En tant que communaut? ethnique et groupe social d?favoris?, les Roms se heurtent quotidiennement aux probl?mes relatifs r l?obtention de papiers d?identit? ou autres documents, difficult? qui les prive de leur?galit? devant l?ensemble des citoyens, et les rend m?me inexistants. L?objet de cet te recherche porte sur les d?marches et probl?mes rencontr?s par les demandeurs en vue d?obtenir les documents suivants: a) num?ro d?immatriculation; b) extrait d?acte de naissance, dedans, de mariage; c) certificat de nationalit?; d) d?claration de s?jour et (...) de lieu de r?sidence; e) carte d?identit? et carte de travail, alors que les groupes vis?s par la recherche sont: employ?s et responsables d?offices d??tat civil; demandeurs, interm?diaires avec autorisations, militants roms et leurs associations, commissaires pour les r?fugi?s et personnes d?plac?es, fonctionnaires de certaines communes et secr?taires des communes, repr?sentants de MUP. Nous avons analys? le travail et les difficult?s de travail de certains organismes, ainsi que les probl?mes rencontr?s par les demandeurs et les interm?diaires avec autorisations en vue de se voir d? livrer des documents personnels ou lors des proc?dures d?obtention de documents personnels. En dernier lieu, nos recommandations concernent l?organisation et la coordination des organismes d??tat civil, une meilleure information s?adressant aux demandeurs, et contiennent le concept d?une am?lioration syst?matique de cet?tat de choses visant r ce que les roms de viennent des citoyens?gaux.. Kao deprivirana etnicka zajednica i socijalna grupa Romi se suocavaju u svakodnevnom zivotu sa problemima pribavljanja osnovnih licnih dokumenata, bez kojih su ne samo neravnopravni, nego cesto i neegzistentni gradjani. Predmet istrazivanja su bili postupci i problemi u sticanju sledecih dokumenata: a) jedinstveni maticni broj gradjana; b) izvodi iz maticnih knjiga rodjenih, umrlih, vencanih; c) uverenja o drzavljanstvu; d) prijava boravka i prebivalista e) licne karte i rad ne knjizice, a osnovne ciljne grupe istrazivanja bili su: sluzbenici i rukovodioci izmestenih maticnih ureda; neposredni podnosioci zahteva za izdavanje dokumenata; posrednici sa ovlastenjima ; romski aktivisti i udruzenja, javni zastupnici, poverenici za izbegli ce i raseljena lica; nacelnici pojedinih opstinskih sluzbi i sekretari opstina, predstavnici MUP-a. Analiziran je rad i poteskoce u radu maticnih i drugih sluzbi, problemi neposrednih podnosilaca zahteva za izdavanje nekog od licnih dokumenata i, posrednici sa ovlascenjima. Na kraju je u preporukama o organizaciji i koordinaciji rada maticnih sluzbi, preporukama za bolje informisanje Roma, podnosilaca zahteva i preporukama u korist podnosilaca zahteva sadrzan koncept sistematskog poboljsanja stanja, cime bi se Romima omogucilo da budu istinski ravnopravni gradjani Srbije. (shrink)

An increasing body of evidence indicates that the response to genotoxic agents such as radiation or drugs is a group phenomenon, rather than the summed response of individual independent cells to injury. Thus, a complex contagion-like response may spread beyond the initial impact of an agent to enlarge its effect. This indirect effect, termed “Bystander Effect,” is multifaceted and may play a significant role in the therapy of tumors and in carcinogenesis. A better understanding of this phenomenon is needed in (...) order to modulate treatment protocols to therapeutic advantage and to provide more rational guidelines for the evaluation of environmental hazards. BioEssays 22:286–290, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Rad ukazuje na kljucne momente razvoja teorije aktera-mreze kroz nekoliko najznacajnih dela Bruna Latura. Uocavaju se promene pocetne pozicije autora u odnosu na dela kasnijeg datuma nastanka. Teorija aktera-mreze je prikazana kroz niz?neuralgicnih? tacaka koje se u njoj mogu uociti. Na samom kraju rada su razmatrana resenja koje teorija aktera-mreze nudi za odredjeni broj fundamentalnih problema sociologije, koje je definisao Latur.

There is an emerging awareness of the possibility of conflicts of interest in the practice of medicine in Croatia. The paper examines areas within the medical profession where conflicts of interest can and have occurred, probably not only in Croatia. Particularly addressed are situations when a doctor may have dual obligations and how independent ethics committees can help in decreasing the influence of a conflict of interest. The paper also presents extracts from the Croatian Code of Ethics for the medical (...) profession that address problems of conflict of interest. (shrink)

The Helsinki Declaration is the ‘gold standard’ — a directive, not a law, on how to conduct controlled studies in humans in conformity with ethical principles. In spite of many discussions about their unsuitability some articles have remained unchanged in the most recent (sixth) revision of the Declaration. The demand to use “the best treatment” excludes use of placebo in the control group and presents an obstacle to the scientific evaluation of a number of drugs and treatments in general. The (...) use of placebo is justified whenever its use does not cause irreversible damage or considerable suffering to the well informed patient. It must be, is, and will be used in the controlled clinical trials of treatments of a great number of diseases especially those which have a tendency to spontaneous improvement, even healing, or have a pronounced psychological component. (shrink)

We present the basic concepts of space and time, the Galilean and pseudo-Euclidean geometry. We use an elementary geometric framework of affine spaces and groups of affine transformations to illustrate the natural relationship between classical mechanics and theory of relativity, which is quite often hidden, despite its fundamental importance. We have emphasized a passage from the group of Galilean motions to the group of Poincaré transformations of a plane. In particular, a 1-parametric family of natural deformations of the Poincaré group (...) is described. We also visualized the underlying groups of Galilean, Euclidean, and pseudo-Euclidean rotations within the special linear group. (shrink)

Horgan believes that the truth of the statement “Beethoven’s fifth symphony has four movements” does not require that there be some “dedicated object” answering to the term “Beethoven’s fifth simphony”. To the contrary, the relevant language/world correspondence relation is less direct than this. Especially appropriate is the behavior by Beethoven that we would call “composing his fifth symphony”. Our objections go along two directions: (1) is the process ontology (a) really a right kind of ontology for artworks (symphonies, novels) and, (...) (b) more important, is this kind of ontology compatible with Parmenidian approach to ontology? The answer to (a) is negative. With reference to point (1b) we might say that Parmenides was a typical staunch advocate of substance metaphysics rather than process metaphysics. Traditionally, substances are individuated by their properties, namely, there are assumed two sorts of properties: primary and secondary. Primary properties describe the substance as it is in and by itself; secondary properties underlie the impact of substances upon others and the responses they elicit from them. (2) The claim that it is most unlikely to suppose that we can have some kind of cognitive contact “with an entity which has no spatio-temporal location and does not causally interact with anything” does not hold. We underpin the claim that there is some cognitive access to entity such as Beethoven’s fifth symphony with Bender’s theory of realization relation between musical work and performance. (shrink)

There is widespread view among numerous aestheticians that aesthetic and value properties are response-dependent. According to some philosophers the dependence has a rich and multilayered structure: value qualities (e.g. beauty) depend on our response to aesthetic properties (e.g. harmonious), which in turn depend on our response to a pattern of primary and secondary qualities (shapes and colors). Secondary qualities are themselves response-dependent. The basic dependence relation is thus iterated. The resulting structure is one of iterated response-dependence. The integral part of (...) such a position is a relational view, best captured by the response-dispositional analysis: My states of being appeared to magnificently in front of a painting manifests the disposition of painting to induce such experience in the normal viewer.There are two main objections against the dispositional analysis: (1) argument from circularity and (2) argument from introducing two kinds of quality, one categorical, for experiential states, and one dispositional for objects. In this paper we will suggest the arguments against second objection. (shrink)

The paper deals with the topic of empty terms as considered in chapter six of Devitt’s book Designation. Devitt’s proposal is that a statement about fiction is (usually) implicitly preceded by a fiction operator roughly paraphrasable by “it is pretended that” or “in fiction”. The causal chain that forms the network for a fictitious name are not d(esignational)-chains, for they are not grounded in an object. Nevertheless, although the fictitious name does not designate, we could say that it stands in (...) some other referential relationship to the world: it ‘F(ictionally)-designates’. It seem that we could then state truth conditions of a F-sentence using F-designation: the F-operator direct us to look not for the designatum of name but for its F-designatum. The name (for example, “Napoleon” in War and Peace), though nonempty, is just like a fictitious name. In proposing that nonempty names in fiction refer to real items, I argue against the view that “Napoleon” in the War and Peace designates the famous general, Napoleon, and F-designates parts of War and Peace. The referent of F-designation is Napoleon, famous general, too. At the end of the paper I claim that Devitt, if he wants to remain a modal fictionalist, has to renounce the view of one-world metaphysics. (shrink)

Games may seem like a waste of time, where we struggle under artificial rules for arbitrary goals. The author suggests that the rules and goals of games are not arbitrary at all. They are a way of specifying particular modes of agency. This is what make games a distinctive art form. Game designers designate goals and abilities for the player; they shape the agential skeleton which the player will inhabit during the game. Game designers work in the medium of agency. (...) Game-playing, then, illuminates a distinctive human capacity. We can take on ends temporarily for the sake of the experience of pursuing them. Game play shows that our agency is significantly more modular and more fluid than we might have thought. It also demonstrates our capacity to take on an inverted motivational structure. Sometimes we can take on an end for the sake of the activity of pursuing that end. (shrink)

[This book] develops an account of rationality and justice that is tradition specific.-http://undpress.nd.edu.

There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are digital technologies that will have significant impact on the development of humanity in the near future. They have raised fundamental questions about what we should do with these systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve, and how we can control these. - After the Introduction to the field (§1), the main themes (§2) of this article are: Ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e., tools made and used (...) by humans. This includes issues of privacy (§2.1) and manipulation (§2.2), opacity (§2.3) and bias (§2.4), human-robot interaction (§2.5), employment (§2.6), and the effects of autonomy (§2.7). Then AI systems as subjects, i.e., ethics for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (§2.8) and artificial moral agency (§2.9). Finally, the problem of a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity” (§2.10). We close with a remark on the vision of AI (§3). - For each section within these themes, we provide a general explanation of the ethical issues, outline existing positions and arguments, then analyse how these play out with current technologies and finally, what policy consequences may be drawn. (shrink)

The author?s approach is based on three premises: 1. that Gajo Petrovic?s Praxis was an outstanding phenomenon in Croatian, Yugoslav and European culture, a challenge of freedom in a repressive society; 2. that there has never been such a thing as "Praxis group", "philosophers of practice" or "Praxis philosophers" with a unified philosophical and socio-theoretical orientation; and 3. that political and ideological attacks on Praxis were part of the repressive system that targeted every instance of cultural and scientific dissent. The (...) political leadership of Tito?s regime, its ideological and propaganda apparatus systematically disseminated allegations, denunciations and accusations against Praxis and Gajo Petrovic. The same style has survived through radical historical changes from the appearance of Praxis until today. The attackers have often been the same persons, with the difference that in earlier times they denounced Praxis and Gajo Petrovic as enemies of "socialism" and the "socialist self-management system", and in the changed political fashion as "servants" of Tito?s authoritarian rule. The fate of Praxis in the former regime has been triumphantly interpreted as a "family quarrel". This paper attempts a sociological analysis of the political destiny of Praxis. The analysis is essentially determined not by old and new political and ideological questionings of Praxis, but by Gajo Petrovic?s fundamental belief that there is no freedom without the human or humanity without freedom.. Osnovu autorovog pristupa cine tri stava: 1. da je Praxis Gaje Petrovica bio izuzetna pojava u hrvatskoj, jugoslovenskoj i evropskoj kulturi, izazov slobode u drustvu represije; 2. da ne postoji tako nesto kao "praxis-grupa", "filozofi prakse" ili "praxis filozofi" koji bi imali jedinstvenu filozofsku ili drustveno-teorijsku orijentaciju; 3. da su politicka i ideoloska osporavanja Praxisa bila deo represivnog sistema kojem je bilo podvrgnuto svako neistomisljenistvo u kulturi i nauci. Politicki vrh Titovog rezima, njegov ideoloski i propagandni aparat sistematski su sirili insinuacije, denuncijacije i optuzbe o Praxisu i Gaji Petrovicu, da bi taj manir u bitno promenjenim istorijskim okolnostima, trajao od pojave Praxisa do danasnjeg dana. Cesto su i akteri napada bile iste osobe, samo sto su nekada osporavali Praxis i Gaju Petrovica kao neprijatelje "socijalizma" i "sistema socijalistickog samoupravljanja", a u promenjenoj politickoj modi kao "sluge" Titove autoritarne vladavine. Sudbinu Praxisa u prethodnom rezimu slavodobitno su tumacili kao "obracun u obitelji". Rad je pokusaj socioloske analize politicke sudbine Praxisa, koju ce bitno odrediti temeljno uverenje Gaje Petrovica da nema slobode bez coveka ni ljudskosti bez slobode, a ne stara i nova politicka i ideoloska osporavanja Praxisa.. (shrink)

Romi su veoma disperzirana etnicka zajednica. Od kako je nad Kosovom uspostavljen medjunarodni protektorat, Romi su najbrojnija nacionalna manjina u Jugoslaviji. Kada se govori o diskriminaciji i integraciji Roma, treba imati u vidu da su do sada najcesce bili izlozeni negativnim vidovima diskriminacije, a da je integracija cesto znacila fakticku asimilaciju. Kako postoji i pozitivna diskriminacija manjinskih grupa u drustvu, ocigledno je da u osnovni pristup 'romskom pitanju' podrazumeva strateski obrat ponasanja svih drzavnih institucija i drugih drustvenih cinilaca od negativne (...) ka pozitivnoj diskriminaciji i od asimilacije ka istinskoj integraciji Roma. Osnovni pristup za koji se autor zalaze je onaj koji omogucava Romima da budu nasi ravnopravni sugradjani. Krugovi bede u kojima se nalazi romsko stanovnistvo postaju sve dublji. Medjutim, carstvo bede se siri jugoslovenskim prostorom. Osiromasenje je opste. Devastacija uslova zivota za sve gradjane Jugoslavije, odnosno Srbije i Crne Gore, izuzev uskog kruga ratnih profitera i ljudi iz centara moci, traje vise od jedne decenije. Srednji slojevi su nestali sa drustvene scene, a mnoge porodice su dosle u subproletersku zonu siromastva. (shrink)

Autor analizira stavove intelektualaca s podrucja bivse Jugoslavije, okupljenih oko casopisa Praxis, prema nacionalizmu, kao i kritike koje su im upucivali nacionalisti, pre svega iz Hrvatske i Srbije. Analiza obuhvata period od pojave Praxisa do prve decenije dvadeset prvog veka.

On the basis of his own previous research the author examines views of Europe held by the Serbian political and cultural elite in the late 20th and early 21st century. Unable to meet the challenges of the historical moment, this elite has brought Serbia into open conflict with its closest neighbors and exposed its citizens to international sanctions. War-mongering propaganda of the major state-controlled media was developing feelings of xenophobia and frustration among citizens. The collusion between authoritarian government and war (...) profiteers was systematically destroying the lives of Serbian citizens, bringing them to the brink of material impoverishment and spiritual misery. The process of dissolution of the common Yugoslav state is coming to its end in the first decade of this century. Just as it lacked wisdom political will or strength to prevent armed conflicts and crimes, the Serbian elite today is unable to condemn war crimes, to face disastrous consequences of its own policies, and to help Serbian citizens find their way to prosperity. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can be compatible with recognizing the (...) inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

Value capture occurs when an agent’s values are rich and subtle; they enter a social environment that presents simplified — typically quantified — versions of those values; and those simplified articulations come to dominate their practical reasoning. Examples include becoming motivated by FitBit’s step counts, Twitter Likes and Re-tweets, citation rates, ranked lists of best schools, and Grade Point Averages. We are vulnerable to value capture because of the competitive advantage that such crisp and clear expressions of value have in (...) our private reasoning and our public justification. There is, however, a price. In value capture, we take a central component of our autonomy — our ongoing deliberation over the exact articulation of our values — and we outsource it. And the metrics to which we outsource usually engineered for the interests of some external force, like a large-scale institution’s interest in cross-contextual comprehensibility and quick aggregability. That outsourcing cuts off one of the key benefits to personal deliberation. In value capture, we no longer adjust our values and their articulations in light of own rich experience of the world. Our values should often be carefully tailored to our particular selves or our small-scale communities, but in value capture, we buy our values off the rack. In some cases – like decreasing CO2 emissions – the costs of non-tailored values are outweighed by the benefit of precise collective coordination. In other cases, like in our aesthetic lives, they are not. This suggests that we should want different values suited to different scales. We should want value federalism. Some values are perhaps best pursued at the largest-scale level, others at smaller scales. The problem occurs when we exhibit an excess preference for the largest-scale values – when we consistently let the universal metrics swamp our quieter interests. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

Pregledujem sedanje slepe ulice zahodne filozofije in predlagam nov začetek. V sedanjem trenutku prevladujejo tri najmočnejše pojmovne opcije; skepticizem, kognitivni privilegij in historicizem. Prvi je škandal, drugega zavračajo vse strani, tretji pa je trenutno dokaj zanemarjen. Historicizem ali zgodovinskost - pojem, daje mišljenje notranje historizirano, da je mišljenje zgodovina - je edini velik nov prispevek moderne filozofije k glavnim pojmovnim virom zahodne tradicije. Sodobna filozofija, posebno angloameriška analitična filozofija, je v bistvu nadaljevanje filozofije 17. stoletja in predkantovske filozofije 18. stoletja, (...) ki ju begajo »nepomembnosti« 19. stoletja; kontinentalna filozofija, v glavnem francoska in nemška, pa se je zdaj pripravljena prilagoditi ahistoricizmu analitične filozofije. Predlagam ponovno odkritje historicizma in prepoznam številne različne strategije, ki dajejo prednost taki politiki, za katero napovedujem, da bo še enkrat prišla na vrsto v naslednjem stoletju. Še posebej skrbno raziskujem vidike prve filozofije, zaprtih sistemov, rešitev problemov reference in predikacije, odnos med naravo in kulturo, odnos med realizmom in idealizmom in naravo ter funkcijo osebe ali sebstva. Ugotavljam, da se sodobna filozofija mora spoprijeti s prispevki Kantovega konstruktivizma in Heglove simbioze in iti preko obeh. Med dokazovanjem orišem splošno krivuljo zahodne filozofije vse do današnjih časov. (shrink)

The ninth edition of Media Ethics: Issues and Cases has been updated to reflect the most pressing ethical issues in media. Featuring 25 new cases on hot topic issues from fake news to drones and a new chapter on social justice, this authoritative case book gives students the tools to make ethical decisions in an increasingly complex environment.

Recent conversation has blurred two very different social epistemic phenomena: echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Members of epistemic bubbles merely lack exposure to relevant information and arguments. Members of echo chambers, on the other hand, have been brought to systematically distrust all outside sources. In epistemic bubbles, other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. It is crucial to keep these phenomena distinct. First, echo chambers can explain the post-truth phenomena in a way that epistemic (...) bubbles cannot. Second, each type of structure requires a distinct intervention. Mere exposure to evidence can shatter an epistemic bubble, but may actually reinforce an echo chamber. Finally, echo chambers are much harder to escape. Once in their grip, an agent may act with epistemic virtue, but social context will pervert those actions. Escape from an echo chamber may require a radical rebooting of one's belief system. (shrink)

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan argues that although all subjects-of-a-life have equal inherent value, there are often differences in the value of lives. According to Regan, lives that have the highest value are lives which have more possible sources of satisfaction. Regan claims that the highest source of satisfaction, which is available to only rational beings, is the satisfaction associated with thinking impartially about moral choices. Since rational beings can bring impartial reasons to bear on decision making, (...) Regan maintains that they have an additional possible source of satisfaction that nonrational beings do not have and, consequently, the lives of rational beings turn out to have greater value.. (shrink)

What is a game? What are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of playing games? Several different philosophical subdisciplines have attempted to answer these questions using very distinctive frameworks. Some have approached games as something like a text, deploying theoretical frameworks from the study of narrative, fiction, and rhetoric to interrogate games for their representational content. Others have approached games as artworks and asked questions about the authorship of games, about the ontology of the work (...) and its performance. Yet others, from the philosophy of sport, have focused on normative issues of fairness, rule application, and competition. The primary purpose of this article is to provide an overview of several different philosophical approaches to games and, hopefully, demonstrate the relevance and value of the different approaches to each other. Early academic attempts to cope with games tried to treat games as a subtype of narrative and to interpret games exactly as one might interpret a static, linear narrative. A faction of game studies, self-described as “ludologists,” argued that games were a substantially novel form and could not be treated with traditional tools for narrative analysis. In traditional narrative, an audience is told and interprets the story, where in a game, the player enacts and creates the story. Since that early debate, theorists have attempted to offer more nuanced accounts of how games might achieve similar ends to more traditional texts. For example, games might be seen as a novel type of fiction, which uses interactive techniques to achieve immersion in a fictional world. Alternately, games might be seen as a new way to represent causal systems, and so a new way to criticize social and political entities. Work from contemporary analytic philosophy of art has, on the other hand, asked questions whether games could be artworks and, if so, what kind. Much of this debate has concerned the precise nature of the artwork, and the relationship between the artist and the audience. Some have claimed that the audience is a cocreator of the artwork, and so games are a uniquely unfinished and cooperative art form. Others have claimed that, instead, the audience does not help create the artwork; rather, interacting with the artwork is how an audience member appreciates the artist's finished production. Other streams of work have focused less on the game as a text or work, and more on game play as a kind of activity. One common view is that game play occurs in a “magic circle.” Inside the magic circle, players take on new roles, follow different rules, and actions have different meanings. Actions inside the magic circle do not have their usual consequences for the rest of life. Enemies of the magic circle view have claimed that the view ignores the deep integration of game life from ordinary life and point to gambling, gold farming, and the status effects of sports. Philosophers of sport, on the other hand, have approached games with an entirely different framework. This has lead into investigations about the normative nature of games—what guides the applications of rules and how those rules might be applied, interpreted, or even changed. Furthermore, they have investigated games as social practices and as forms of life. (shrink)

Анотація. У статті проаналізовані досягнення Соціального Вчительства Католицької Церкви, репрезентовані працями Лева ХІІІ, Пія ХІ, Пія ХІІ, Івана Павла ІІ, що розкривають змістовні характеристики поняття «принцип субсидіарності», його роль і значення в системі християнських цінностей. Принцип субсидіарності робить можливими такі взаємовідносини в соціальному житті, коли спільнота вищого порядку не втручається у внутрішнє життя спільноти нижчого порядку, перебираючи на себе належні тій функції; заради спільного добра, спільного блага вона надає їй у разі потреби підтримку й допомогу, узгоджуючи у такий спосіб її (...) взаємодію з іншими соціальними структурами. Принцип субсидіарності скеровує соціальну практику на утвердження спільного блага в людському співтоваристві. Поширення і застосування принципу субсидіарності протистоїть небезпеці «одержавлення» суспільства та найзагрозливіших проявів колективізму, обмежує абсолютизацію влади, бюрократизацію державних і соціокультурних структур, стає одним із гарантів дотримання прав і свобод громадян своєї країни. (shrink)

In her BBC Reith Lectures on Trust, Onora O’Neill offers a short, but biting, criticism of transparency. People think that trust and transparency go together but in reality, says O'Neill, they are deeply opposed. Transparency forces people to conceal their actual reasons for action and invent different ones for public consumption. Transparency forces deception. I work out the details of her argument and worsen her conclusion. I focus on public transparency – that is, transparency to the public over expert domains. (...) I offer two versions of the criticism. First, the epistemic intrusion argument: The drive to transparency forces experts to explain their reasoning to non-experts. But expert reasons are, by their nature, often inaccessible to non-experts. So the demand for transparency can pressure experts to act only in those ways for which they can offer public justification. Second, the intimate reasons argument: In many cases of practical deliberation, the relevant reasons are intimate to a community and not easily explicable to those who lack a particular shared background. The demand for transparency, then, pressures community members to abandon the special understanding and sensitivity that arises from their particular experiences. Transparency, it turns out, is a form of surveillance. By forcing reasoning into the explicit and public sphere, transparency roots out corruption — but it also inhibits the full application of expert skill, sensitivity, and subtle shared understandings. The difficulty here arises from the basic fact that human knowledge vastly outstrips any individual’s capacities. We all depend on experts, which makes us vulnerable to their biases and corruption. But if we try to wholly secure our trust — if we leash groups of experts to pursuing only the goals and taking only the actions that can be justified to the non-expert public — then we will undermine their expertise. We need both trust and transparency, but they are in essential tension. This is a deep practical dilemma; it admits of no neat resolution, but only painful compromise. (shrink)

The Helsinki Declaration is the ‘gold standard’ — a directive, not a law, on how to conduct controlled studies in humans in conformity with ethical principles. In spite of many discussions about their unsuitability some articles have remained unchanged in the most recent (sixth) revision of the Declaration. The demand to use “the best treatment” excludes use of placebo in the control group and presents an obstacle to the scientific evaluation of a number of drugs and treatments in general. The (...) use of placebo is justified whenever its use does not cause irreversible damage or considerable suffering to the well informed patient. It must be, is, and will be used in the controlled clinical trials of treatments of a great number of diseases especially those which have a tendency to spontaneous improvement, even healing, or have a pronounced psychological component. (shrink)

According to most accounts of trust, you can only trust other people (or groups of people). To trust is to think that another has goodwill, or something to that effect. I sketch a different form of trust: the unquestioning attitude. What it is to trust, in this sense, is to settle one’s mind about something, to stop questioning it. To trust is to rely on a resource while suspending deliberation over its reliability. Trust lowers the barrier of monitoring, challenging, checking, (...) and questioning. Trust sets up open pipelines between yourself and parts of the external world. Trust permits external resources to have a similar relationship to one as one’s internal cognitive faculties. This creates efficiency, but at the price of exquisite vulnerability. We must trust in this way because we are cognitively limited beings in a cognitively overwhelming world. Crucially, we can hold the unquestioning attitude towards objects and technologies. When I trust my climbing rope, I stop worrying about its reliability. When I trust my online calendaring system, I simply go to the events indicated, without question. But, one might worry, how could one ever hold such a normatively loaded attitude as trust towards mere objects? How could it ever make sense to feel betrayed by an object? Trust is our engine for expanding and outsourcing our agency — for binding external processes into our practical selves. Thus, we can be betrayed by our smartphones in the same way that we can be betrayed by our memory. When we trust, we try to make something a part of our agency, and we are betrayed when our part lets us down. To unquestioningly trust something is to let it in—to attempt to bring it inside one’s practical functioning. This suggests a new form of gullibility: agential gullibility, which occurs when agents too hastily and carelessly integrate external resources into their own agency. (shrink)

Recent discussions in the just war literature suggest that soldiers have a duty to assume certain risks in order to protect the lives of all innocent civilians. I challenge this principle of risk by arguing that it is justified neither as a principle that guides the conduct of combat soldiers, nor as a principle that guides commanders in the US military. I demonstrate that the principle of risk fails on the first account because it requires soldiers both to violate their (...) strict duty of obedience and loyalty and to exceed their special obligations to protect their fellow comrades, the state, the state's constituents and other protected civilians. I then illustrate that the principle of risk fails on the second account since it conflicts with the commander's primary obligation to protect and promote the welfare and lives of his or her soldiers. I conclude by arguing that we cannot reasonably expect soldiers and commanders to adhere to the principle of risk until there is a radical, institutional-level transformation of militaristic goals, values, strategies, policies, warrior codes and expectations of service members in the US Armed Forces. (shrink)

Монографія "Функціональність релігії: український контекст".