Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the impact of Machiavellian rhetoric on fundraising within the increasingly important context of online crowdfunding. The “all-or-nothing” funding model used by the world’s largest crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, may be an attractive context in which entrepreneurs can utilize Machiavellian rhetoric to reach their funding goal, lest they get no funding at all. This study uses data from 76,847 crowdfunding projects posted on kickstarter.com and develops a dictionary for computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of Machiavellian rhetoric to measure (...) the relationship between the frequency of Machiavellian rhetoric use and crowdfunding performance, operationalized as either reaching a funding goal or the number of backers who funded the project. Machiavellian rhetoric is segregated into eight facets, which are categorized into hard and soft influence tactics. Hard tactics include revenge, intimidation, betrayal, and manipulation. Soft tactics include ingratiation, supplication, self-disclosure, and persuasion. Results reveal that signals of revenge, self-disclosure, and intimidation have negative effects, whereas signals of ingratiation and persuasion have mixed positive effects on crowdfunding performance. Ingratiation is found to increase the number of backers, but not funding success. Conversely, persuasion is found to increase funding success, but not the number of backers. Surprisingly, betrayal rhetoric is positively related to both measures of crowdfunding performance. Thus, this article complements the literature on backer decision-making, entrepreneurial methods, reward-based crowdfunding, and ethics in entrepreneurship by demonstrating how the displays of potentially negative phenomena, such as Machiavellianism, have complex consequences for entrepreneurial outcomes. (shrink)

Ethics has an established place within the medical curriculum. However notable differences exist in the programme characteristics of different schools of medicine. This paper addresses the main differences in the curricula of medical schools in South East Europe regarding education in medical ethics and bioethics, with a special emphasis on research ethics, and proposes a model curriculum which incorporates significant topics in all three fields. Teaching curricula of Medical Schools in Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro were (...) acquired and a total of 14 were analyzed. Teaching hours for medical ethics and/or bioethics and year of study in which the course is taught were also analyzed. The average number of teaching hours in medical ethics and bioethics is 27.1 h per year. The highest national average number of teaching hours was in Croatia, and the lowest was in Serbia. In the countries of the European Union the mean number of hours given to ethics teaching throughout the complete curriculum was 44. In South East Europe, the maximum number of teaching hours is 60, while the minimum number is 10 teaching hours. Research ethics topics also show a considerable variance within the regional medical schools. Approaches to teaching research ethics vary, even within the same country. The proposed model for education in this area is based on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Bioethics Core Curriculum. The model curriculum consists of topics in medical ethics, bioethics and research ethics, as a single course, over 30 teaching hours. (shrink)

That is the main question of this book, which seeks to contribute to an understanding of morality as a human phenomenon.

Nowadays, people, states and international organizations feel more threatened and insecure, more than in the past, and this has contributed to an increase in need for security and the establishment of a new order and rules through which the world’s problems will be successfully solved. One of the leading countries is the People’s Republic of China, which is taking an increasing share on the global stage and is striving to reduce the dominance and role of the United States and European (...) countries. The rise of China as an economic, security-military and information-technological power has contributed to the shift of the centre of gravity and power from the West to the East, and a lot of opportunities have been created for other Asian countries to find their place and role and be an important subject in the new international structure. With the inclusion of new actors on the international stage, the balance of power changes and new rules of the game are imposed, contrary to the Western countries. The “new managers” are expected to have greater responsibility and influence in reforming the existing international institutions, as well as reducing the factors that cause instability and lead to an anarchic world order. However, due to the different values, interests and goals promoted by the PRC, a number of security implications of an international nature, intensification of geopolitical and geo-economics rivalries, polarization, emergence of new risks and dangers, and increased tension between great powers are expected. (shrink)

Paradoxes are an unavoidable part of work life. The unusualness of attempting to simultaneously satisfy contradictory imperatives can result in creative outcomes that simultaneously satisfy both imperatives by inducing search for, and selection of, novel and useful solutions. Likewise, extant research suggests that paradoxes can also result in anxiety, defensiveness, and persistence of old ways of doing things. However, there is little work attempting to describe how paradoxes affect cognition and when it results in higher or lower creativity. To tackle (...) this issue, a theory of paradoxical creativity is developed. Paradoxical creativity is the attempt by an individual to creatively resolve a contradiction by simultaneously achieving competing demands. The theory is implemented into a computational model and a simulation is used to describe how paradoxes affect creative cognitive process and how these processes in turn result in higher or lower degrees of creativity. The results show that creative output is enhanced when paradoxes have a balanced effect on the cognitive processes responsible for an individual’s capacity to search for new information and willingness to tolerate new ideas. Hence, individuals with high baseline levels of creative cognition are more likely to suffer negative creative performance consequences resulting from contradictory demands. For those individuals, contradictory demands may produce more alternatives, which increases uncertainty and time to insight (if insight is ever reached). This suggests that incentives or rewards to resolve contradictions may have the unintentional effect of reducing creative output in some circumstance. (shrink)

The issue of the policy of multiculturalism toward ethno-cultural minorities in contemporary Serbia has been reviewed within the project Regional and European Aspects of Integrative Processes in Serbia held by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. The aim of this paper is directed toward examination of theoretical and empirical problems regarding the phenomenon of multiculturalism. In spite of the fact that multiculturalism is one of the striking characteristics of modern life in Serbia our social sciences pay a little attention (...) to this topic. Ethnicity as an important part of multicultural discourse is based on nonscientific knowledge and in this manner it presents basis for policy and practice for the protection of rights of minorities in the country. Problem politike multikulturalnosti prema etno-kulturnim manjinama u savremenoj Srbiji autor razmatra u okviru projekta Instituta za filozofiju i drustvenu teoriju "Regionalni i evropski aspekti integrativnih procesa u Srbiji: civilizacijske pretpostavke, stvarnost i izgledi za buducnost". Cilj rada na ovoj temi je usmeren ka razmatranju teorijskih i empirijskih problema u vezi sa fenomenom multikulturalnosti. Uprkos tome sto je multikulturalnost jedna od upecatljivijih karakteristika drustvenog zivota u Srbiji, u nasim drustvenim naukama malo paznje se posvecuje proucavanju ovog fenomena. Stavise, na neutemeljenim saznanjima o etnicitetu kao bitnom delu multikulturalnog diskursa eklekticki je osmisljena politika i konstruisana praksa zastite manjinskih prava u zemlji. (shrink)

The paper discusses the challenges faced by the theoretical thought and practice in Europe concerning the politics of. Though multiculturalism is a complex phenomenon assuming that many social diversities should be brought into accord, in the practice of the Central and Southeast European states it is reduced to the identification of the identities and the recognition of the ethno-cultural minorities' rights. In these regions the politics of multiculturalism meets the resistance of the majority as well as the barriers that slow (...) down their social development. The antagonists of multiculturalism find their allies in conservative though real opinions of the intellectuals and politicians in the West who are afraid that a too fast expansion of the European Union may jeopardize its economic development and disturb even more its political stability. U radu se razmatraju izazovi sa kojima se suocavaju teorijska misao i praksa u Evropi, u vezi sa politikom multikulturalnosti. Iako je multikulturalizam slozen fenomen koji podrazumeva uskladjivanje mnogih drustvenih razlicitosti u praksi drzava u Centralnoj i Jugoistocnoj Evropi on je redukovan na prepoznavanje identiteta i priznavanje prava etno-kulturnih manjina. U ovim regionima politika multikulturalnosti nailazi na otpor vecine i prepreke koje usporavaju njihov drustveni razvoj. Saveznike, neprijatelji multikulturalizma, nalaze u konzervativnim, ali aktuelnim misljenjima intelektualaca i politicara na Zapadu koji strahuju da ce prebrzo prosirenje Evropske unije ugroziti njen ekonomski razvoj i jos vise uzdrmati politicku stabilnost. (shrink)

Politike multikulturalnosti nisu tekovina moderne i liberalne drzave, kako se to u javnosti najcesce zakljucuje. Sa problemom "kontrole" multikulturalnosti suocavale su se istorijske imperije, drzave "stare" demokratije, kolonijalna i imigrantska drustva, a nakon eksperimenta sa komunizmom i istocno evropske drzave. Modeli politike multikulturalnosti su brojni i zavise od politickih drustvenih i kulturnih prilika u razlicitim delovima sveta, a cesto susedne drzave bliskih kultura razvijaju razlicite politike multikulturalnosti. U radu se razmatraju istorijska i savremena iskustva u vezi sa politikama multikulturalnosti, a (...) u poslednjem odeljku razmatraju se uslovi u kojima savremena Srbija odgovara na zahteve i izazove sopstvene multikulturalnosti. (shrink)

The Essay on Freedom represents a milestone in the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling. Although Schelling already deviated from a strictly idealistic framework with his philosophy of nature, notably from that of Kant and Fichte, because he was seeking a moment of self-positing activity of the absolute subject in the object itself, it was only with The Essay on Freedom that he stepped out of that framework. The central point considered is an introduction of the second principle that was (...) complementary, but irreducible to the standard idealist principle of self consciousness. It was about the ground or nature in God. Only through that duality of principles, it was possible to grasp the positive notion of freedom as the possibility for good and evil. In such manner comprehended, the fact of human freedom in its entirety became relation with the whole of beings. The purpose of such explanation was an attempt to solve the problem that was spanning through Schellingʼs entire philosophy – the problem of the relation between finite and infinite. (shrink)

A new diagnostic system for organic psychiatry is presented. We first define "organic psychiatry", and then give the theoretical basis for conceiving organic psychiatric disorders in terms of hypothetical psychopathogenetic processes, HPP:s. Such hypothetical disorders are not strictly identical to the clusters of symptoms in which they typically manifest themselves, since the symptoms may be concealed or modified by intervening factors in non typical circumstances and/or in the simultaneous presence of several disorders. The six basic disorders in our system are (...) Astheno Emotional Disorder (AED), Somnolence Sopor Coma Disorder (SSCD), Hallucination Coenestopathy Depersonalisation Disorder (HCDD), Confusional Disorder (CD), Emotional Motivational Blunting Disorder (EMD) and Korsakoff's Amnestic Disorder (KAD). We describe their usual etiologies, their typical symptoms and course, and some forms of interaction between them. (shrink)

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) is the European Commission’s in-house science and knowledge service, employing a substantial staff of scientists devoted to conducting research to provide independent scientific advice for EU policy. Focussed on various research areas aligned with EU priorities, the JRC excels in delivering scientific evidence for policymaking and has published numerous science-for-policy reports and scientific articles. Drawing on a scientific integrity statement, surveys among JRC’s research staff, and thematic discussions with JRC’s research leaders, the JRC has developed (...) a comprehensive Scientific Integrity and Research Ethics (SIRE) framework, including instruments, procedures, and guidelines to ensure high standards and independence in its research. Key components of the SIRE framework include a Scientific Integrity Officer, an Editorial Review Board, a Research Ethics Board, and guidelines for responsible conduct of research. This article provides an overview of the JRC’s SIRE framework and how it was developed, emphasising the importance of maintaining independence, integrity, and ethics in scientific research that supports EU policy. The article also discusses potential gaps in the framework and where additional efforts may be needed, comparing with the recent U.S. National Science and Technology Council report on Protecting the Integrity of Government Science. (shrink)

Recent events have proved that colonialism has left indelible prints in history. In 2013, the British Foreign Secretary apologized and promised compensation for the atrocities in Kenyan detention camps in the 1950s and the same year the heads of governments of the Caribbean Community issued a declaration demanding reparation for the genocide of indigenous populations and for slavery and the slave trade during colonialism. The discussion and literature on global justice has mainly focused on distributive justice. What are the implications (...) of colonialism for a theory of global justice today? What does rectificatory justice mean in the light of colonialism? What does global rectificatory justice require in practice? This book seeks the answers to these questions. (shrink)

Both interpersonal and mass media communication is demanding for competence of communicators. The aim of this study was to determine the dimensions of interpersonal communicative competence. First, a total of 23 skills and traits were identified that are by various authors related to interpersonal communicative competence. Then, a research instrument named Interpersonal Communication Competence Inventory (ICCI) was developed for the measurement of those skills and traits. After evaluation of the ICCI scales, their total scores were factor analyzed in an attempt (...) to identify the possible dimensions of interpersonal communication competence. The results of the factor analyses are presented in a schematic model and theoretically elaborated. Finally, more insight is given into various aspects of competent interpersonal communication, and the potential uses of the model presented in this study are outlined. (shrink)

The consequences of chasm between the rich and the poor vary, depending on whether or not it is suffered by an individual or a larger group of people. Although in the case of various social groups it encompasses a larger area of effect, especially if it amasses as a protest, the consequences can be worse for an individual because the individual feels it stronger. In this paper, considered is the notion of existence in two aspects, socio­economic and philosophical, following examples (...) from the films Parasite and Joker. The focus is placed on the problem of poverty. (shrink)

Brouwer's demonstration of his Bar Theorem gives rise to provocative questions regarding the proper explanation of the logical connectives within intuitionistic and constructivist frameworks, respectively, and, more generally, regarding the role of logic within intuitionism. It is the purpose of the present note to discuss a number of these issues, both from an historical, as well as a systematic point of view.

This paper seeks to chart a concept of historical experience that French Romantic writers first developed to describe their own relationship to historical time: the notion of the “transitional period.” At first, the term related strictly to the evolving periodic conception of history, one that required breaks, spaces, or zones of indeterminacy to bracket off periods imagined as organic wholes. These transitions, necessary devices in the new grammar of history, also began to attract interest on their own, conceived either as (...) chaotic but creative times of transformation, or, more often, as slack periods of decadence that possessed no proper style but exhibited hybrid traits. Their real interest, however, lies in their reflexive application to the nineteenth century itself, by writers and historians such as Alfred de Musset, Chateaubriand, Michelet, and Renan, who in their effort to define their own period envisioned the “transitional period” as a passage between more coherent and stable historical formations. This prospective self-definition of the “age of history” from a future standpoint is very revealing; it shows not just the tension between its organic way of apprehending the past and its own self-perception, but it also opens a window on a new and paradoxical experience of time, one in which change is ceaseless and an end in itself. The paper also presents a critique of the way the term “modernity” has functioned, from Baudelaire’s initial use to the present, to occlude the experience of transition that the Romantics highlighted. By imposing on the nineteenth-century sense of the transitory a heroic period designation, the term “modernity” denies precisely the reality it describes, and sublimates a widespread temporal malaise into its contrary. The paper concludes that the peculiarly “modern” mania for naming one’s period is a function of transitional time, and that the concept coined by the Romantics still governs our contemporary experience. (shrink)

This paper examines the intertextual relations between Bertolucci’s film The Conformist and Plato’s allegory of the cave. The importance of interpretation for the Plato’s allegory is emphasized: it is central in the thematic, in its form, and in the way it is communicated. The interpretation of the world is inseparable from self-interpretation. By using elements from Plato’s allegory of the cave, Bertolucci’s film becomes the interpretation of Plato. At the same time, the reality of the film is interpreted in Plato’s (...) terms and images. The concepts of conformism, knowledge and liberation are explored. (shrink)

This paper was presented at the conference ‘The Marrano Phenomenon: Jewish Hidden Tradition and Modernity’, Warsaw, 16–19 September 2019. It considers the case of Marcus Ehrenpreis, chief rabbi of Stockholm. Ehrenpreis followed in the tradition from Antiquity of Philo of Alexandria, who expressed his Jewish philosophy in Greek, and Moses Mendelssohn, who attempted to bring the principles of the Englightenment to German Jews and to promote an understanding of Judaism among non­Jews. Ehrenpreis sought to follow a similar path among the (...) Swedes, not least in making Swedish his preferred language of writing. Although the Marrano phenomenon relates primarily to the concept of ‘borderline’ Jewishness, of which Ehrenpreis was not an exponent, it nonetheless proves fruitful to consider him from a Marrano perspective in order to extend our understanding of him as an innovative figure who sought to achieve greater understanding across the religious and cultural boundaries between Judaism and non­-Judaism. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to clarify the idea that narratives cohere by representing stories. Stories are causally related in the way proposed by Noël Carroll, i.e., the events and states constitute necessary conditions or sufficient conditions or INUS-conditions of each other. Then, a general concept of propositional coherence is suggested. It is based on Nelson Goodman's and Joseph Ullian's ideas about unitary formulas. Narrative coherence is defined as the propositional understanding of a text (in the wide sense, including non-verbal (...) narratives) that constitutes one unitary string built upon conditional relations, i.e., relations between individuals matching Carroll's types of conditions. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to clarify the idea that narratives cohere by representing stories. Stories are causally related in the way proposed by Noël Carroll, i.e., the events and states constitute necessary conditions or sufficient conditions or INUS-conditions of each other. Then, a general concept of propositional coherence is suggested. It is based on Nelson Goodman's and Joseph Ullian's ideas about unitary formulas. Narrative coherence is defined as the propositional understanding of a text (in the wide sense, including non-verbal (...) narratives) that constitutes one unitary string built upon conditional relations, i.e., relations between individuals matching Carroll's types of conditions. (shrink)

At the very end of his treatise Opticks, Isaac Newton mentions a “Reformationˮ of the System of Nature, a periodic divine intervention that sustains the continued existence of nature otherwise prone to decay. With the help of Holbachʼs idea of order, we offer an interpretation of Newtonʼs claims on the origin and importance of this reformation, which sometimes appear to contradict one another. By accentuating similarities and differences between human and divine cognition, we can see how Newton’s philosophy of nature (...) can accommodate two concepts of ordered systems: a simple mechanical system, and a well-designed teleological system that displays the presence of an almighty and benevolent Creator. These concepts help differentiate Newton’s understanding of God from deistic, Cartesian and Leibnizʼs ideas. (shrink)

he paper highlights the formal aspects of the educational process that are structurally ignored by contemporary pedagogical ideology. Pedagogy as the endeavour to realise certain specific goals through formation has become the constitutive essence of social reality. Yet, in the same sense that we are unknowingly embedded in ideological reality through shared social practises, we are also blind to the formal aspect of our conscious educational activities, regardless of their actuality. While we strive to establish order, logic, and meaning, we (...) simultaneously recognise the reason, which does not lead to adequate knowledge of content, but to what the cognising subject does not know. It arises only through the realisation of the unsuccessful search for knowledge and truth, which is precisely what the formal aspect of pedagogy fails at. Genuine self-reflection, therefore, can be neither the starting point nor the goal since it occurs rather incidentally in the shaping of the individual. Hegel’s contribution to pedagogy is not that he imparted true knowledge or an appropriate way of teaching, but that his commitment to reason gave prominence to this unreflected ideological core of the contemporary social arrangement. (shrink)

U članku se ističe uloga vlasništva u uspostavljanju slobodne volje. Ljudska sloboda obično se shvaća kao sposobnost pojedinca za proizvoljno donošenje odluka. Iako se čini da se radi o svjesnim akcijama, akcijama u kojima smo najbliže sebi, ipak nismo svjesni uzroka kojim se utvrđuju ove akcije. Ipak, umjesto da izgladimo vrijednosnu podjelu između slobode i nužnosti, naš je cilj objasniti kako je logika slobode imanentno vezana za nužnost izlaska izvan sebe. Hegel nije prvi koji je pokazao tu logiku, ali bio (...) je najdosljedniji u iznošenju ideje slobode kao postajanje drugim. Za njega, biti slobodnom osobom, subjektom, znači eksternalizirati našu volju u neovisne vanjske stvari i time steći vlasništvo nad njima. Sloboda, dakle, nije individualna kvaliteta, već društveni princip, jer vlasnička prava mogu postojati samo u intersubjektivnim odnosima. U tom kontekstu, postavlja se pitanje: kako je u okolnostima gdje je subjektivnost proizvod vlasništva i dalje moguće stvoriti nešto iz ničega? The article highlights the role of property in the establishment of free will. Human freedom is usually understood as individual’s capacity for arbitrary decision- making. While it seems that we are dealing with conscious actions, actions where we are closest to ourselves, we nonetheless remain unaware of the causes whereby these actions are determined. But instead of reconciling the age old divide between freedom and necessity, our aim is to expound how the logic of freedom is immanently bound to the necessity to go outside oneself. Hegel was not the first to demonstrate this logic, but was the most consistent in laying out the idea of freedom as self-othering. For him, being a free person, subject, means to externalize our will into a non-independent extraneous things and thereby obtain ownership over them. Freedom is therefore not an individual quality, but a societal principle as property rights can only exist in intersubjective relationships. In this context, the following question comes to the fore: how is in circumstances where subjectivity is a product of ownership still possible to create something out of nothing? (shrink)

The article highlights the role of property in the establishment of free will. Human freedom is usually understood as individual’s capacity for arbitrary decision- making. While it seems that we are dealing with conscious actions, actions where we are closest to ourselves, we nonetheless remain unaware of the causes whereby these actions are determined. But instead of reconciling the age old divide between freedom and necessity, our aim is to expound how the logic of freedom is immanently bound to the (...) necessity to go outside oneself. Hegel was not the first to demonstrate this logic, but was the most consistent in laying out the idea of freedom as self-othering. For him, being a free person, subject, means to externalize our will into a non-independent extraneous things and thereby obtain ownership over them. Freedom is therefore not an individual quality, but a societal principle as property rights can only exist in intersubjective relationships. In this context, the following question comes to the fore: how is in circumstances where subjectivity is a product of ownership still possible to create something out of nothing? (shrink)

The present trend of resource depletion and environmental destruction is related to a lack of morals in society. Available tools like exergy, ecology and democracy are ignored. This not only makes us unaware of reality but also of the possibilities of avoiding a catastrophe. Instead, economics and politics are often based on myths. The most dangerous threat to humankind is new, unknown diseases, fostered by environmental pollution. This knowledge is suppressed. The author concludes that too much attention has been given (...) to the body of society, that is, its metabolism. Therefore, the focus should now be directed to the soul of society, especially morals and love. (shrink)