Project
Institute of Philosophy SAS
International Projects
Anthropocene, Limits and Sustainability
Anthropocene, Limits and Sustainability
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2025 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | Open-Mob-2024-15 |
| Program: | Mobility |
| Project leader: | doc. Mgr. Sťahel Richard PhD. |
The impact of AI on Low-resource (limited digital resources) languages and their visual cultures
Dopad AI na low-resourced (s obmedzenými digitálnymi zdrojmi) jazyky a ich vizuálne kultúry
| Duration: | 1. 6. 2025 - 30. 11. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 22510385 (Visegrad fund) |
| Program: | International Visegrad Fund (IVF) |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Kuchtová Alžbeta PhD |
| Annotation: | This research initiative, led by MOME, aims to address the underrepresentation of low-resource languages, such as Slovak, Hungarian,Czech, Polish and their associated visual cultures in artificial intelligence systems. The project will define the status quo of the problematic AI systems and develop AI tools tailored to these cultures, enhancing the visibility of the V4 visual heritage. |
FOGOS - Futures-oriented Governance of Outer Space
Futures-oriented Governance of Outer Space
| Duration: | 8. 10. 2024 - 7. 10. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | COST Action CA23118 |
| Program: | COST |
| Project leader: | Mgr Likavčan Lukáš PhD |
| Annotation: | Europe faces rapidly rising geopolitical, socio-economic, and environmental stakes in outer space. The European space industry is crucial for economic growth and innovation. European scientific organizations are at the forefront of the global space sciences. Orbital satellite infrastructures play diverse and essential roles for European telecommunications and navigation. In the future, further exploration of the solar system holds vast potential for scientific discoveries and socio-economic development, possibly including by tapping various types of space resources. The COST Action “Futures-Oriented Governance of Outer Space: Towards Peace, Equity, and Environmental Integrity” (FOGOS) brings together researchers from Europe and beyond that work on diverse aspects of space governance and space futures across scientific disciplines. Starting from a comprehensive concept of sustainability that encompasses peace, equity, and environmental integrity as its core components, the aim of FOGOS is to improve the understanding of governance mechanisms and processes that can facilitate the attainment of sustainable space futures towards the middle of the 21st century for Europe. FOGOS will engage in a stocktake of existing governance mechanisms and processes; evaluate their potential deficits, gaps, and inconsistencies; and propose policy recommendations towards a grand political bargain aligned with the achievement of sustainable space futures over approximately the next three decades. The Action will do so by engaging policymakers and stakeholders from industry, science, and civil society. Through its networking and capacity-building activities, FOGOS will put Europe center stage in the contemporary global debate on outer space and its futures. |
| Project web page: | https://fogos.space/web/ |
COTIAN - Cosmopolitanism and Tianxia: Toward the Shared Grounds of Mutually Beneficial and Respectful Understanding in Global Political Thought
Kozmopolitizmus a Tianxia: K spoločným základom vzájomne prospešného a rešpektujúceho porozumenia v globálnom politickom myslení
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | SAS-NSTC-JRP-2025-07 |
| Program: | Bilaterálne - iné |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Dunaj Ľubomír PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project brings together the leading interpreters of both Western and Eastern traditions and perspectives so as to forge a cross-cultural philosophical dialogue on the sources and prospects of a truly global political thought. The recent development of critical hermeneutics, emphasizing a reflexive account of cultural and social origins of values by building on the normative resources of interpretation, empathy and dialogue, and similar developments and aspirations coming from within comparative philosophy, will provide the substance of the project investigations. Given that such an undertaking must be reflexively situated in the multiplicity of civilizational and cultural origins, so as to adequately represent today’s global diversity of traditions, the issue arises how to critically assess both their methodological promise as well as the normative substance for their stated goal to reground global political philosophy and the respective much-needed dialogic politics. The project undertakes this assessment and exploration in a cross-cultural yet systematically focused manner. The investigations will engage the shared prospects of a global ethic, and a related dialogic politics based on a multi-polar and multi-origin of moral, religious, and civilizational perspectives. The research partner team based in Taiwan will place particular emphasis on Taiwan’s traditions of liberalism and New Confucianism, especially in how they differ from the perspectives of the Chinese academic community on key issues such as fundamental human rights, universal moral norms, foreign relations, economic aid, global justice, the international community, just war, and related topics. The Taiwanese partners seek to integrate Chinese and Western philosophies, demonstrate a strong interest in Western thought, and maintain a more open attitude toward modern values such as individuality, freedom, and democracy. |
The crisis of symbolic structures in the context of Central Europe
Kríza symbolických štruktúr v kontexte strednej Európy
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2025 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Program: | Medziakademická dohoda (MAD) |
| Project leader: | doc. Mgr. Vydrová Jaroslava PhD. |
National Projects
-
Antropocén ako Meta-Udalosť: Ontológia Zlomu
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2027 |
| Program: | Iné projekty |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Podušelová Katarína PhD. |
Beyond Reaction: Reassessing Hegel's View of Revolt
Beyond Reaction: Reassessing Hegel's View of Revolt
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2027 |
| Program: | Iné projekty |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Kulcsár Dominik PhD. |
Phenomenological Reflection of Contemporary Art in the Situation of Late Modernity
Fenomenologická reflexia súčasného umenia v situácii neskorej modernity
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | 2/0047/26 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Mgr. Vydrová Jaroslava PhD. |
| Annotation: | The subject matter of the project is contemporary art, namely non-commercial, experimental, avant-garde art, which is theoretically, structurally and paradigmatically unanchored. It is analysed by art studies, sociology or history but avoids a unifying interpretation. The project hypothesis is that this art is an expression of the lived experience of late modernity, which entails alienation, atomization and technicization as well as contradictory experiences of escapism and the search for meaning. The project will be realized by philosophers based in phenomenology and working in specific fields of art: visual art, sculpture, film, music. This allows, on the one hand, the examination of the artwork itself, through which the essential structures of lived experience are manifested; for this phenomenology has the appropriate theoretical tools. On the other hand, it will be not just a general investigation but an analysis of specific art forms. The result will be philosophical reflection useable interdisciplinary. |
TECHNE - Philosophical and methodological challenges of intelligent technologies
Filozofické a metodologické výzvy inteligentných technológií
| Duration: | 1. 7. 2023 - 30. 6. 2027 |
| Evidence number: | APVV-22-0323 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | PhDr. Vacek Daniela PhD. |
| Annotation: | Intelligent technologies give rise to pressing philosophical and methodological challenges of theoretical importance and practical relevance. The present project explores such challenges in three areas: moral philosophy, legal philosophy, and methodology of sciences. Concerning moral philosophy, providers of intelligent technologies are only partially aware of the ethical issues concerning the technology they develop, and only partially understand and control how intelligent technologies arrive at their decisions. This is often perceived as a threat to the possibility of moral culpability for the negative impact of intelligent technologies on the world. Concerning legal philosophy (and law), it is still largely an open question how intelligent technologies will be, and should be, regulated ac ross different jurisdictions, and whether international law should step in. Finally, a methodological reflection of intelligent technologies and their normative problems is almost lacking. The project will set out to resolve these timely problems and consider notions that venture beyond single individuals and their backward-looking responsibility: collective culpability, vicarious liability, and forward-looking responsibility will be suggested as appropriate tools to overcome the above problems in moral and legal philosophy. The project will also methodologically assess the debate on intelligent technologies in moral and legal philosophy, and propose an exhaustive and exclusive classification of techno-responsibility gaps. |
| Project web page: | https://www.techne.sk |
Concepts of culture and nation in Slovak philosophical and political thought of the 19th and 20th centuries : initiatives, polemics, criticism
Koncepcie kultúry a národa v slovenskom filozofickom a politickom myslení 19. a 20. storočia : iniciatívy, polemiky, kritika
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | VEGA 2/0166/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Martinkovič Marcel PhD. |
| Annotation: | The aim of the project is to analyse and critically evaluate concepts of culture in Slovak philosophical and political thought of the 19th and 20th centuries, with an emphasis on contemporary philosophical debates and their impact on Slovak culture. The research emphasis will concentrate on the analysis of the formation of individual narratives of cultural identity, the relationship between nation and state and its philosophical justification. The project will focus on the characterization of the development of philosophical-political thought, which, in addressing issues of cultural, national and social progress, was framed by philosophical disputes based on the paradigm of immanence in social philosophy, culminating in the initiatives of reformist Marxism and the transcendental approaches of Christian personalism, blondism, intuitive realism as well as other philosophical trends. Within this ideological tension, the research will concentrate on selected polemics that contained philosophical justifications for selected conceptions of the institutionalization of Slovak culture. |
The Crisis of the Modern Subject: Existential, Dialogical and Phenomenological Solutions
Kríza moderného subjektu: Existenciálne, dialogické a fenomenologické riešenia
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2028 |
| Evidence number: | 2/0113/26 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Stewart Jon DrSc., PhD., Dr. habil phil. et |
| Annotation: | The project focuses on the crisis of the modern subject together with existential, dialogical, and phenomenological responses to it. In reaction to traditional societies, in which the needs of the individual were subordinated to those of the collective, modern intellectual movements arose that emphasized the subject’s autonomy, sovereignty, self-determination and power. However, the striving for emancipation and individual freedom also led to images of the modern subject that resulted in the subject's dominance and isolation. In modern individualism, relativism and idealism we can find images of the modern subject which fail to reflect the subject's deep interconnectedness with others. Our aim is to explore the structure and influence of these images and to evaluate the existential, dialogical and phenomenological initiatives that seek to correct the asymmetrical emphasis on subjectivity at the expense of relationality. |
NCRIO - Naturalized Cognitive Relationism and Imaginary Objects
Naturalizovaný kognitívny relacionizmus a imaginárne objekty
| Duration: | 1. 10. 2025 - 30. 9. 2030 |
| Evidence number: | IM-2024-113 |
| Program: | IMPULZ |
| Project leader: | Bonardi Paolo PhD |
| Annotation: | Salmon’s (Frege’s Puzzle, 1986) Millian Russellianism is a prominent theory in analytic philosophy of language, which offers a persuasive semantics for sentences, proper names and other linguistic expressions. At a non-semantic level, it employs modes of presentation to solve puzzling cases where intuitively rational subjects believe contradictory Russellian propositions, and to address other problematic issues. Taking cues from Fine (Semantic Relationism, 2007) and Davidson (Problems of Rationality, 2004), in my PhD thesis and recent articles I have developed a version of Millian Russellianism called cognitive relationism. This view rejects modes of presentation mainly due to their lack of clear identity conditions, and replaces them with: a non-semantic, viz. merely cognitive, and subjective relation of coordination; token thoughts, which have a granularity comparable to that of Russellian-proposition occurrences and which are individuated using a method based on Russellian propositions and cognitive coordination; token-attitude states more generally (token beliefs, token desires, token hopes, etc.), constituted by token thoughts plus attitudinal modes; and subsystems of belief, such that if a subject s believes (the Russellian proposition) p and believes not-p without believing p¬-p, then s’s token beliefs that p and that not-p are stored in distinct subsystems. My research aims to naturalize cognitive relationism by grounding it in six philosophically basic yet neuroscientifically analyzable notions: taking as, simulation, detecting, basic attitudinal modes, having in mind and predicating. My IMPULZ project focuses particularly on Kaplan’s (“An Idea of Donnellan”, 2012) causal-Russellian conception of having in mind, and seeks to provide an account of imaginary objects – viz. a naturalistic version of Salmon’s (“Nonexistence”, 1998) creationism, as opposed to Priest’s (Towards Non-Being, 2016) neo-Meinongianism – in which having in mind plays a central role. In fact, drawing from Soames’ (Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning, 2015) cognitive approach to propositions according to which a proposition p is the type act or state of entertaining or having in mind p, I hypothesize that any imaginary object o is a mental type, viz. the type state of having in mind o; for example, Holmes (the entity created by Conan Doyle) is the type state of having in mind Holmes. I argue that the apparent circularity of this proposal disappears once having in mind is analyzed neuroscientifically in light of recent discoveries by R.Q. Quiroga (“Concept Cells”, 2012). |
| Project web page: | https://impulz.sav.sk/sites/default/files/Bonardi_EN.pdf |
-
Princíp explózie ako základný filozofický princíp
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2029 |
| Evidence number: | 2/0055/26 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | Mgr. Vacek Martin PhD. |
| Annotation: | Traditionally, philosophical systems containing contradictions are dismissed as absurd, based on the classical Principle of Explosion (PE), which holds that from a contradiction, any proposition can be inferred. This result is referred to as explosion. This project introduces a revised formulation, the Principle of Explosion* (PE*), which reframes explosion not as purely destructive but as philosophically productive. Rather than rejecting explosions outright (as in paraconsistent logic), this approach takes contradictions seriously while preserving the principle’s structural force. The project’s central aim is to explore the positive, hyperintensional, dual role of the PE* as both a descriptive tool (revealing structural implications of contradiction) and a prescriptive one (guiding standards for coherence in theory building). The project formulates several hypotheses which challenge the traditional view of explosion as merely a point of failure. Instead, it stresses it positive theoretical role. |
The Social Nature of Normativity as a Starting Point for Explaining the Relationship between Individual and Collective Autonomy
Sociálna povaha normativity ako východisko vysvetlenia vzťahu individuálnej a kolektívnej autonómie
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2027 |
| Evidence number: | 2/0118/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | prof. Dr. phil. Muránsky Martin PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project focuses on the principles of individual and collective self-determination based on their common postulate - the social nature of normativity. Reflecting on the Socratic question of how to live (well), the project thematises alternatives to a reductionist approach , in which normativity is understood only as the application of 'ready-made' norms, and norms are understood as its constraining prescriptions. The main hypothesis of the project is: A non-reductive conception of norms operates on the basis of the internalized requirement of their consistent justifiability for its creators and receivers , and not independently of it. Using the dynamics of formally explicit rules and informally implicit norms, the project also reflects on the critical limits of such a conception. In doing so, it draws on the conflictuality of the principles of individual and collective self-determination in the context of human rights, given in tension of deontological and utilitarian aproach to normativity. |
TAUT - Symbolic Structures in the Tension between Authenticity and Tradition
Symbolické štruktúry v napätí medzi autenticitou a tradíciou
| Duration: | 1. 9. 2025 - 31. 8. 2029 |
| Evidence number: | APVV-24-0145 |
| Program: | APVV |
| Project leader: | doc. Stewart Jon DrSc., PhD., Dr. habil phil. et |
The Plato – and Platonism – of Jan Patočka
The Plato – and Platonism – of Jan Patočka
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2026 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | APD0214 |
| Program: | PostdokGrant |
| Project leader: | Majerník Jozef Ph.D. |
Tasks of Political Philosophy in the Context of the Anthropocene II
Úlohy politickej filozofie v kontexte antropocénu II
| Duration: | 1. 1. 2024 - 31. 12. 2026 |
| Evidence number: | 2/0110/24 |
| Program: | VEGA |
| Project leader: | doc. Mgr. Sťahel Richard PhD. |
| Annotation: | The project aims to explore the relevance of the Anthropocene concept for political and environmental philosophy. It is a continuation of the VEGA 2/0072/21 project, the aim of which was to develop a methodology for the political and economic rendering of the current and expected state of Earth System, following the hypothesis that a political philosophy adequate to the Anthropocene will have to be at the same time an environmental philosophy. The philosophical exploration of this hypothesis has been documented in the main output of the project "Introduction to Environmental Political Philosophy" (Prague: Malvern 2023, in press). Following this, it is necessary to move from an elementary definition to the elaboration of a coherent theory of environmental political philosophy (EPP). The aim of the project is therefore to explore questions of methodology, cultural conditioning, critique and metacritique of EPP and its possible influences of normative practical philosophy in the Anthropocene epoch. |
Projects total: 17