Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in (...) the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state. (shrink)

This exploratory study aims at integrating the psychometric approach to studying creativity with an eye-tracking methodology and thinking-aloud protocols to potentially untangle the nuances of the creative process. Wearing eye-tracking glasses, one hundred adults solved a drawing creativity test – The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) – and provided spontaneous comments during this process. Indices of visual activity collected during the eye-tracking phase explained a substantial amount of variance in psychometric scores obtained in the test. More importantly, however, clear (...) signs of methodological synergy were observed when all three sources (psychometrics, eye-tracking, and coded thinking-aloud statements) were integrated. The findings illustrate benefits of using a blended methodology for a more insightful analysis of creative processes, including creative learning and creative problem-solving. (shrink)

Pythagorean Women Philosophers argues for a rewriting of Greek philosophical history so as to include female intellectuals. Dutsch presents testimonies regarding the role of women in the Pythagorean school as demonstrating their active contribution to the philosophical tradition.

Looking at a number of memorials, memory sites and artworks relating to the Holocaust the book uses this idea of synaesthetic perception to explore trauma, memory and the production of art in relation to painful memories.

The study was designed to examine whether trait emotional intelligence would moderate the impact of negative emotions at work on job burnout. A total of 188 female nurses participated in this study and completed measures of trait affectivity, emotional intelligence, anger and sadness at work [over five consecutive days, nurses rated the extent to which they experienced anger-related emotions (i.e., irritation, embitterment and anger) and sadness-related emotions (i.e., depression, disappointment and sadness)], and burnout. The results revealed significant and positive relationships (...) between both types of negative emotions and burnout above and beyond demographics and the nurses’ trait affectivity. Importantly, the study demonstrated that trait emotional intelligence buffers the effects of negative emotions on burnout. Specifically, anger- and sadness-related emotions predicted greater burnout among nurses with low trait emotional intelligence but not among nurses with high trait emotional intelligence. These results suggest that emotional intelligence training could be implemented to prevent the adverse effect of negative emotions felt at work on job burnout. (shrink)

Author: Angutek Dorota Title: ON THE ROLE OF JERZY KMITA’S SEMIOTIC CONCEPTS IN DESCRIPTION OF NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION (O wykorzystaniu pojęć semiotycznych Jerzego Kmity w opisie komunikowania niewerbalnego) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.12, number: 2011/1, pages: 329-346 Keywords: SEMIOTICS, SIGN, NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION, HAPTIC COMMUNICATION, CULTURE, CONVENTION Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The author discusses various approaches to nonverbal communication and tries to provide a general descriptive account of the problem in (...) order to confront it with Jerzy Kmita’s theory of culture, signs, and symbolic communication. On the base of semiotic conception of Kmita, the author sketches theoretical background which opens the possibility of conventional interpretation of nonverbal communicates and presupposes their social and cultural relativization. (shrink)

The concept of the responsibility to protect has generated considerable controversy since its formulation in the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereig...

"Alternative Selves" and Authority in the Fiction of Jane Urquhart The article engages with "alternative selves," a concept found in The Stone Carvers by a Canadian writer, Jane Urquhart. Her fiction is first seen in the context of selected texts by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro, who explore the clash between female characters' conventional roles and their "secret" selves. My analysis was inspired by Pamela Sue Anderson's A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, which stresses the need for "reinventing (...) ourselves as other" in the face of biased beliefs and dominant epistemology. In particular, my article refers to Anderson's concern with Kant's imaginary from The Critique of Pure Reason, where "the territory of pure understanding" is projected on the island, while desire, chaos and death are identified with the sea. Seen through the prism of a feminist reading of the philosophical imaginary, the sea becomes the female beyond. Urquhart's three novels: Away, The Stone Carvers and A Map of Glass dissolve the opposition between Kantian island and water, by showing how reason is invaded by desire and death, and how the female protagonist embodies the elements that have been repressed. Urquhart's fiction, which is "landscape driven," provides the image of a dynamic relationship between the qualities that form a static binary opposition in Kantian discourse. Mary in Away, Klara in The Stone Carvers and Sylvia in A Map of Glass all subvert the dominant epistemology by following their desire, which becomes "a positive energy" and not "a deviation from a good rational norm," to refer to another concept by Anderson. Urquhart's Mary, Klara and Sylvia have to contend with power vested in collective beliefs and stereotypical construction of femininity. By venturing into the liminal zone beyond the territory of "pure understanding," the three protagonists regain their voices and discover their authority. The article ends with the analysis of a Homeric intertext in A Map of Glass, where Sylvia identifies with Odysseus "lashed to mast" so that he would not respond to the call of the siren song. Reading Homer's passage on the siren song, one realizes that the use of the Kantian imaginary turns Ithaca into the island of truth, and the sea into the stormy beyond, identified with desire, death and femaleness. While the Odyssey suppresses the dangerous message of the siren song, Urquhart's fiction rewrites it and reclaims it as positive inspiration for the female protagonist. (shrink)

Dilemma one, Between the theoretical concepts and authorial intention -- Dilemma two, Good manners and eristic -- Dilemma three, Between strangeness and familiarity -- Dilemma four, Between scholarly research and faith.

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest prezentacja recepcji myśli Kartezjusza w Hiszpanii. Praca dzieli się na trzy części. W części pierwszej przedstawiam wczesne hiszpańskie recepcje Kartezjusza, które miały miejsce na przełomie XVII i XVIII wieku i związane są z działalnością takich postaci jak: José Zaragoza, Vincente Tosca czy Bautista Corachán. W części drugiej prezentuje XIX- wieczne studia nad filozofią kartezjańską, które dotyczą recepcji Kartezjusza w hiszpańskim neokantyzmie i w Pokoleniu 1898. W części trzeciej natomiast ukazuję XX-wieczne recepcje filozofii francuskiego myśliciela, w obszarze (...) których szczególną rolę odegrały badania José Ortegi y Gasseta. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest prezentacja filozofii polityki Ernesto Laclau, w szczególności ujęcia możliwości istnienia wspólnoty politycznej w warunkach trwałego, konfliktowego pluralizmu.

The aim of this article is to focus on pragmatic teaching in a modern school. Getting knowledge should always be connected with improving certain skills (linguistic, analytic, critical etc.). Firstly, in this work the methods of teaching and forms of statement of pragmatic aims were shown. It is pointed out what kind of skills students acquire when particular methods of leaching are used (e.g. discussions, methods of plan, dramas, press conferences, or projects) and how teaching various forms of expressing ideas (...) influences gaining competence of a sender and a receiver of messages. It is also presented how the methods let the young people develop their minds, imagination, and critical attitudes. In other words, all this allows the students to use their knowledge functionally. Moreover, the article raises the importan issue of linguistic, literary and cultural education in the sense of pragmatic teaching. Learning about a language should predominantly provide the students with learning the language (M. Nagajowa). Literary education demands some analytic skills, and encouraging to participate in culture, improving the abilities of reception of various forms of art by creative activities aim at making the young people be aware of practical usage of their knowledge. The article also underlines reading comprehension skills – extremely important with a view to the new linal secondary-school exams (Matura 2002) coming soon, and it has, according to S. Bortnowski, some ‘utilitarian dimension’. To sum up, the modern school should educate pragmatists, who experiment, initiate and use. (shrink)

Zainteresowanie poznawcze autorki prezentowanego artykułu koncentruje się na określeniu funkcji czasów w tekstach typu polityczny komentarz prasowy. Punktem wyjścia do rozważań staje się charakterystyka referencyjna poszczególnych czasów, pozwalająca ustalić przyporządkowanie czasowe komentowanych treści i wyjaśnić użycie czasów w danych kontekstach. Polityczne komentarze prasowe charakteryzuje regularność występowania czasów. Dominacja czasu teraźniejszego w połączeniu z licznymi sygnałami przeszłości i przyszłości wynika z realizacji schematu komentarza prasowego. W strukturze tekstu komentarza prasowego wyraźnie można oddzielić fragmenty, które spełniają funkcję tematyzującą, od tych, w których (...) następuje problematyzowanie zdarzeń. Temu podziałowi tekstu odpowiada rozmieszczenie czasów, które według Weinricha konstruują w tekście „świat opowiedziany” i „omówiony”. W tym sensie czasy stają się wykładnikami funkcji tekstu. (shrink)

This study contributes to the constantly accumulating evidence on the effects of customer incivility (CI) on service employee exhaustion. Previous research has demonstrated that surface acting (SA) acts as a mediating variable in the relationship between CI and exhaustion. This study extended prior findings in two ways. The results of Study 1 (315 retail sales employees, 62.2% female) demonstrated that SA mediates the positive relationship between CI and exhaustion while controlling for employees’ trait positive and negative affectivity (NA). The results (...) of Study 2 (292 customer service representatives, 51% female) supported a moderated mediation model demonstrating that trait emotional intelligence (EI) buffers the direct and indirect (through SA) effects of CI on exhaustion. Specifically, it was found that employees exposed to many uncivil customer behaviors but high in trait EI reported using less SA and, thus, experienced fewer exhaustion symptoms than their low in trait EI counterparts. These results highlight EI as an important personal resource that mitigates the adverse effects of CI on service employees’ exhaustion, and suggest that organizations should consider implementing EI training programmes for their frontline service employees. (shrink)

Rethinks the existing definitions of aesthetics and ethics and the relations between them.

One of the most influential views in privacy scholarship is that privacy protects individual autonomy. On the early liberal view, the exercise of autonomy requires detachment from social and political life and privacy facilitates it. This view of privacy still informs current legal and political practice. As this view of privacy presupposes a tension between privacy and society, it is responsible for the underrating of privacy in legal and political practice. Over the last decades, liberal reflection on autonomy has shifted (...) from the early liberal understanding of autonomy as calling for detachment from social life to the idea of autonomy as socially embedded. This development has brought about a corresponding adjustment in the liberal concept of privacy: privacy has come to be seen as a social rather than merely an individual interest. The social turn in thinking about privacy has gone a long way to change the problematic image of privacy in legal and political practice. It has not gone far enough, however, to draw conclusions regarding the political relevance of privacy. I argue that we should understand autonomy as politically embedded. Revised along these lines, privacy has a political value: when we claim privacy, we do not make a claim to withdraw from political life, but rather make a claim to protect certain forms of political engagement. (shrink)

Starting from the observation that the construction of vague reference in legal texts is intended by the legislator, we examine the intensifier adjective grave linked to linguistic vagueness. The aim is to define the meanings of grave and the role of the noun it qualifies, and to identify Polish equivalents in comparable and parallel legal texts. After mentioning studies on vagueness and vague reference, we analyse definitions that indicate two meanings: ‘importance’ and ‘consequence. The ‘cause-consequence’ relationship becomes central to the (...) study of the categories of intensifiable nouns and grave meanings. The Polish equivalents prove that it is polysemous and that the place of the N in the logical relation must be taken into account. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the presence of selected themes of John Dewey's _Art as Experience_ mainly in Polish humanistic thought. Our focus is on frameworks in which art-related experience is not only a distinct field of aesthetic research but is also a factor in understanding of art as a process modeled upon all other experiences. We outline philosophical, aesthetic, and educational contexts inspired by Dewey's multifaceted aesthetics, particularly in connection with contemporary considerations on democracy, the humanities, and creative practices. (...) We give special attention to Dewey's explorations of literature, which substantiate the importance of the imagination as a preparation for ethical action. (shrink)

The 7th of September 2013 was a significant day from a point of view of the public manifestation of the history of philosophy: the reconstructed monument of the eighteenth-century Jewish philosopher Salomon Maimon [Salomon ben Jehoshua] (1753–1800) was unveiled in Kożuchów (Lower Silesia, Poland). The unveiled memorial of Maimon is the only one worldwide.That event was significant on a number of dimensions:First, it commemorated the person that was influential in philosophy in general: Maimon was the representative of epistemological rationalism. Secondly, (...) it honoured a prominent representative of European philosophy. Thirdly, it memorialized an important representative of a German philosophical system: Maimon was in fact Kantian, Kant’s critic, and the representative of transcendental idealism.As such Maimon is the author of Essay on Transcendental Philosophy (London-New York 2010; in original: Versuch über die Transcendentalphilosophie. Mit einem Anhang über die symbolische Erkenntni .. (shrink)

Artykuł zawiera rozważania nad zróżnicowaniem tekstów eseistycznych dotyczących problematyki polskości, wynikającym z różnorodnej roli pamięci w poszczególnych koncepcjach narodowej tożsamości. Celem szkicu jest podjęcie refleksji nad relacją, w jaką wchodzą teksty, dające się określić jako tradycjonalistyczne oraz modernizacyjne, z orientacjami esencjalistycznymi i kontruktywistycznymi. Przedmiot analizy zawartej w tekście stanowią przede wszystkim dwie publikacje: Awangardowy konserwatyzm Pawła Rojka oraz Polska: wspólnota fantazmatyczna Agaty Bielik-Robson. Eseje te pozwalają się traktować jako reprezentatywne przykłady złożonych zależności ideowych występujących w obszarze refleksji nad polskością.

The study investigates the possibility of applying texture analysis (TA) for testing Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) therapies. The work is based on the Golden Retriever Muscular Dystrophy (GRMD) canine model, in which 3 phases of canine growth and/or dystrophy development are identified: the first phase (0–4 months of age), the second phase (from over 4 to 6 months), and the third phase (from over 6 months to death). Two differentiation problems are posed: (i) the first phase vs. the second phase (...) and (ii) the second phase vs. the third phase. Textural features are derived from T2-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images. In total, 37 features provided by 8 different TA methods (statistical, filter-based, and model-based) have been tested. The work focuses on finding such textural features that evolve along with the dog’s growth. These features are indicated by means of statistical analyses and eliminated from further investigation, as they may disturb the correct assessment of response to treatment in dystrophy. The relative importance of each remaining feature is then assessed with the use of the Monte Carlo (MC) procedure. Furthermore, feature selection based on the MC procedure is employed to find the optimal subset of age-independent features. Finally, three classifiers are used for evaluating different sets of textural features: Adaptive Boosting (AB), back-propagation Neural Network (NN), and nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVM). The best subsets of age-independent features ensure 80.0% and 78.5% of correctly identified phases of dystrophy progression, for the first (i) and second (ii) differentiation problem respectively. (shrink)

The article discusses the portrayal of Éowyn in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the light of the biblical tradition of the warrior woman. The author focuses on the scene in which Éowyn slays the Nazgûl Lord in the battle of the Pelennor Fields with the help of Meriadoc. This event is juxtaposed against the biblical descriptions of female warriors, in particular Jael and Judith. A detailed analysis of passages from the King James Bible and the Douay-Rheims Bible, with (...) which Tolkien was familiar, allows the reader to detect numerous affinities between his vocabulary and imagery, and their biblical antecedents. Filipczak contends that, by defending the body of the dying Théoden, Éowyn defends the whole kingdom; her action can be interpreted in the light of The King’s Two Bodies by Ernst Kantorowicz. Her threat to the Ringraith makes use of the verb that can be found in the descriptions of Jael and Judith in the Protestant and Catholic Bibles respectively. Furthermore, Éowyn’s unique position as a mortal woman who achieves the impossible and thus fulfills the prophecy paves the way for a comparison with the Virgin Mary, whose Magnificat contains elements of “a holy-war song” which were suppressed by traditional interpretations. Consequently, the portrayal of Éowyn blends the features of Jael, Judith and Mary with allusions to St. Joan of Arc. Moreover, her act of slaying the Ringraith’s fell beast reinterprets the story of St. George and the dragon. Filipczak argues that Éowyn’s uniqueness is additionally emphasized because she acts out Gandalf’s words from Minas Tirith and sends the Nazgûl Lord into nothingness. (shrink)

The article focuses on the eponymous protagonist of Isobel Gunn, a Canadian feminist historical novel by Audrey Thomas, published in 1999. Based on a real story, the novel fictionalizes the life of an Orcadian woman who made her transit from the Orkney Islands to the Canadian north in male disguise, and was only identified as a woman when she went into labour. The article juxtaposes the novel against its poetic antecedent The Ballad of Isabel Gunn, published by Stephen Scobie in (...) 1983. In the article Gunn’s fate as a unique transvestite m in the Canadian north is compared to the fate of famous transvestite saint Joan of Arc. Though removed from each another historically and geographically, both women are shown to have suffered similar consequences as a result of violating the biblical taboo on cross-dressing. Isobel’s sudden change of status from a young male colonizer to the defenseless colonized is seen in the context of managing the female resources by colonial authorities. At the same time, the fact that Isobel allows herself to be deprived of her son is analyzed in the light of insights on the maternal by Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. The absence of the mother and the ensuing condition of her offspring’s orphanhood are shown as a consequence of reducing the position of the mother to that of an imperial servant, the fruit of whose body can be freely used and abused by the male imperial authority. (shrink)

Looking at Holocaust testimonies, which in her view always involve some form of translation, the author seeks to develop an ethics of translation in the context of Levinas’ hyperbolic ethics of responsibility. Calling on Benjamin and Derrida to make explicit the precipitous task of the translator, she argues that the translator faces an ethical call or assignation that resembles the fundamental structure of Levinasian subjectivity. The author relates the paradoxes of translation in Holocaust testimony to Levinas’ silence on the problem (...) of translation—puzzling if one considers Levinas’ focus on the ethical essence of language, his multilingualism, and the fact that he wrote his texts in a second language. She proposes that the trace of the philosopher’s displacement from his linguistic community can be discerned in his exilic conception of ethical subjectivity and in the testimonial impetus that animates his work. Thus, although Levinas’ Saying is posited as a translinguistic horizon that transcends the boundaries of a particular national language, it carries the remainder of the disavowed loss of the mother tongue. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to verify the importance of reinforcing a sex stereotype onparticipants’ identification with this role. The results were analysed as a function of both biological sex and psychological gender. In the study the Psychological Gender Inventory was used, as well as a scale measuring Agency and Communion, a scale measuring Unmitigated Agency and Unmitigated Communion, lists of sentences containing stereotypes of the male sex and the female sex, and sentences that were neutral with regard to (...) sex. The results showed that feminine women ascribed more female characteristics to themselves regardless of whether the role that was associated with their biological sex was reinforced or not. Men showing characteristics of both sexes ascribed a similar level of unmitigated communion and agency to themselves irrespective of whether the sex stereotype was reinforced or not. (shrink)

When does eating become art? Can a cook be an artist? This book answers these questions by exploring the position of taste in contemporary culture and the manners in which taste meanders its way into the realm of art.

Artykuł zajmuje się problemem struktury i specyfiki twierdzeń dyscyplin praktycznych wyodrębnionych obok teoretycznych w naukach empirycznych. Wymieniony problem, jak i kwestia dychotomicznego podziału nauk empirycznych, jest ciągle powodem licznych kontrowersji. Aktualnie rozpowszechniona jest, różna od pozytywistycznej, koncepcja prawa empirycznego jako zdania ściśle ogólnego, gwarantującego prawdziwość odpowiednich warunkowych zdań kontrfaktycznych. W poglądach metodologów i badaczy, uprawiających refleksję metodologiczną, zarysowały się dwa główne stanowiska o dyrektywalnej i niedyrektywelnej - opisowej strukturze twierdzeń nauk praktycznych. W ramach pierwszego stanowiska decydujący wpływ na poglądy wielu (...) metodologów wywarły koncepcje T. Kotarbińskiego i A. Podgóreckiego. W obu przypadkach kwestią wielce problematyczną jest wartość logiczna tak podejmowanych twierdzeń, analiza przykładów wykazuje, że nie są one zdaniami w sensie logicznym. Pozostałe propozycje w ramach dyrektywalnej koncepcji twierdzeń posiadają wymienione i inne niedopatrzenia natury metodologicznej. Zwrot w poglądach dotyczących twierdzeń nauk praktycznych datuje się od stwierdzenia H. Stonerta, iż nauki empiryczna nie różnią się pod względem twierdzeń. Stanowisko to nie zyskało aprobaty, ale skierowało poszukiwania uzasadnienia wyróżniania nauk praktycznych na płaszczyznę idealizacyjnej teorii nauki, również kontrowersyjnej. Zwolennicy tej koncepcji stoją na stanowisku niedyrektywalnej postaci twierdzeń i przyjmują, iż są to twierdzenia idealizacyjne, spełnione w dziedzinie typów idealnych bądź faktualno-idealizacyjne. Twierdzenia idealizacyjne są wg L. Nowaka w naukach praktycznych twierdzeniami optymalizacyjnymi, podającymi warunki realizacji ideałów i wzorów. Analiza przykładów twierdzeń optymalizacyjnych w pedagogice przeprowadzona w artykule wykazała, iż twierdzenia te charakteryzują się podrzędnością instrumentalną i aksjologlozną. Wgląd w czynności badawcze prowadzone w ramach nauk praktycznych pozwolił na ustalenie etapów poprzedzających formułowanie twierdzeń optymalizacyjnych, będących podstawą projektowania modeli realnych, a tychże modelach twierdzenia optymalizacyjne dotyczą kolejnych rozwiązań postawionego problemu optymalizacji, czyli realizowania przyjętego kryterium efektywności, równoznacznego np. z kryterium jakości w naukach technicznych. Twierdzenia optymalizacyjne są elementami teorii optymalizacyjnej, określają zależność i między wartością postulowaną w kryterium efektywności a czynnikami, od których zależy jej realizacja. Przedstawione rozważania wskazują na fakt, że metodologia nauk praktycznych jest dziedziną aktualnie rozwijającą się. Należy przypuszczać, iż wyniki jej badań znajdą zastosowanie w doskonaleniu procedury badawczej i budowanych teorii w poszczególnych naukach praktycznych. (shrink)