categories, so that all the system had to do was receive this already-digested symbolic input, and make sense of it. But what if we don't have access to pre-parsed input? What if our sensory sequence is raw unprocessed information? The central contribution of this paper is a neuro-symbolic framework for distilling interpretable theories out of streams of raw, unprocessed sensory experience. First, we extend the definition of the apperception task to include ambiguous (but still symbolic) input: sequences of sets of disjunctions. Next, we use a neural network to map raw sensory input to disjunctive input. Our binary neural network is encoded as a logic program, so the weights of the network and the rules of the theory can be solved jointly as a single SAT problem. This way, we are able to jointly learn how to perceive (mapping raw sensory information to concepts) and apperceive (combining concepts into declarative rules). (shrink)

We hypothesize that threat of dehydration provided selection pressure for the evolutionary emergence and persistence of the anterior communicating artery (ACoA – the inter‐arterial connection that completes the Circle of Willis) in early amniotes.The ACoA is a hemodynamically insignificant artery, but, as we argue in this paper, its privileged position outside the blood‐brain barrier gives it a crucial sensing function for the osmolarity of the blood against the background of the rest of the brain, which efficiently protects itself from dehydration. (...) Till now, the questions of why the ACoA evolved, and what its physiological function is, have remained unsatisfactorily answered. The traditional view—that the ACoA serves as a collateral source of vascularization in case of arterial stenosis—is anthropocentric, and not in accordance with principles of natural selection that apply more generally. Diseases underlying arterial stenosis are associated with aging and the human lifestyle, so this cannot explain why the ACoA formed hundreds of millions of years ago and persisted in amniotes to this day.The peculiar hemodynamic properties of the ACoA could be selected traits that allowed for more efficient forebrain detection of dehydration and complex behavioral responses to water loss, a major advantage in the survival of early amniotes. This hypothesis also explains insufficient hydration often seen in elderly humans. (shrink)

We hypothesize that threat of dehydration provided selection pressure for the evolutionary emergence and persistence of the anterior communicating artery (ACoA – the inter‐arterial connection that completes the Circle of Willis) in early amniotes.The ACoA is a hemodynamically insignificant artery, but, as we argue in this paper, its privileged position outside the blood‐brain barrier gives it a crucial sensing function for the osmolarity of the blood against the background of the rest of the brain, which efficiently protects itself from dehydration. (...) Till now, the questions of why the ACoA evolved, and what its physiological function is, have remained unsatisfactorily answered. The traditional view—that the ACoA serves as a collateral source of vascularization in case of arterial stenosis—is anthropocentric, and not in accordance with principles of natural selection that apply more generally. Diseases underlying arterial stenosis are associated with aging and the human lifestyle, so this cannot explain why the ACoA formed hundreds of millions of years ago and persisted in amniotes to this day.The peculiar hemodynamic properties of the ACoA could be selected traits that allowed for more efficient forebrain detection of dehydration and complex behavioral responses to water loss, a major advantage in the survival of early amniotes. This hypothesis also explains insufficient hydration often seen in elderly humans. (shrink)

Im Folgenden werde ich über den Wenn-Dann-Ismus als Strategie zur Verringerung unserer ontologischen Verpflichtungen in der Mathematik sprechen. Ich beginne mit der Definition des Wenn-Dann-Ismus in Principles of Matemathics. Danach setze ich mich mit Puntnams Kritik des Wenn-Dann-Ismus auseinander. Es folgen einige Argumente von Cian Dorr, die diese Kritik unterstützen. Zuletzt soll von der ontologischen Sparsamkeit als allgemeinem Motiv für die Aneignung des Wenn-Dann-Ismus die Rede sein. Ich werde von der ontologischen Sparsamkeit in Zusammenhang mit dem Naturalismus sprechen und zugunsten (...) der These argumentieren, dass die Bevorzugung der ontologischen Sparsamkeit nicht aus dem Naturalismus hervorgeht. (shrink)

In this paper I am going to try to prove that if-then-ism is not an option. I will focus on if-then-ism as a strategy to reduce ontological commitments in mathematics. I will start with the definition of if-then-ism in The Principles of Mathematics. Then I am going to discuss the Putnam’s criticism of if-then-ism. Next I will move on to some arguments of Cian Dorr that support it. In the end, I will talk about ontological parsimony as the general motivation (...) for adopting the if-then-ism. I will discuss ontological parsimony in connection with naturalism and argue that demand for ontological parsimony does not follow from naturalism. (shrink)

Je parlerai dans cet article du si-alors-sinon comme d’une stratégie de nos obligations ontologiques dans les mathématiques. Je commencerai par la définition du si-alors-sinon dans les Principia mathematica. Ensuite, je discuterai la critique du si-alors-sinon par Putnam. Suivront certains arguments de Ciana Dorra qui l’appuient. Finalement, il sera question de la « parcimonie » ontologique en tant que motif d’adoption du si-alors-sinon. Je traiterai de la parcimonie ontologique en liaison avec le naturalisme en essayant de démontrer que la parcimonie ontologique (...) n’est pas une exigence découlant du naturalisme. (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)

To foster research integrity (RI), it is necessary to address the institutional and system-of-science factors that influence researchers’ behavior. Consequently, research performing and research funding organizations (RPOs and RFOs) could develop comprehensive RI policies outlining the concrete steps they will take to foster RI. So far, there is no consensus on which topics are important to address in RI policies. Therefore, we conducted a three round Delphi survey study to explore which RI topics to address in institutional RI policies by (...) seeking consensus from research policy experts and institutional leaders. A total of 68 RPO and 52 RFO experts, representing different disciplines, countries and genders, completed one, two or all rounds of the study. There was consensus among the experts on the importance of 12 RI topics for RPOs and 11 for RFOs. The topics that ranked highest for RPOs concerned education and training, supervision and mentoring, dealing with RI breaches, and supporting a responsible research process (e.g. through quality assurance). The highest ranked RFO topics concerned dealing with breaches of RI, conflicts of interest, and setting expectations on RPOs (e.g. about educating researchers about RI). Together with the research policy experts and institutional leaders, we developed a comprehensive overview of topics important for inclusion in the RI policies of RPOs and RFOs. The topics reflect preference for a preventative approach to RI, coupled with procedures for dealing with RI breaches. RPOs and RFOs should address each of these topics in order to support researchers in conducting responsible research. (shrink)

We take a tremendous interest in how other people think of us. We have certain expectations of others, concerning how we are to figure in their thought and judgment. And we often feel wronged if those are disappointed. But it is puzzling how others’ beliefs could wrong us. On the one hand, moral considerations don’t bear on the truth of a belief and so seem to be the wrong kind of reasons for belief. On the other hand, truth-directed considerations seem (...) to render moral considerations redundant. In this paper, we argue that to understand the possibility of doxastic wronging, we need to understand beliefs, no less than actions, as ways of relating to one another. In particular, how we take account of what others think and say will depend on whether we take up what P. F. Strawson calls the participant stance toward them. We show how this helps to make sense of an example Miranda Fricker identifies as a case of epistemic injustice. We then use the example to spell out the ethical significance of Tyler Burge’s idea that we have a default entitlement to accept at face value what we receive from a rational source. (shrink)

Suppose we suffer a loss, such as the death of a loved one. In light of her death, we will typically feel grief, as it seems we should. After all, our loved one’s death is a reason for grief. Yet with the passage of time, our grief will typically diminish, and this seems somehow all right. However, our reason for grief ostensibly remains the same, since the passage of time does not undo our loss. How, then, could it not be (...) wrong for grief to diminish? Or how are we to make sense of the diminution of grief? Do reasons expire? —The paper clarifies the puzzle and then considers four responses. It argues that all of them are inadequate and that there are principled reasons why this should be so: In experiencing grief we are apprehending a loss. Yet in our effort to understand the diminution of grief, we must apprehend ourselves. But because grief is not about ourselves, our apprehension of the diminution of grief is at odds with our apprehension of the object of grief. This gives rise to a kind of double-vision, which is why the puzzle eludes a solution. (shrink)

In this paper, the author approaches the question of why one should study philosophy from an affirmative point of view and argues pro philosophia, i.e. he justifies and promotes the possible taking up of the study of philosophy in the present day by considering its extra philosophical benefits. Thus, the author speaks from a particular perspective, looking at the study of philosophy from an opportunistic and instrumentalised angle. Namely, he does not consider the study as such, its philosophical justification and (...) quality, but looks for its potential in and for today’s world. That is, not for professions such as philosophy teachers or academic philosophers, but actually for almost everyone else. In this sense, the author elaborates ten possible benefits of studying philosophy: (1) Developing critical, logical and reflective, (2) careful and (3) creative thinking; (4) Identifying and formulating (essential) questions; (5) Making quality decisions (‘decision making’); (6) Developing problem-solving skills; (7) Enabling ethical reflection; (8) Identifying life values; (9) Human flourishing and the search for meaning; (10) Preparing for a range of possible professions outside the philosophical professions. (shrink)

Summary, page 467: "This book is concerned with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in 18th-century Europe and it is divided into two main parts. The first part is focused on the exposition of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy in their historical context, because this topic is still mostly unknown in Croatia. The second part deals with the influence of Hume’s metaphysics and moral philosophy on selected European thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment until the beginning of the (...) French Revolution in 1789.". (shrink)

The paper was prompted by B. H. Suitsʼ construction of Utopia and solutions for the meaningful and happy life of every single human, presented in The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. The author considers, critically evaluates and confronts the role of human physical exercise and game-playing in four constructions of meaningful and happy human life, presented in three Renaissance philosophical writings: De optimo reipublicae statu deque nova insula Utopia libelous by T. More, La città felice by F. Patricius, and Civitas (...) Solis. Idea reipublicae philosophicae by T. Campanella, with the aforementioned B. H. Suitsʼ postmodern writing. The authorʼs thesis is that Suitsʼ solution to human meaningful and full life, which consists in constant game-playing or engaging in only autotelic and intrinsically valuable activities, contains all the leisured intentions of other considered constructions. Moreover, although Suits aims at contemporary humans, it is a solution for all historical periods, conditions or circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper, object-oriented ontology is attempted to be applied to play. First, from the anti-reductionist approach of OOO, some former interpretations of play in science and philosophy are reviewed. Then, because of the conceptual similarities of art and play, the already existing OOO of art is consulted. Based on the works from the field of Human-computer interaction, Graham Harman’s theatrical interpretation of a metaphor, and Eugen Fink’s interpretation of the play, who sees it as a mixture of Being and (...) illusion, play is analysed in the end as a speculative “I”, tension between a real object and sensual qualities, and an interrelationship of elements of the quadruple object. In the pursuit of the link between play, art, philosophy, metaphor, and theatricality, a search as an answer to the encounter with the mixture of Being and illusion is recognised. (shrink)

We often promise to ϕ despite having evidence that there is a significant chance that we won’t ϕ. This gives rise to a pressing philosophical problem: Are we irresponsible in making such promises since, it seems, we are insincere or irrational in making them? I argue that we needn’t be. When it’s up to us to ϕ, our practical reasons for ϕ-ing partly determine whether it is rational for us to believe that we will ϕ. That is why we can (...) sometimes rationally believe that we will ϕ even if our belief goes against the evidence. (shrink)

This book present interdisciplinary research in the social sciences and humanities by connecting seemingly disparate sources through a sensitivity to endangered human values. It links reflections on the contemporary relationship between art and technology in a post-modern context, seeing art in terms of crossing boundaries and exploring virtuality. It deals with the consequences of economics colonising other disciplines, in terms of the processes by which the social becomes the economic. Using Jantsch''s evolutionary paradigm, the concept of self-transcendence is seen as (...) crucial for the understanding of human beings and their social systems. Incorporating recent thinking from the natural sciences, the learning process can be conceived as the life and activity of all complex systems, including those once conceived as organisms, machines, cultures or economies. Without the societal embrace of scientific and technological development no collective or individual meaning can be assigned to the production of new knowledge. The book seeks to recognise the point where a collective learning process becomes the heart of productivity, and where the shift from the hegemony of material labour to immaterial labour becomes fundamental. The author brings new understandings of art, the social, and technology together, based on the idea that history is not a story told in separate physical, social and spiritual spaces and that the most fundamental problem of today is how to find some shared meaning in a fractured world. The author analyses, at a global level, the process of the co-production of scientific and social order, of culture and technology, of life sciences and economic and political regimes. It rightly identifies the rise of the role of knowledge and the move of capital into life sciences as a new stage in the history of capitalism: what we can qualify as cognitive capitalism or biocapitalism. In this new era of capitalism, what is being manufactured and sold are not just tangible and non-tangible goods, whose increasing importance, as the author shows, poses unsurmountable theoretical problems to the theoretical apparatus of economic science. The increasing mercantilisation of the world appears at the same time as a bio-power, i.e. a set of instruments creating and controlling different forms of life, forms of communication, standards of socialisation, education, the individual and collective imaginary, etc. More fundamentally, the encounter of life sciences and the information technology integrates and subjects the most essential mechanisms of biological and social reproduction to the logic of capital valorization. To understand the complexity of these changes and the ethical and philosophical questions that the development of technology and sciences poses to the future of mankind one must break through the disciplinary barriers delineating different disciplines in social sciences and those separating social sciences from natural sciences. Professor Matko Mestrovic manages to tackle this challenge not only because of his impressive and masterful knowledge of different disciplines in the social and natural sciences, but he does it also owing to his capacity for theoretical elaboration that allows him to lay the foundations of a new transdisciplinary paradigm. This is why his work can raise the awareness of the general public on two issues: on a global and profound vision of the challenges posed by the new millennium; and on the need for a radical theoretical innovation bringing into question the disciplinary certitudes in develop a social science able to better understand the movement and the ambiguity of history. - Carlo Vercellone, Universite de Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne Mestrovic provides a unique insight into the often forgotten relation between economics on the one hand and arts and culture on the other, demonstrating that these adomains function as a total social facticity and not as separate, entirely independent elements thereof. In doing so he is dispelling the illusions about the disciplinary self-containdness of individual forms of knowledge and is relying on those paradigms of contemporary scientific thought whose aepistemiological programs are based on close cooperation and aopening up and not on the persuasion about one''s own positions and dispositions. - Prof. dr. Rade Kalanj, Redovni profesor na Odjelu za sociologiju. (shrink)

Philosophers have accused locke of holding a view about propositions that simply conflates the formation of a propositional thought with the judgment that a proposition is true, and charged that this has obviously absurd consequences.1 Worse, this account appears not to be unique to Locke: it bears a striking resemblance to one found in both the Port-Royal Logic (the Logic, for short) and the Port-Royal Grammar. In the Logic, this account forms part of the backbone of the traditional logic expounded (...) in the text. As a result, the account’s alleged faults seem to seriously threaten the coherence and value of the whole approach to logic. And to the extent that Locke’s core philosophical commitments, in particular his .. (shrink)

Suppose you decide or promise to do something that you have evidence is difficult to do. Should you believe that you will do it? On the one hand, if you believe that you will do it, your belief goes against the evidence—since having evidence that it’s difficult to do it constitutes evidence that it is likely that you won’t do it. On the other hand, if you don’t believe that you will do it but instead believe, as your evidence suggests, (...) that it is likely that you will fail, your decision is not serious and your promise is not sincere. This problem—I call it the Epistemological Problem of Difficult Action—is a pressing philosophical problem that each of us faces. In this paper I consider several possible responses to it. I conclude that the right response is to say that we should believe against the evidence. Cases in which we decide or promise to do something that we have evidence is difficult to do are the best counterexamples to evidentialism. (shrink)

Olfactory heritage is an aspect of cultural heritage concerning the smells that are meaningful to a community due to their connections with significant places, practices, objects or traditions. Knowledge in this field is produced at the intersection of history, heritage science, chemistry, archaeology, anthropology, art history, sensory science, olfactory museology, sensory geography and other domains. Drawing on perspectives from system dynamics, an approach which focuses on how parts of a system and their relationships result in the collective behaviours of the (...) system, we will outline a series of practices relevant to this field and identify the elements, materials and competences involved, as well as the connections and interactions. While research in olfactory heritage is currently growing, much of the knowledge that could advance our understanding of this field is still being developed within disciplinary boundaries, leading to little integration of the knowledge and methods and limited interdisciplinary interpretation of findings. In the first part, we review the methodologies for identifying, researching and preserving olfactory heritage, highlighting methodological opportunities and challenges from diverse perspectives like smellscape research, odour nuisance management or heritage science. In the second part, we review the presentation and communication of olfactory heritage in museums and other heritage spaces, outlining the value of presenting scents to wide audiences for interpretation and engagement purposes. Finally, we discuss challenges associated with historical scent reconstruction, and discuss future directions for the field, such as the potential of mining large digital collections for olfactory data. (shrink)

SummaryA detailed database on the genealogy of the Makarska region in Croatia has been created. The twinning rate for three villages in the region were analysed over the period 1870 to 1940 and factors such as mother's age and birth order are discussed. Of the three villages, Podgora was identified as having the highest twinning rate and consequently records for Podgora were examined further to include almost 400 years of historical data.

It is common to think of the attitude of trust as involving reliance of some sort. For example, Annette Baier argues that trust is reliance on the good will of others, and Richard Holton argues that trust is reliance from a participant stance. However, it is puzzling how trust could involve reliance, because reliance, unlike trust, is responsive to practical reasons: we rely in light of reasons that show it worthwhile to rely, but we don’t trust in light of reasons (...) that show it worthwhile to trust. To address the puzzle, I sketch an account of reliance, according to which reliance consists in action, and I sketch an account of trust, according to which trust consists in belief held from a participant stance. I conclude that it is plausible to see trust as the grounds for reliance. (shrink)

This paper proposes to reorient the philosophical debate about peer disagreement. The problem of peer disagreement is normally seen as a problem about the extent to which disagreement provides one with evidence against one's own conclusions. It is thus regarded as a problem for individual inquiry. But things look different in more collaborative contexts. Ethical norms relevant to those contexts make a difference to the epistemology. In particular, we argue that a norm of mutual answerability applies to us when we (...) engage in shared inquiry with others, and precludes us from treating one another's conflicting judgments as evidence relevant to the dispute. From this it follows that standard philosophical accounts of peer disagreement—e.g., the Equal Weight View and the Total Evidence View—presuppose that the disagreeing parties are in a sense alienated from one another. It's doubtful that such forms of alienated disagreement should be treated as the central case. (shrink)

The ethics of belief is concerned with the question what we should believe. According to evidentialism, one should believe something if and only if one has adequate evidence for what one believes. According to classic pragmatism, other features besides evidence, such as practical reasons, can make it the case that one should believe something. According to a new kind of pragmatism, some epistemic notions may depend on one’s practical interests, even if what one should believe is independent of one’s practical (...) reasons. In this paper I recount and briefly assess the debate between evidentialism and pragmatism. (shrink)

The law giveth and the law taketh away. The question ‘Who is law for’ has of late received increased attention in mainstream jurisprudence.1 Whether at a general, conceptual level o...

ABSTRACTThis article examines anxiety, arguing that it is a systemic feature of neoliberalism which regenerates the economy and acts in a conservative manner, thereby effectively preventing social change. Anxiety is explored using psychoanalytic theory to extend Foucault’s conception of neoliberal governmentality as proposed in his lectures on neoliberalism at the Collège de France. Relying on Foucault’s notion of governmentality as an analytic perspective, this article does not present the economy or the state as the origin of power in neoliberalism. Rather, (...) these are seen as mediums of power, whereas the anchorage point of power relations is understood to be a particular form of governmentality. In neoliberalism, this anchorage point of power is largely supported and strongly characterised by anxiety. While examining the psychic life of power in neoliberalism, I avoid positioning and thus analysing anxiety either on the individual or the macro level of society. Rather, showing that anxiety exposes the w... (shrink)

How does evidence figure into the reasoning of an agent? This is an intricate philosophical problem but also one we all encounter in our daily lives. In this chapter, we identify the problem and outline a possible solution to it. The problem arises, because the fact that it is up to us whether we do something makes a difference to how we should think of the evidence concerning whether we will actually do it. Otherwise we regard something that is up (...) to us as if it were not: We regard something that is up to us as if it were the outcome of a lottery. Nonetheless, we would be wrong to ignore the evidence. Otherwise we could not make a rational decision. In this chapter, we first show that a decision-theoretic approach to this problem cannot succeed. This approach does not explain how we can take evidence into account in practical reasoning without making predictions concerning matters that are up to us. It also gives rise to incoherence between our practical and our theoretical conclusions. We then argue that what is required to solve the problem is recognizing that beliefs about matters that are up to us can be grounded in practical reasoning. We argue that such beliefs are not subject to an evidential norm, because they are not meant to reflect a reality that is independent of them but instead are meant to bring about the reality they represent. Finally, we argue that, even if we are fully rational agents, we will sometimes lack practical knowledge of what we will do. That is because when it is practically rational to do something that will require resolve, we may be in a position to rationally conclude that we will do it, even though we have evidence that there is a non-negligible chance that we won’t. In such cases, our evidence serves as a defeater for our practical knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophical theories about the nature of belief can be roughly classified into two groups: those that treat beliefs as occurrent mental states or episodes and those that treat beliefs as dispositions. David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature seems to contain a classic example of an occurrence theory of belief as he defines 'belief' as 'a lively idea related to or associated with a present impression' (Treatise 1.3.7.5 96). This definition suggests that believing is an occurrent mental state, such as (...) judging, or thinking about something in a particular manner. However, a number of Hume's readers claim to find elements in his writings that are suggestive of a dispositional account of belief. Moreover, these elements are sometimes taken as signs of the inadequacy of Hume's account of belief and his dissatisfaction with it. This paper argues that Hume does hold an occurrence theory of belief, that he has deep-seated reasons for doing so, and that this theory of belief has greater explanatory power than its critics generally allow. I contend in particular that beliefs play an explanatory role in Hume's Science of Man that could not be played by dispositions, but requires that beliefs be introspectible occurrent mental states. Attention to the role of belief in explaining our actions, thoughts, emotional responses, and reasoning reveals that Hume is committed to treating beliefs as occurrent states. (shrink)