Education and conspiracy beliefs: A replication of van Prooijen (2017)

The main aim of the study was to replicate and extend van Prooijen's findings on how education and its outcomes (cognitive complexity, subjective social standing, self-esteem, a feeling of control and powerlessness, cognitive reflection, epistemic curiosity and scientific reasoning) predict conspiracy beliefs. In two studies (Study 1: N = 497, M_age = 49.06, SD_age = 14.92; Study 2: N = 482, M_age = 47.45, SD_age = 15.87), subjective socioeconomic status and cognitive reflection (Study 1) and a feeling of powerlessness and scientific reasoning (Study 2) contributed to the negative relationship between education level and belief in conspiracy theories. These results showed the connection of education to socioeconomic status, a feeling of control and analytic thinking (cognitive reflection, scientific reasoning) and their power to reduce conspiracy beliefs.     

Asymmetry arguments

In the First Meditation, the Cartesian meditator temporarily concludes that he cannot know anything, because he cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while he is dreaming. To resist the meditator’s conclusion, one could deploy an asymmetry argument. Following Bernard Williams (1978), one could argue that even if the meditator cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while dreaming, it does not follow that he cannot do it while awake. In general, asymmetry arguments seek to identify an asymmetry between a bad case that is entertained as a ground for doubt and a good case in which one takes oneself to know something. My aim in this paper is to consider how effective asymmetry arguments are as an anti-skeptical strategy. I conclude that although asymmetry arguments provide an effective response to dreaming skepticism, they fail as a response to brains-in-a-vat skepticism.     

Human Dignity as an Existentiale? On Paul Ricoeur’s Phenomenology of Human Dignity

Human Studies - Apart from being a pervasive concept of present-day law, human dignity is a phenomenon regularly experienced by people in their lives. Yet before any protection for it can be...     

A test of theory of planned behavior in type II diabetes adherence: The leading role of perceived behavioral control

Current Psychology - Diabetes mellitus is a health complication that millions of people suffer from all over the world. Type II (non-insulin dependent) diabetes requires many changes in the daily...     

Psychological research and practice in former Yugoslavia and its successors

This paper presents a brief history of Yugoslav psychology and a review of the current state of psychological research and practice in the former Yugoslav countries. Bibliometric mapping was used to explore the knowledge domain and international visibility of psychological research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Judging by the number of papers visible in Scopus, psychological research activity in these countries is similar to the other former communist countries. In a relative sense, it is even higher in Slovenia and Croatia. However, psychologists still rely heavily on national journals indexed in Scopus when publishing their papers. Regarding psychological practice, former Yugoslav countries are facing challenges that are more or less typical for all small countries in the global scientific and economic market. Keeping in mind all the obstacles and traumas in the past decades, it should be considered a success that psychology in the former Yugoslav countries is now a fully established profession and a recognized scientific discipline.     

Sequent-systems and groupoid models. II

The purpose of this paper is to connect the proof theory and the model theory of a family of prepositional logics weaker than Heyting's. This family includes systems analogous to the Lambek calculus of syntactic categories, systems of relevant logic, systems related to BCK algebras, and, finally, Johansson's and Heyting's logic. First, sequent-systems are given for these logics, and cut-elimination results are proved. In these sequent-systems the rules for the logical operations are never changed: all changes are made in the structural rules. Next, Hilbert-style formulations are given for these logics, and algebraic completeness results are demonstrated with respect to residuated lattice-ordered groupoids. Finally, model structures related to relevant model structures (of Urquhart, Fine, Routley, Meyer, and Maksimova) are given for our logics. These model structures are based on groupoids parallel to the sequent-systems. This paper lays the ground for a kind of correspondence theory for axioms of logics with implication weaker than Heyting's, a correspondence theory analogous to the correspondence theory for modal axioms of normal modal logics.Below is the sequel to the first part of the paper, which appeared in the previous issue of this journal (vol. 47 (1988), pp. 353–386). The first part contained sections on sequent-systems and Hilbert-formulations, and here is the third section on groupoid models. This second part is meant to be read in conjunction with the first part.