scholarly journals Free Will as a Paradox: Empirical Evaluation of the Construct of Everyday Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-151
Author(s):  
Eugeny L. Dotsenko ◽  
Olga V. Pchelina

Background. Free will belongs to the category of phenomena that are actively discussed in scientific discourse but are neither verified nor proven false. Free will is studied in philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. We discuss this pluralism, multiplicity of perceptions, and the parties’ arguments in the theoretical part of this article. We approach the existing polemics from the point of view of a person who is in the moment of making a decision and taking responsibility for it. The usual paradoxes are mitigated if we consider free will through the concepts underlying everyday consciousness. Objective. Our aim is to introduce into the discussion of free will an understanding of its nature as a construct of everyday consciousness, one which acts as a factor in increasing the personal maturity of vital decisions. We also discuss the arguments of the various meta-positions in the dispute about free will. Design. Our empirical research was designed as a modification of the experiments on imposed attitudes. The sample consisted of 340 people ages 30–50 years. Results. The level of maturity of actions by the subjects who received the set for determinism was lower than that of the subjects who received the set for free will (U 5133; p = 0.014). Conclusion. Our study showed that the stronger a person’s belief in free will, the more personally mature that person’s choices – actions – are; and that the more active that belief in free will, the more effective are their efforts to overcome social pressure.

Author(s):  
Jens Oliver Krüger ◽  
Kathrin Krüger

While from a medical point of view it seems obvious that “vaccination is one of the most effective ways to prevent disease” (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020), some people reject vaccinations for various reasons. The scientific discourse refers to them as vaccination hesitant. In this article we take a closer look at the different concepts of knowledge underlying vaccination hesitancy. We look at the history of vaccination hesitancy, examine current studies and report on select, empirical research into parental vaccination hesitancy, that we carried out in 2014/2015. Finally, we argue that the key challenge in vaccination education is not only to provide information but to build confidence.


Chelovek RU ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 18-53
Author(s):  
Sergei Avanesov ◽  

Abstract. The article analyzes the autobiography of the famous Russian philosopher, theologian and scientist Pavel Florensky, as well as those of his texts that retain traces of memories. According to Florensky, the personal biography is based on family history and continues in children. He addresses his own biography to his children. Memories based on diary entries are designed as a memory diary, that is, as material for future memories. The past becomes actual in autobiography, turns into a kind of present. The past, from the point of view of its realization in the present, gains meaning and significance. The au-thor is active in relation to his own past, transforming it from a collection of disparate facts into a se-quence of events. A person can only see the true meaning of such events from a great distance. Therefore, the philosopher remembers not so much the circumstances of his life as the inner impressions of the en-counter with reality. The most powerful personality-forming experiences are associated with childhood. Even the moment of birth can decisively affect the character of a person and the range of his interests. The foundations of a person's worldview are laid precisely in childhood. Florensky not only writes mem-oirs about himself, but also tries to analyze the problems of time and memory. A person is immersed in time, but he is able to move into the past through memory and into the future through faith. An autobi-ography can never be written to the end because its author lives on. However, reaching the depths of life, he is able to build his path in such a way that at the end of this path he will unite with the fullness of time, with eternity.


Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer

In 1792, the French Revolution became a thing in itself, an uncontrollable force that might eventually spend itself but which no one could direct or guide. The governments set up in Paris in the following years all faced the problem of holding together against forces more revolutionary than themselves. This chapter distinguishes two such forces for analytical purposes. There was a popular upheaval, an upsurge from below, sans-culottisme, which occurred only in France. Second, there was the “international” revolutionary agitation, which was not international in any strict sense, but only concurrent within the boundaries of various states as then organized. From the French point of view these were the “foreign” revolutionaries or sympathizers. The most radical of the “foreign” revolutionaries were seldom more than advanced political democrats. Repeatedly, however, from 1792 to 1799, these two forces tended to converge into one force in opposition to the French government of the moment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Phd.Can Elsa Vula

Challenges of assessment might come up from different reasons or circumstances which generate huge obstacles and dissatisfactions for teachers and students in the same time. Meanwhile, teachers of foreign languages see them as barriers or complications due to an effective and reliable assessment. Firstly, this paper elaborates on theoretical part of assessment, as a crucial tool to measure students’ performance of speaking, as a significant English skill, and then it is presented the elaboration of challenge and its sub-challenges during my work as an English assistant at my tutorial classes on a specific course such as “Integrated English Skill III”, particularly focusing on speaking skill. After it, there is an expansion of others’ research done on this issue, supported by different teaching approaches, and relying on others’ work related to such issue. And at the end of this paper it can be found the summary and recommendations, which wereconducted from the empirical research.


Upravlenie ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 116-122
Author(s):  
Sadeghi Elham Mir Mohammad ◽  
Ahmad Vakhshitekh

The article considers and analyses the basic principles and directions of Russian foreign policy activities during the presidency of V.V. Putin from the moment of his assumption of the post of head of state to the current presidential term. The authors determine the basic principles of Russia's foreign policy in the specified period and make the assessment to them. The study uses materials from publications of both Russian and foreign authors, experts in the field of political science, history and international relations, as well as documents regulating the foreign policy activities of the highest state authorities. The paper considers the process of forming the priorities of Russia's foreign policy both from the point of view of accumulated historical experience and continuity of the internal order, and in parallel with the processes of transformation of the entire system of international relations and the world order. The article notes the multi-vector nature of Russia's foreign policy strategy aimed at developing multilateral interstate relations, achieving peace and security in the interstate arena, actively countering modern challenges and threats to interstate security, as well as the formation of a multipolar world. The authors conclude that at present, Russia's foreign policy activity is aimed at strengthening Russia's prestige, supporting economic growth and competitiveness, ensuring security and implementing national interests. Internal political reforms contribute to strengthening the political power of the President of the Russian Federation and increasing the efficiency of foreign policy decision-making.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Tavares Gomes ◽  
Eduardo Santos ◽  
Sandra Gomes ◽  
Daniel Pansarelli ◽  
Donizete Mariano ◽  
...  

This book, consisting of nine chapters, is the result of multiple theoretical and empirical research carried out by students in the post-graduate program in education (PPGE) at Universidade Nove de Julho (UNINOVE). The object of the research was to carry out a study on the new models of higher education, implemented in Brazil between 2005 and 2013. The studies carried out focus, above all, on institutional principles, student access policies, the internationalization process, quota policies, and mechanisms for inclusion in higher education for public school students. These were studies that used, as a theoretical basis, epistemological models of a counter-hegemonic character and, from a methodological point of view, an essentially qualitative approach. The studies showed, generically, the possibility of building other models of higher education capable of overcoming the elitism, characteristic of traditional universities. The inclusion of students from public school reveals that it is possible to make higher education a right for everyone, democratizing it, in the sense of establishing social and cognitive justice. Keywords: higher education; new models; empirical research; Brazil; social and cognitive justice.


2012 ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Michał Mrozowicki

Michel Butor, born in 1926, one of the leaders of the French New Novel movement, has written only four novels between 1954 and 1960. The most famous of them is La Modification (Second thoughts), published in 1957. The author of the paper analyzes two other Butor’s novels: L’Emploi du temps (Passing time) – 1956, and Degrés (Degrees) – 1960. The theme of absence is crucial in both of them. In the former, the novel, presented as the diary of Jacques Revel, a young Frenchman spending a year in Bleston (a fictitious English city vaguely similar to Manchester), describes the narrator’s struggle to survive in a double – spatial and temporal – labyrinth. The first of them, formed by Bleston’s streets, squares and parks, is symbolized by the City plan. During his one year sojourn in the city, using its plan, Revel learns patiently how to move in its different districts, and in its strange labyrinth – strange because devoid any centre – that at the end stops annoying him. The other, the temporal one, symbolized by the diary itself, the labyrinth of the human memory, discovered by the narrator rather lately, somewhere in the middle of the year passed in Bleston, becomes, by contrast, more and more dense and complex, which is reflected by an increasinly complex narration used to describe the past. However, at the moment Revel is leaving the city, he is still unable to recall and to describe the events of the 29th of February 1952. This gap, this absence, symbolizes his defeat as the narrator, and, in the same time, the human memory’s limits. In Degrees temporal and spatial structures are also very important. This time round, however, the problems of the narration itself, become predominant. Considered from this point of view, the novel announces Gerard Genette’s work Narrative Discourse and his theoretical discussion of two narratological categories: narrative voice and narrative mode. Having transgressed his narrative competences, Pierre Vernier, the narrator of the first and the second parts of the novel, who, taking as a starting point, a complete account of one hour at school, tries to describe the whole world and various aspects of the human civilization for the benefit of his nephew, Pierre Eller, must fail and disappear, as the narrator, from the third part, which is narrated by another narrator, less audacious and more credible.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Lidia Peneva

Crimes against marriage and family are a particular group of social relation­ships that the law has defended properly in view of the high public significance and value they enjoy. At the moment they are regulated in Chapter VI, Section I, of the specific part of the Penal Code the Repub­lic of Bulgaria. The subject matter of this Statement will, however, be the legisla­tive provisions concerning these criminal­ized acts in retrospect. The purpose of the study is to show by historical method and through the comparatively legal method the development of these criminal groups during the periods of various criminal laws in Bulgaria. This will also provide a basis for reflection on possible de lege ferenda proposals. This report from a structural point of view will be divided into three distinct points, marking each of the penal laws in the Republic of Bulgaria, which were in force before 1968.


Author(s):  
Christopher Evan Franklin

According to incompatibilists, free will and moral accountability exist only in nondeterministic worlds. But which ones? Where exactly must indeterminism be located, and what role must it play to make room for the possibility of freedom and accountability? This chapter evaluates three possible libertarian answers—non-action-centered accounts, nonbasic action-centered accounts, and basic action-centered accounts—and argues that libertarians should embrace a basic action-centered account that locates indeterminism at the moment of basic action (e.g., choice). Central to this chapter is showing that the source of the major problems with Kane’s event-causal libertarian theory can be traced to his problematic conception of the role and location of indeterminism and that we can avoid these problems by embracing the alternative conception developed in minimal event-causal libertarianism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 697-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Quendler

AbstractTourism is vitally important to the Austrian economy. The number of tourist destinations, both farms and other forms of accommodation, in the different regions of Austria is considerably and constantly changing. This paper discusses the position of the ‘farm holiday’ compared to other forms of tourism. Understanding the resilience of farm holidays is especially important but empirical research on this matter remains limited. The term ‘farm holiday’ covers staying overnight on a farm that is actively engaged in agriculture and has a maximum of 10 guest beds. The results reported in this paper are based on an analysis of secondary data from 2000 and 2018 by looking at two types of indicator: (i) accommodation capacity (supply side) and (ii) attractiveness of a destination (demand side). The data sets cover Austria and its NUTS3 regions. The results show the evolution of farm holidays vis-à-vis other forms of tourist accommodation. In the form of a quadrant matrix they also show the relative position of farm holidays regionally. While putting into question the resilience of farm holidays, the data also reveals where farm holidays could act to expand this niche or learn and improve to effect a shift in their respective position relative to the market ‘leaders’. However, there is clearly a need to learn more about farm holidays within the local context. This paper contributes to our knowledge of farm holidays from a regional point of view and tries to elaborate on the need for further research.


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