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In this text I present two theoretical and research paradigms that shape the nature and meaning of phenomenon of nation as an socio-political phenomenon and nationalism as the most significant and the most puzzling political ideology of the contemporary world. Also, I will refer to authors who, with their theoretical positions articulate key presuppositions and conditions for the origins and development of nations and nationalism, with the special review of on Anthony D. Smith and his ethno-symbolical perspective. The aim is to prove that ethno-symbolism more effectively explicates an “inner world” and inner motifs of nations and nationalism and that nationalism implicates its relations to modernity that are crucial for a continuous theoretical, political and practical implication in the contemporary age. Also, a critical reflection is directed towards stressing the ethnical dimension which to some extent appeals the concept of ethno-reductionism as a form of essencialisation of social world and its constellations.
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In this work I consider an epistemological value of probabilistic causality. In a probabilistic theory of causation, causes just increase the probability of their effects rather than necessitate their effects in the ways traditional deterministic theories have specified. This traditional point of view was determined by Hume’s understanding of causality. Because of that probabilistic model of causality can be seen as an alternative one when compared to the matrix made by Hume. Main thesis of this work is that probabilistic causality can be analyzed using the notion of hypothetical frequency. Probabilistic causality, seen in this way, is of great importance to modern science because of its capability for predicting and manipulating with processes.
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Russell’s analysis of language in the relation with its theory of knowledge and ontology is discussed in this work. The theory of definite descriptions presents the Russell’s way of solving philosophical problems using language analysis. By reconstructing logical form of an expression Russell presents how we can be mistaken, if guided by grammar. At the same time, he demonstrates forcing all assertions into pre-determined (subject – predicate) schema as limited act of traditional logic. Attitudes expressed in essay On Denoting are considered related to Russell’s view in The Principles of Mathematics where the questions of denotation of definite descriptions are solved in the way similar to Frege’s. In the essay, Russell explicates his theory, considering Frege’s theory of meaning. That’s the reason why this work presents Russell’s understanding of distinction denotation – meaning related to Frege’s distinction reference – sense. The last part of this work shows how distinction between proper names and definite descriptions has to be considered in the relation with Russell’s epistemological views, especially those related to difference between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.
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A few months before the November 1989 collapse of "real eXIstIng socialism" in Central and Eastern Europe, Habermas reflected on the revolutionary ideas of 1789. How is one to think within plural and secular modernity about a radical democratic republic? He notes the paradox of post-traditional ethical self-realization and moral self-determination: social revolutions project contents and forms that in a finite way transcend the revolutionary action, but revolution shipwrecks before the project gets off the ground. He proposes that to overcome the "sorrow" and the "melancholy" of projected revolutionary possibility, one must form posttraditional identities in those life-forms which are nurtured by a "permanent and everyday-becoming revolution. “
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The paper argues that the practice of thought experimenting enables scientists to follow through the implications of a way of representing nature by simulating an exemplary or representative situation that is feasible within that representation. What distinguishes thought experimenting from logical argument and other forms of propositional reasoning is that reasoning by means of a thought experiment involves constructing and simulating a mental model of a representative situation. Although thought experimenting is a creative part of scientific practice, it is a highly refined extension of a mundane form of reasoning. It is not a mystery why scientific thought experiments are a reliable source of empirical insights. Thought experimenting uses and manipulates representations that derive from real-world experiences and our conceptualizations of them.
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For J. Brown the essential feature of thought experiments is that they mobilize our intuition; the way they teach positive lessons to cognizers is by means of the intuition mobilized. The paper presents a problem for Brown with the help of a famous TE as counterexample. It argues that Berkeley’s master argument is a philosophical thought experiment that lacks a feature typical of platonic thought experiments––intuitive grasp. If Berkeley’s argument is a thought experiment, as I’ve attempted to show, then we have a counterexample to Brown’s view that thought experiments are not arguments.
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The first, critical part of the paper summarizes J. R. Brown’s Platonic view of thought experiments (TEs) and raises several questions. One of them concerns the initial, particular judgments in a TE. Since they seem to precede the general insight, Brown’s Platonic intuition, and not to derive from it, the question arises as to the nature of the initial particular judgment. The other question concerns the explanatory status of Brown’s epistemic Platonism. The second, constructive descriptive-explanatory part argues for an alternative, i.e. the view of TE as reasoning in, or with help of, mental models which can accommodate all the relevant data within a non-aprioristic framework (or, at worst, within a minimally “aprioristic”, nativist one). The last part turns to issues of justification and argues that the mental model proposal can account for justification of intuitional judgments and can also support the view of properly functioning intuition as an epistemic virtue, all within a more naturalist framework than the one endorsed by Brown.
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There are simple rules for making important judgments that are more reliable than experts, but people refuse to use them. People refuse even when they are told that these rules are more reliable than they are. When we say that people “refuse” to use the rule, we do not mean that people stubbornly refuse to carry out the steps indicated by the rule. Rather, people defect from the rule (i.e., they overturn the rule’s judgment) so often that they end up reasoning about as reliably as they would have without the rule, and less reliably than the rule all by itself. We have two aims in this paper. First, we will explain why (at least some) simple rules are so reliable and why people too often defect from them. And second, we will argue that this selective defection phenomenon raises a serious problem for all epistemological theories of justification. We will suggest that the best way to escape this problem is to change the focus of contemporary epistemology.
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I consider how we might begin to redress a cognitive model for thought experimental and other imagery-based scientific reasoning from an embodied cognition viewpoint. The paper gravitates on clarifying four issues: (i) the danger of understanding the genuine novelty of thought-experimental reasoning and other imagery-based reasoning as a product of ‘quasi-perceiving’ new phenomenology with the ‘mind’s eye’ (as asserted by quasi-pictorialist theories of imagery); (ii) the erroneous choice of units of analysis that assume equivalence of external reports of visual imagery with those internal structures that govern imagery-based reasoning, which are, as I will argue, largely linked to motor processes; (iii) the establishment of thought experimentation as imagery-based reasoning by providing evidence for the psychological necessity of imagistic simulation in thought experiments; (iv) a cognitive model for how learning via thought experimentation and other imagery-based reasoning takes place. The study was underpinned by constructivist assumptions. Case methodology was adopted, the case being a pair of final year A-level physics students. Data was collected through non-participant observation over two sessions of collaborative problem-solving. The tasks drew upon Newtonian mechanics.
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I reply to a number of papers (published in Croatian Journal of Philosophy 7 [2007], 29–92 and in this issue) that stem from a conference in Rijeka on thought experiments. These are papers by Ana Butković, Dave Davies, Boris Grozdanoff, Dunja Jutronić, Nenad Miščević, Ksenija Puškarić, and Irina Starikova. Their criticisms of my views are diverse, but one theme, perhaps inevitably, dominates the criticisms: the unworkability of my Platonism. I try to defend this and to adequately answer other criticisms, as well.
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Jim Brown (1991, viii) says that platonism in mathematics involves the following: 1. mathematical objects exist independently of us; 2. mathematical objects are abstract; 3. we learn about mathematical objects by the faculty of intuition. The same is being claimed by Jerrold Katz (1981, 1998) in his platonistic approach to linguistics. We can take the object of linguistic analysis to be concrete physical sounds as held by nominalists, or we can assume that the object of linguistic study are psychological or mental states which presents the conceptualism or psychologism of Chomsky and that language is an abstract object as held by platonists or realists and urged by Jerrold Katz himself. I want to explicate Katz’s proposal which is based on Kant’s conception of pure intuition and give arguments why I find it implausible. I also presents doubts that linguists use intuitive evidence only. I conclude with some arguments against the a prioricity of intuitive judgements in general which is also relevant for Jim Brown’s platonistic beliefs.
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