Tadeusz Kotarbinski is one of towering figures in contemporary Polish philosophy. He was a great thinker, a great teacher, a great organizer of philosophical and scientific life, and, last but not least, a great moral authority. He died at the age of 96 on October 3, 1981. Kotarbinski was active in almost all branches of philosophy. He made many significant contributions to logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology, history of philosophy, and ethics. He created a new field, namely praxiology. Thus, using an (...) ancient distinction, he contributed to theoretical as well as practical philoso~hy. Kotarbinski regarded praxiology as his major philosophical "child". Doubtless, praxiology belongs to practical philosophy. This collection, howewer, is mainly devoted to Kotarbinski' s theoretical philosophy. Reism - Kotarbinski' s fundamental idea of ontology and semantics - is the central topic of most papers included here; even Pszczolowski' s essay on praxiology considers its ontological basis.,Only two papers, namely that of Zarnecka-Bialy and that of Wolenski, are not linked with reism. However, both fall under the general label "Kotarbinski: logic, semantics and ontology". The collection partly consists of earlier published papers. (shrink)

Ewa Ziarek fully articulates a feminist aesthetics, focusing on the struggle for freedom in women's literary and political modernism and the devastating impact of racist violence and sexism. She examines the contradiction between women's transformative literary and political practices and the oppressive realities of racist violence and sexism, and she situates these tensions within the entrenched opposition between revolt and melancholia in studies of modernity and within the friction between material injuries and experimental aesthetic forms. Ziarek's political and aesthetic investigations (...) concern the exclusion and destruction of women in politics and literary production and the transformation of this oppression into the inaugural possibilities of writing and action. Her study is one of the first to combine an in-depth engagement with philosophical aesthetics, especially the work of Theodor W. Adorno, with women's literary modernism, particularly the writing of Virginia Woolf and Nella Larsen, along with feminist theories on the politics of race and gender. By bringing seemingly apolitical, gender-neutral debates about modernism's experimental forms together with an analysis of violence and destroyed materialities, Ziarek challenges both the anti-aesthetic subordination of modern literature to its political uses and the appreciation of art's emancipatory potential at the expense of feminist and anti-racist political struggles. (shrink)

In the present thesis the characteristics of current consumer society are presented in the context of female-male relationships and any inter-human relationships. It has been shown that the ideology of consumption may have an impact on the changeability of female-male relationships, as well as on the stereotypical division of roles in a relationship. The importance of consumer ethics has here been emphasised. For this purpose, the model of erotic ethos, based on sexual aesthetics, has been discussed in this article. This (...) model is connected with the contemporary consumption model, in which one can compare material product consumption with relationship consumption. It seems that consumer ethics concerning relationships not only should consider current changes, but also, in the context of a relationship, bear in mind life ethos and sexual aesthetics. (shrink)

Tekst podejmuje temat kondycji i tożsamości etyki środowiskowej XXI wieku w oparciu o analizę wybranych narracji występujących w debacie na temat antropocenu. Czy zwrot w stronę antropocenu odmienia nasze dotychczasowe myślenie dotyczące troski o przyrodę? Artykuł pokazuje, że nauka o systemie Ziemi i ograniczeniach planetarnych umożliwia nam identyfikację zupełnie nowych problemów etycznych. Są to m.in. problem nieodwracalnych strat, utraty kontroli i sterowalności a także kluczowa kwestia irracjonalnej krótkowzroczności wpisanej w ludzkie horyzonty moralne. Tekst szuka odpowiedzi na dwa dodatkowe pytania: 1) (...) Czy troska o postprzyrodę okaże się wyłącznie zarządzaniem stratą? 2) Czy etyka postprzyrody jest antropocentryczna? (shrink)

This article shows that the question of “Historical Thinking and the Human” demands expanding the field of the philosophy of history. What I propose is to investigate the issue from two perspectives: firstly, by positioning it in the broader philosophical context, one that increasingly transcends the boundaries of the humanities to enter the realm of the life sciences; and secondly, by drawing on a wider range of analytical material than has usually been the case in classic works in the philosophy (...) of history. I will critically reflect upon history’s anthropocentric biases, highlighting the need to develop an alternative to history. My thinking is aligned, on the one hand, with notions of the agency of images that have emerged from art criticism and visual culture studies, and, on the other hand, with the idea of theriomorphism, which I explore in terms of new animism, new totemism and philosophical ethology. In my analysis of works by the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo, I argue that a future-oriented redefinition of the human should transcend the limited categories that have emerged within the framework of history understood as a Eurocentric approach to the past rooted in Greco-Judaic-Christian tradition. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 27 Heft: 4 Seiten: 479-491.

Kluczowy kontekst artykułu stanowi najnowsza wiedza dotycząca powagi planetarnego kryzysu środowiskowego i jego reperkusji społeczno-gospodarczych (kompromitacja kapitalizmu paliw kopalnych i nierówności). Na tym tle teoretycznym zostaną ze sobą krytycznie porównane trzy ujęcia. Chodzi o filozofię Herberta Marcusego, krytykę tzw. „tanich natur” i kapitałocenu Jasona W. Moore’a oraz o ekonomię ekologiczną wystudzania wzrostu. Wszystkie z nich to postkapitalistyczne eko-utopie budowane w obliczu troski o samo przetrwanie cywilizacji. Tekst poszukuje antycypacji myśli Moore’a i idei ekonomistów ekologicznych w refleksji Marcusego na temat ekologii. (...) Wskazane zostaną ważne podobieństwa, jak i wybrane różnice między wymienionymi wyżej koncepcjami. Artykuł rozpatruje przy tym dwa poziomy: diagnozy dotyczącej problemów rozwiniętego społeczeństwa przemysłowego oraz możliwej, systemowej oraz konstruktywnej korekty. Tekst przekonuje, że istnienie konkretnych ujęć ekonomii ekologicznej dewzrostu, dobrobytu i redystrybucji przeczy tezie Marcusego o tym, że kapitalizm całkowicie kolonizuje ludzką wyobraźnię. (shrink)

An article that reflects on the adaptation of a phenomenologically inspired approach within sociological epistemology. Using two sociological as examples perspectives – interpretivism and critical theory – we point at the normative assumptions common to both approaches. We suggest these are responsible for the impossibility of transgressing dichotomization and mediation – two features continuously reproduced within social sciences. With the use of phenomenologically inspired non-dichotomous epistemology we offer a way to work around these limitations. It is possible, we argue, thanks (...) to the application of the categories of intentionality and responsiveness, to ground sociology in a non-dichotomous, and hence expanded, paradigm. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 4 Seiten: 617-653.

Graduates of the management major at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg find employment in a variety of organizations. As future managers with employees from different professions, students expressed an interest in discussing ethics cases in the operations management class. The semester starts with students familiarizing themselves with various professional and corporate codes of ethics. Throughout the semester a number of short ethics’ cases in operations’ areas such as inventory management, scheduling, facility location, and product design are introduced to illustrate (...) ethical issues that a manager and his/her employees might face. Students prepare individual responses before the in-class discussions. The semester ends with a long group ethics case discussion and formal case presentations. In the end-of-semester survey, students responded very favorably to an ethics component in the operations management class. (shrink)

According to an intuition highly popular in Western world, beliefs, includ-ing religious beliefs, must be supported by sufficient evidence in order to be held in a rational (or justified) way (evidentialism). Plantinga for-mulates his own view about the rationality of religious beliefs, which he considers as opposite to the traditional view. The central thesis of his position is that religious beliefs are perfectly rational when believed in the basic way, that is without any evidence or argument and even with-out the (...) use of natural reason at all. According to Plantinga people could have acquired their religious beliefs via extraordinary cognitive faculty, which he calls, after Calvin, sensus divinitatis. In this paper I ask a ques-tion whether Plantinga successfully rejects traditional intuition about the need of natural reason for religious beliefs. For this purpose, I first refer to Plantinga’s understanding of the traditional concept of the rationality of religious beliefs. I then summarize Plantinga’s views on the third condi-tion of knowledge and his account of the rationality of religious beliefs. Next, I turn to the critical part of the article. I point out the inadequacy of Plantinga’s position. To do so I first analyze and criticize Plantinga’s argument for the view that possessing sufficient evidence for religious beliefs is not an epistemic duty. I argue that Plantinga rejects only one understanding of that requirement and this is not enough to reject the whole idea of evidentialism. Then, I criticize Plantinga’s position on the third condition of knowledge, which he calls warrant. To this end I recall Laurence BonJour’s argument against externalism, since my critique of Plantinga’s position is analogous to BonJour’s argument. If my critique is successful then it is not that religious belief could be held in rational way without the use of natural reason, because in this case subject would be epistemically irresponsible. (shrink)

This paper examines early syntactic development from a usage-based perspective, using transcripts of the spontaneous speech of two Englishspeaking children recorded at relatively dense intervals at ages 2;0 and 3;0. We focus primarily on the children’s question constructions, in an effort to determine (i) what kinds of units they initially extract from the input (their size and degree of specificity / abstractness); (ii) what operations they must perform in order to construct novel utterances using these units; and (iii) how the (...) units and the operations change between the ages of two and three. In contrast to nativist theories of language development which suggest that children are working with abstract syntactic categories from an early point in development, we suggest that the data are better accounted for by the proposal that children begin with lexically specific phrases and gradually build up a repertoire of increasingly abstract constructions. (shrink)

In the paper ordering relations for comparison of verisimilitude of theories are introduced and discussed. The relations refer to semantic analysis of the results of theories, in particular to analysis of concepts the theories deal with.

How should we use intellectual history to inform our thinking about freedom in the advent of digital technologies? Quentin Skinner argues that prevalent liberal idiom is unable to address the political challenges in the world of big tech. While liberals consider these challenges in terms of invasion of individual privacy, in Skinner's neo-Roman – and once widely accepted – perspective, the growing datafication of contemporary societies should be considered an affront to liberty. By invoking the figure of ‘paths not taken’, (...) the author of Liberty before liberalism shows, how we may learn from the past without abandoning commitments to contextual accuracy of historical investigation. The interview will be published in Polish in ‘Przegląd Polityczny’ [Political Review]. (shrink)

"In this edited collection, an international ensemble of scholars examine what contemporary cinema tells us about neoliberal capitalism and cinema, exploring whether filmmakers are able to imagine progressive alternatives under capitalist conditions. Individual contributions discuss filmmaking practices, film distribution, textual characteristics and the reception of films made in different parts of the world. They engage with topics such as class struggle, debt, multiculturalism and the effect of neoliberalism on love and sexual behaviour. Written in accessible, jargon-free language, Contemporary Cinema and (...) Neoliberal Ideology is an essential text for those interested in political filmmaking and the political meanings of films."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

What kind of challenge does sexual and racial difference pose for postmodern ethics? What is the relation between ethical obligation and feminist interpretations of embodiment, passion, and eros? How can we negotiate between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic struggles against domination, injustice, and equality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other? We cannot address such questions, Ziarek argues, without putting into dialogue discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, (...) and the idea of radical democracy. Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers - including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray - the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. (shrink)

Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and physiological responses. Based (...) on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of development of Kripke semantics for logics determined by information systems. The proposals are made to extend the standard Kripke structures to the structures based on information systems. The underlying logics are defined and problems of their axiomatization are discussed. Several open problems connected with the logics are formulated. Logical aspects of incompleteness of information provided by information systems are considered.

Muslims are a marginal minority in Poland, but research shows that they are often subject to negative perceptions and hostility from the majority. Orientalist stereotypes about Islam and the people associated with it are widespread and often reproduced in the media. Research from North America and the European Court of Human Rights suggests that such prejudices can affect the adjudication of cases involving Muslims. It may be presumed that Poland is no exception to that, and this assumption was the starting (...) point for our empirical study. To date, there have been no studies on the perception of Muslims and Islam in the Polish legal system. This article presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis of 57 judicial opinions issued by the common courts in Poland and published online, in which Islam or being Muslim was mentioned. The cases were categorised and texts of the judicial opinions closely analysed (with computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software) to identify recurring themes. The findings of this first exploratory study show that stereotypical representations and the “‘Othering” of Muslims do indeed occur in Polish courts, with some judges repeating Orientalist tropes that have become normalised in Polish society. (shrink)