The theoretical philosophical interest in the future comes only after the practical one. Every philosophical reflection on the future builds on a practical approach towards the latter. As, on the one hand, human behavior is not fully determined while, on the other, people have the faculty of imagining future states of the world, everyone has an immediate practical interest in the future. Since human actions are determined by independently made decisions, people orient their actions according to purposes of their own choosing that lie in the future. In this paper I examine three different types of human approaches towards the future: predicting,intending, and promising. In their everyday experience, all individuals have developed some intuitive understandings of what constitutes a prediction, an intention, or a promise, which are resident in natural language as implicit meanings of words. Taking this everyday linguistic experience as a starting point, I try to formulate explicit understandings of predicting, intending, and promising. By predicting, we form an idea of the events we expect to happen. Insofar as predicting involves events that have not yet occurred and cannot be described, all predictions about them are uncertain. When the occurrence of particular events depends onhow we ourselves will act, we develop a peculiar readiness to act in a particular way. Intention consists in this readiness to perform a given action. The only way others can learn that someone intends to perform a particular action is if the person declares this intention. Declaration of an intention for action entails no obligation to perform the action. Such an obligation arises only if one makes an utterance of another type, namely if one makes a promise. There is not merely an intention to perform a particular action but that this intention is so serious that the promiser is ready to suffer possible sanctions if he or she fails to perform as promised. There is a close interrelation between predicting, intending, and promising as three different ways in which humans approach the future. Without predictions of the future, intentions for action cannot be formed; without intentions, obligations cannot be undertaken through promises.

Over the last sixty years, marked by spaceflights and the cybernetization of the human activities, logic has preoccupied specialists, but at the same time, it has attracted the interest of many others with an extraordinary force. That is similar with what happened to physics in the first half of the twentieth century or to psychoanalysis, which, at a certain moment, had become an everyday conversational topic. Obviously, such phenomena do not equate with genuine public understanding of scientific knowledge, they only express a certain fascination for the mysterious and sensational side, for media propaganda and celebrity. Certain scientific domains have benefited occasionally from a certain mysticism they succeed in generating.

Both, the individual and social life, discover the future in so far as they organise the structure of their own life out of their conscious subjectivity. With that consciousness they become aware that the only unconditioned future is dead, my personal disappearing as well as the end of mankind. After this discovery, the only possible action rests the care for all these consciousnesses, who know that there will be an end; such an action is also a free accepted care for those, who are so contingent, but at least know that they are so.

An anticipatory system is a system with the capacity to anticipate its own evolution. This paper generalizes the idea of anticipatory systems from its original biological setting to the fields of cognitive and social sciences, and it shows that anticipatory systems are a generalization of autopoietic systems. Anticipatory systems, almost by definition, escape the possibilities of rote iteration. This argument shows that the complexity of an anticipatory system extends well beyond mainstream complexity theory. For this reason, the idea of systems of higher-order complexity has been introduced. These types of systems come in at least two forms: impredicative or self-referential systems, and living systems. It follows that anticipation does not necessarily require life.

The threads of linguistic philosophy in Being and Time oppose the prevailing tendency to understand language philosophically within the confines of representational epistemology. In elaborating on the ontological aspects of the view of human beings as inhabiting a linguistically articulated world, the paper stresses the peculiar status of the “fore-structure of understanding” in the discursive articulation as an existential phenomenon of being-in-the-world.

The paper joins Horwich’s criticism of stipulationist accounts of a priori knowledge, and raises some problems for his own account of the a priori. It first questions the assumed separability of scientific investigation and non-scieentific assertoric practices in regard to norms of adequacy. It also questioned Horwich’s Restriction Assumption according to which only the former are answerable to the standards of empirical adequacy and overall simplicity (which threaten apriority in the case of science). Finally, it criticises his argument that inability to think otherwise might guarantee apriority, pointing to science-driven reflective revisability of possibly innate beliefs.

The main purpose of the research over the presence of Spengler’s famous book “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” in the Bulgarian intellectual area between the two world wars is to find explanation about the power and significance of the prophecy that the book contained – especially in the “Bulgarian case.” An accent is put on the interaction between Spengler’s ideas about the decline of the West, and the Eurasian movement whose manifesto carried the emblematic title “Back to the East.” The conclusion is that Spengler’s book played its most important role with regard to this vital question for Bulgarian national selfconsciousness– the definition of Bulgarian cultural identity.

Some general, programmatic points about informal logic are addressed. The informal approach to argument analysis faces serious foundational problems which have been recognized by its practitioners – but informal logic has yet to come together as a clearly defined discipline. Another problem is the dilemma of the dialectician (Sextus Empiricus): informal logic is either trivial or powerless on its own (field expertise is needed). According to Johnson and Blair the central notion in theory of argument is cogency which replaces soundness. An argument is cogent if and only if (i) its premises are rationally acceptable, (ii) its premises are relevant to its conclusion and (iii) its premises provide sufficient reason to accept the conclusion. I propose to understand cogency as a broader notion that includes deductively valid inferences. The criteria of cogency are simply the basic ideals of scientific methodology which requires a respect for available evidence and “reasonable” inference, an awareness of alternatives and a willingness to modify or reject those beliefs that fail to conform to the evidence. Informal logic in the sense of elementary scientific methodology is concerned with proper reasoning and not with proper dialogue. Informal logic involves non-trivial argumentativeskills and abilities applied to the subject area and accessible to every normally intelligent and educated person.

The focus of the paper is the conditions under which an agent can be justifiably held responsible or liable for the harmful consequences of his or her actions. Kant has famously argued that as long as the agent fulfills his or her moral duty, he or she cannot be blamed for any potential harm that might result from his or her action, no matter how foreseeable these may (have) be(en). I call this the Duty-Absolves-Thesis or DA. I begin by stating the thesis in a more precise form and then go on to assess, one by one, several possible justifications for it: that (i) it wasn’t the view Kant himself actually held or was committed to; (ii) there is nothing strange about the DA, either theoretically or intuitively; (iii) the DA is more plausible as an account of legal (either criminal or tort) liability; (iv) the DA becomesperfectly plausible when conceived as a thesis about what insulates the agent from either remedial moral responsibility or the demands of compensatory justice; (v) the rationale for the DA is to protect our moral assessment of agents and their actions from the threat of moral luck. I show, using the famous Inquiring Murderer example, all these (and some other) justificatory attempts unsuccessful. I conclude that besides being counter-intuitive, the DA-thesis also lacksfirm theoretical grounding and should therefore be rejected as (part of) an account of outcome moral responsibility.

The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, four types of meaning theories are presented (namely, formal or truth-conditional theories, use theories, structuralism and the cognitivist and conceptualist approaches) with respect to how crucial they consider the notion of truth to be in the explication of meaning. In the second part, Conceptual Semantics, as the theory that understands the inquiry into meaning as an investigation of our conceptual structure, and doesn't use truth as a key notion, is advocated as a very promising approach. In the final part of the paper, a construal of truth as a matter of multiple fit is proposed as onethat both sits well with the framework of Conceptual Semantics and also sheds some light on the ways in which our cognitive system operates with the notion of truth.

The paper confronts the issue of single jurisprudence facing a value (-system) pluralism, the one often arising nowadays. Starting from the Raz – B. Williams debate, it outlines a proposal close to Raz’s but ontologically less demanding.

The study of a pragmatic dimension of semiotics appears only late in the history of this discipline. “Pragmatics” seems the last one called into the dispute of signs. The following study focusses on semiotics and the theory of action, stressing the distinction between “pragmatism” and “practical” matters within this philosophical discipline. The theory of “speech acts” is investigated and related to the new perspectives opened in the semiotics in order to highlight furtheravenues for research.

Jean Luc-Marion’s assertion that Heidegger has not sufficiently addressed the notion of gratitude and the Call is incorrect. Based on Heidegger’s discussion in What is Called Thinking? of thankfulness and its relation to thinking, I argue that Heidegger indeed articulates a place for gratitude as the proper situation, the proper attitude of phenomenology. While I make an apology for Heidegger, I also note, however, that Husserl’s own discussions require more authentic reappraisal within the context of Heidegger’s work, thereby reinforcing the notion that gratitude has something to say in terms of the way phenomenology getsbuilt up over time, both in form and content.

This article depicts empirical research conducted in the Western Balkans and Bulgaria (project Balkan Monitor 2006 conducted by the Gallup Europe) that is geared towards the trust that citizens have in national and international institutions, as well as people in general. Empirical research provides a realistic picture of trust as seen from the inside. According to the data collected, within the general population, the strongest percentage was given to neighbors, followed by the police and European Union. A considerable degree of attention was given to interreligious confidence and focus was placed on the number of adepts of a particular faith and the degree of confidence. From Islam, Orthodoxy and Catholicism to Protestantism, the degree of confidence diminishes, as well as the number of adherents, which points out to the relationship between minority and majority. The findings suggest that the degree of trust towards religious communities comes as a dominant attitude which means that these are the institutions that merit the greatest degree of trust. The exceptions are Albania and Kosovo where NATO comes first, whereas in Serbia NATO comes last. Ex- communists enjoy trust from 4% of the respondents whereas 24% completely rejects them. 8% of the respondents have a lot trust in people in general whereas 9% have no trust in people at all. For the purposes of this paper we will depict only a number of questions related to the degree of trust in various countries.

The aim of this paper is to analyze Robert Putnam’s and Francis Fukuyama’s theses and the views of many other their adherents about trust and social capital. At the beginning, basic concepts are defined, and a brief characterization of the arguments is offered. But in its major part, the article is critical. Firstly, a series of empirical research results are presented, which do not go together with and are even in direct contradiction to the points of the ideas under discussion. Secondly, an analysis is offered, presenting their theoretical setbacks: exaggeration of the role of trust and “free associations” in economic and political life, which in its turnleads to reversing causal relationships and concealing real problems; incorrect use of the idea of culture and the values linked to it where major parameters of power relationships remain concealed.

My remarks on trust follow an anthropological perspective. Referring to an everyday-knowledge of trust in ordinary language, trust is understood as a functional relation, which develops into many varieties, mostly in the social sphere, but also in the religious and subjective sphere. Further remarks relate to an ontogenesis of trust, to the element of cognition in trust, trust in oneself, in God and in nature.

Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic tradition have defined the noetic content of Christian faith, fide, as a sort of ungrounded belief — not knowledge — motivated by grace. Calvin and the Reformed tradition, instead, have seen that content as a sort of knowledge made possible by grace. Both theologians agree that faith produces trust in God, but the way they respectively understand the ground of such trust depends upon their respective ways of understanding the noetic content of faith. The aim of the present paper is to to explain in what sense Christian faith, as understood by John Calvin, is or involves a certain kind of trust or reliance.

Recent work in social and cultural studies of science and technology has shown that the ‘epistemic dependence’ of laypeople on experts is not a relation of blind trust, but typically and necessarily involves critical assessment of expert testimonies. Normative epistemologists have suggested a number of criteria, mostly of contextual nature since expert knowledge means restricted cognitive access to some epistemic domain, according to which non-experts can reliably evaluate expert claims; while science studies scholars have concentrated on how laypeople can come to warranted decisions about technical matters on non-technicalgrounds. Instead of addressing the problem transcendentally (how such decisions are possible) or normatively (how such decisions should be reached), this paper contrasts the recommendations available in the literature with the empirical findings of a rough case study concerning the public reaction to the H1N1 vaccine issue. Awareness of how lay people do come to such decisions may inform and refine normative philosophical investigations.

The chief aim of the paper is to argue for a two-level theory of trust consisting of basic and intentional trust. The paper sets out by comparing the concepts of trust and justice to highlight the double meaning of trust as a descriptive social phenomenon and an evaluative normative term. It is subsequently argued that the conceptions of trust known from political science and recent philosophical debates of trust do not capture this double meaning of trust as the former focuses on trust as a social phenomenon while the latter focuses on the normative aspect. As an alternative I develop a two-level theory of trust where basic trust, understood in accordance with sociologist Harold Garfinkel’s conception of trust, is combined with a conception of intentional trust as a willed response to breaches in the social expectancies. Finally, the social philosophical consequences of the two-level theory of trust are indicated in a brief recapitulation of the comparison of trust and justice.

This essay explores the distinction between trust and confidence and its relevance to the terms of social solidarity in contemporary societies. It compares a moral community of trust to communities of confidence and questions the consequences of such distinctions for our ability to abide by and live with difference. It presents the idea of tolerance as a plausible if under-theoretized concept for how to live with ethnic and religious differences in our new multicultural societies.