For Rousseau, social contract is a hypothetical one; the paper claims that it is, in contemporary terms, a political thought-experiment (TE). The abductive way of thinking, looking for the best normative pattern in the data, finds its counterpart in the historical abduction in the Second Discourse; the analogy between the two secures the methodological unity of Rousseaus political philosophy. The proposed reading of the work as a TE shows that it fulfills the necessary requirements put by (hopefully) intuitively acceptable definition of a TE, and fits in the contractarian tradition that has been experimenting with hypothetical arrangements since its start. The reading of The Social Contract as a TE has helped to systematize some of its shortcomings from the wider perspective of methodology of political philosophy. Finally, the political thought experiment (PTE) reading of Rousseau places his central work where it belongs: in the tradition started by Platos Republic, continuing with Renaissance and early modern philosophical utopias, culminating in the contractarian social contract TE, and going all the way to the work of Rawls and his present day continuators. We hope that this can contribute to a more positive picture of Rousseaus work, despite criticism concerning his brusque manner of thought-experimenting.
COBISS.SI-ID: 20253704
The author tries to redefine the core issue of intellectuals essence: what and who exactly is the intellectual by definition? Who are, very much concretely, intellectuals in the Slovenian social landscape? He develops a typology of four relatively heterogeneous types of intellectuals (educational, scientific, progressive and humanist), paying further attention to the ignored social role of the intellectual as an active citizen. He stresses that intellectuals have to be concerned with the public use of reason, deliberation on the goals of collective life, and the welfare of others. The intellectuals should hold up in society as an example of adherence to rationality. The author concludes that the intellectual as an active citizen issignificantly involved in the procedures of collective decision making, drawing attention to errors and premature conclusions, prejudices and rights, hate speech and discriminatory treatment, which primarily affi rm a progressive and humanist intellectual.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32481885
In the first, shorter part of the paper I point out some problems and potential misunderstandings connected with B. Berčić's treatment of Nozick's sensitivity condition for knowledge. In the second part of the paper I offer the condition of modal stability or limited sensitivity as a revision of Nozickian conditions for non-accidental connection between our belief and the truth of our belief. "When it is seriously possible for you to falsely believe that p", that is a goodreason for denying that you know that p. Sensitivity within limits requires that we consider more possible worlds (all within a sphere of serious or relevant possibilities) than classical sensitivity, but not the worlds outside this sphere. The idea of modal stability combines robustness (benefits of safety) with responsiveness to facts (benefits of sensitivity).
COBISS.SI-ID: 20331528
Since the beginning, the project of the European Capital of Culture, which took place in Maribor in 2012, had rather symbolic implications, however with clearly conveyed objectives: these were, for example, to enrich the European cultural or mental diversity, to celebrate the relations which unify the Europeans, and finally, to enforce the feeling of a European citizenship on the basis of common virtues. The book on the ignored reading of the European Capital of Culture 2012 stresses such missions, defined by the European Commission, but especially highlights the importance of intellectual culture in Slovene framework as a kind of positive externality in improving a city’s cultural offerings and enforcing its visibility. Intrinsic to the creation of a European citizenship should be finding common features and values also in intellectual culture, making real and not only superficial solidarity between citizens.
COBISS.SI-ID: 269218560
The article introduces a relation among functionalism which considers mental states as functional states, computers that are according to its computational version able to think and the Chinese Room Argument which is supposed to prove, once and for all, that machines will never be intelligent. The first part shows the fundamental idea and motivation for functionalism together with the main objections to it, the second part of the article represents the Chinese Room Thought Experiment which, formulated as an argument, rejects the idea of thinking machines on the grounds that a manipulation with symbols is not enough for understanding their contents, and the third part summarizes the key objections to the Chinese Room Argument as well as principle answers to them bringing about thereby some new ideas in order to defend the belief that intelligent computers are, in principle, possible.
COBISS.SI-ID: 20307976