This book seeks to read the political thought of classic thinkers of the liberal tradition in the context of their metaphysical and theological writings. Sokolowski demonstrates that the political measures offered by political theorists to remedy the state of unrest and instability are intrinsically connected to their metaphysical conception of order, the self, and the interaction between the two.

Artykuł zawiera rozważania na temat międzynarodowych czynników wpływających na kształt negocjacji umowy handlowej Transatlantyckiego Partnerstwa w Dziedzinie Handlu i Inwestycji (TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) pomiędzy USA a UE. Na początku zostanie omówiona kwestia wzrostu potęgi gospodarczej Stanów Zjednoczonych po II wojnie światowej oraz Unii Europejskiej po jej powstaniu w latach 90. XX wieku. Omówione zostaną poszczególne elementy TTIP, wokół których odbywały się poszczególne rundy negocjacyjne. Są one bardzo ambitne oraz mają na celu związać gospodarczo obszar po obydwu (...) stronach Atlantyku. Najistotniejszym z nich jest wskazanie specyfiki handlowej partnerów transatlantyckich i wyraźne ukazanie różnic w prawodawstwie amerykańskim oraz unijnym w tym zakresie. Przedstawienie immunitetu państwa ma służyć opisaniu trudności, na jakie były narażone poszczególne państwa członkowskie Unii Europejskiej w kontekście parafowania umowy. Przysługuje on państwu jako podmiotowi prawa międzynarodowego, będąc atrybutem jego suwerenności oraz niezależności. Nie podlega on ograniczeniu przez inne państwo, a ewentualne ograniczenie immunitetu lub rezygnacja z niego może się odbyć wyłącznie za zgodą państwa, którego ta sytuacja dotyczy. Ostatnią z omawianych kwestii jest przedstawienie poszczególnych grup lobbingowych, które regularnie oddziaływały na Komisję Europejską prowadzącą negocjacje ze stroną amerykańską. Największe i najbardziej liczące się korporacje międzynarodowe oraz przedsiębiorstwa mają swoją reprezentację w liczących się grupach lobbingowych. Ich nacisk na organy reprezentujące zarówno Stany Zjednoczone, jak i Unię Europejską jest bardzo duży, stąd można wysnuć wniosek, że w negocjacjach dotyczących Partnerstwa Transatlantyckiego interes prywatny góruje nad reprezentantami interesu publicznego. W aspekcie międzynarodowym takie ustalenia mogą wzmocnić pozycję USA i UE w znacznym stopniu, ale wiąże się to z zagrożeniami dla konsumentów. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest zagadnienie medialnego wizerunku kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego (1901–1981) stworzonego na potrzeby kultury popularnej w trzech filmach fabularnych: _Prymas. Trzy lata z tysiąca _Teresy Kotlarczyk, _Wyszyński – zemsta czy przebaczenie _Tadeusza Syki oraz _Prorok _Michała Kondrata. Filmy, z uwagi na fakt pokazywania osoby powołanej do stanu duchownego, kapłana Kościoła katolickiego poświęcającego się działalności religijnej, spełniają kryteria kina o tematyce religijnej. Podjętym zagadnieniem badawczym stało się ustalenie, czy filmowe produkcje o kardynale Wyszyńskim są filmowymi hagiografiami beatyfikowanego Prymasa Tysiąclecia, konfesyjnym kinem (...) religijnym czy też jedynie nawiązują do jego biografii. (shrink)

Presents a guide to the basics of quantum mechanics and measurement.

Innovation is necessary to deal with challenges that climate change brings for agriculture, such as droughts, floods, pests and pathogens that enter new climatic regions, and challenges relating to the labour force. There is a dominant narrative that science and technology are the locus of innovation, and that the solutions developed can change systems. Indeed, history shows how the Green Revolution started a massive change in practices worldwide and gave science and technology the main role. Innovation, however, also happens outside (...) universities or industry research. Particularly in agriculture, it happens in the field through farmers’ experimentation. This opens up the idea of who is an innovator, and it is crucial to tackling climate challenges to agriculture. In this paper, we investigate the role of curiosity as a virtue of innovators. Instead of looking at systems of innovation, or at innovations themselves, we add to the growing scholarship on virtues of innovators. Among those virtues, curiosity is prominent. We argue that different contexts require different forms of the innovator virtues, and we conceptually investigate how such virtues ought to be cultivated in order to contribute to solving 21st century challenges for agriculture. (shrink)

Inappropriate authorship is a common problem in biomedical research and may be becoming one in bioethics, due to the increase in multiple authorship. This paper investigates the authorship policies of bioethics journals to determine whether they provide adequate guidance for researchers who submit articles for publication, which can help deter inappropriate authorship. It was found that 63.3% of bioethics journals provide no guidance on authorship; 36.7% provide guidance on which contributions merit authorship, 23.3% provide guidance on which contributions do not (...) merit authorship, 23.3% require authors to take responsibility for their contributions or for the article as a whole, 20% provide guidance on which contributions merit an acknowledgement but not authorship, 6.7% require authors to describe their contributions, and only 3.3% distinguish between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. To provide authors with effective guidance and promote integrity in bioethics research, bioethics journals should adopt authorship policies that address several important topics, such as the qualifications for authorship, describing authorship contributions, taking responsibility for the research and the difference between authorship in empirical and conceptual research. (shrink)

Teaching is not testimony. Although both convey information, they have different uptake requirements. Testimony aims to impart information and typically succeeds if the recipient believes that informationon account of having been told by a reliable informant. Teaching aims to equip learners to go beyond the information given—to leverage that information to broaden, deepen, and critique their current understanding of a topic. Teaching fails if the recipients believe the information only because it is what they have been told.

Cognitive advancement is not always a matter of acquiring new information. It often consists in reconfiguration--in reorganizing a domain so that hitherto overlooked or underemphasized features, patterns, opportunities, and resources come to light. Several modes of reconfiguration prominent in the arts--metaphor, fiction, exemplification, and perspective--play important roles in science as well. They do not perform the same roles as literal, descriptive, perspectiveless scientific truths. But to understand how science advances understanding, we need to appreciate the ineliminable cognitive contributions of non-literal, (...) non-descriptive symbols. (shrink)

Here we develop a view of language as a form of material engagement, one that foregrounds its embodied and ecological character. Achieving such a view, however, requires disabusing ourselves of certain received and deeply entrenched notions. We present a thought experiment meant to illuminate the materiality of language, as a technological activity on par with the construction and manipulation of artifacts. We explore its implications, justifying the comparison with actual languages while emphasizing revealing differences. Ultimately, we hope to expose the (...) embodied and enactive nature of language, offering a view of language as continuous with our engagement with the environment, as opposed to a picture of language as an essentially symbolic system or code. (shrink)

Arab countries; intellectual life; congresses.

"Williams on Truthfulness" is a review of Bernard Williams's Truth and Truthfulness. It argues that Williams explicates truthfulness as a thick concept that depends on but diverges from a mere propensity to utter truths. Besides conveying an understanding of the complex virtue of truthfulness, it thus shows why thick concepts are not simply descriptive concepts overlaid with expressive glosses.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 295 [Access article in PDF] Agency, Narrative, and Self:A Philosophical Case Conference John Z. Sadler and K. W. M. Fulford This issue of PPP features our second "philosophical case conference," which addresses three important and interrelated concepts in the philosophy of psychiatry. Our first philosophical case conference (Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology Volume 5, Number 2, 1998) featured detailed case material concerning the manifold (...) issues involved in psychiatric euthanasia. For this issue, guest edited by J. Melvin Woody, the rich cases supplied by Lloyd Wells provide the foundation for a discussion of narrative accounts of the self and what it means to be an agent.Philosophical case conferences are an occasional feature of PPP, and develop topics to satisfy one or more criteria: to provide discussions that are important to clinical practice or research, to embed current or perennial philosophical debates in the nitty gritty of clinical practice and personal experience, and/or to provide a clinical testing ground for new conceptual developments relevant to the philosophy of psychiatry.The format for this issue involves four feature articles, the first by Wells, presenting detailed case material of several patients, followed by discussions (by Kennett & Matthews, Phillips, and Woody) inspired by, or addressing explicitly, the philosophical questions implied in such cases. Following these four feature articles, a panel of commentators (Glas, Hardcastle, Radden, Thornton, Weiner, Woodbridge) respond to the four feature articles as they wish, providing the variations on the agency, narrative, and self themes. We think you will find this issue of PPP to be a fine example of what the philosophy of psychiatry can do, and we give our abundant thanks to Mel Woody for putting this issue together.... (shrink)

Burge follows Descartes in claiming that the category of conceptually self-verifying judgments includes (but is not restricted to) judgments that give rise to sincere assertions of sentences of the form, 'I am thinking that p'. In this paper I argue that Burge’s Cartesian insight is hard to reconcile with Fregean accounts of the content of thought. Burge's intuitively compelling claim that cogito judgments are conceptually self-verifying poses a real challenge to neo-Fregean theories of content.

This article attempts to assess Mario Bunge’s important but widely neglected criticisms of dialectics. It begins by providing a contextualized interpretation of Friedrich Engels’s metaphysics of the dialectics of nature before embarking on a detailed discussion of Leon Trotsky’s and contemporary “dialectical” scientists’ views on materialist dialectics. It argues that while some of Bunge’s criticisms are eminently sensible, the principles underlying the works of dialectical scientists are compatible with Bunge’s emergentist and systemic approach and can shed light on such issues (...) as the levels of organization, the diachronic and synchronic aspects of emergence, and the individualism-holism-systemism trilemma. This article also submits that dialectics is best interpreted as a guideline for a philosophy of change instead of a magical wand that liberates the investigator from study of facts. Understood as something that serves heuristic purposes, dialectics can be sensibly utilized by scientists to shore up or refine their methodological principles and thereby to facilitate empirical research. (shrink)

Injury to the central or peripheral nervous system is often associated with persistent pain. After ischemic injury to the spinal cord, rats develop severe mechanical allodynia-like symptoms, expressed as a pain-like response to innocuous stimuli. In its short-lasting phase the allodynia can be relieved with the [gamma]-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-B receptor agonist baclofen, which also reverses the hyperexcitability of dorsal horn interneurons to mechanical stimuli. Furthermore, there is a reduction in GABA immunoreactivity in the dorsal horn of allodynic rats. Clinical neuropathic (...) pain of peripheral and central origin often cannot be relieved by opiates at doses that do not cause side effects. The loss of sensitivity to opiates may be associated with the up-regulation of endogenous antiopioid substances, such as the neuropeptide cholecystokinin (CCK). CCK and its receptor (CCK-R) protein is normally not detectable in rat dorsal root ganglion cells. After peripheral nerve section, both CCK and CCK-R are up-regulated in the dorsal root ganglia. Furthermore, CI 988, an antagonist of the CCK-B receptor, chronically coadministered with morphine, reduces autotomy, a behavior that may be a sign of neuropathic pain following peripheral nerve section. Thus, opiate insensitivity may be due to the release of CCK from injured primary afferents. Similarly, in the chronic phase of the spinal ischemic model of central pain, the allodynia-like symptom is not relieved by systemic morphine, but is significantly reversed by the CCK-B antagonist. Consequently, up-regulation of CCK and CCK-R in the CNS may also underlie opiate drug insensitivity following CNS injury. Thus, dysfunction of central inhibition involving GABA and endogenous opioids may be a factor underlying the development of sensory abnormalities and/or pain following injury to neural tissue. (shrink)

Microbial genome sequencing has entered a new phase, where DNA sequence information is gathered from entire microbial communities (metagenomics or environmental genomics) rather than from individual microorganisms. By providing access to the genetic material of vast numbers of organisms, most of which are organisms that have never been isolated or cultivated, a new level of insight is being gained into the diversity and extent of the microbial processes that are presently occuring in environmental communities. By extending metagenomic‐based approaches to the (...) study of very complex and methodologically recalcitrant soil environments, a recent study has found that ammonia‐oxidizing archaea are more abundant in many soils than bacteria.1 These findings not only highlight the undoubtedly critical yet unknown roles that archaea play in global nutrient cycles but illustrate the importance of genomic studies for informing us about the functional capacity of life on Earth. BioEssays 29: 11–14, 2007. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

There is a well-known remark in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations which even some philosophers sympathetic to his work have found very hard to accept. It reads:Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language;it can in the end only describe it.For it cannot give it any foundation either.It leaves everything as it is. Surely, it is said, that is carrying matters too far. Wittgenstein's hyperbole should be excused as a harmless stylistic flourish.

This article examines interactivity using the concept of dialogic relationships introduced by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin and the concept of transtextuality, proposed by French literary theorist Gérard Genette. These concepts help to reveal two parallel strata of interactivity: the stratum of interactivity between the viewer and the message and the stratum of interactivity that exists inside the message and its surrounding. It concludes that interactivity can be conceived as a relation and that the message is a co-creation. The study contributes (...) to the theory of interactivity, which challenges the existing – and rather limited – advertising theories and offers an alternative Bakhtinian perspective on the phenomenon of interactivity. (shrink)

At the current level of economic development, the digital transformation of society is an important factor in advancing any social structure. The purpose of the present study was to explore the transformation of a traditional society into a digital one, with a focus on ethical and environmental aspects. The study draws on a variety of information analysis methods to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of digitalization, including the environmental aspect. Our research revealed that in Russia, the only highly digitalized (...) sectors were information technology and finance. Digitalization is strikingly different in the European countries, where only transport and building industries slowly implemented digital technologies into their business processes. We also examined digitalization levels in 7 Moscow universities. The universities managed to improve their digitalization scores with the help of recommendations developed for online learning, such as selection of quality software, having qualified teaching staff, constant monitoring, and evaluation of knowledge. The findings can be used in economic, social, and environmental spheres since they highlight the ambiguous effects of digitalization using practical examples. (shrink)