Summary Several subdisciplines within historiography, most notably the arms and armour or martial arts studies, are interested in inferring physical qualities of historical material objects from historical sources. Scholars from these fields face serious deficiency of written accounts when it comes to various crucial information regarding their subject matter. Therefore, researchers’ attention is often drawn to iconographical sources, sometimes resulting in certain fascination with the material culture depicted in primary technical literature (Fachliteratur). This tendency seems particularly strong in studies on (...) HEMA which rely heavily on pre-modern combat treatises known as ‘fight books’ (Fechtbücher) and are tempted either to treat the available iconography as a faithful representation of its corresponding material reality or to interpret apparent mismatch between icono-graphical representations and their material source domain as evidence for the inferior skills of the illustrator. We would like to put forward that there is a fundamental oversight in such approach to Fachliteratur in general and fight books in particular, namely the lack of consideration for the artwork as a diagrammatic representation of the functional aspects of depicted embodied technique, where proportional ‘realism’ is of lesser priority. It may be fruitful to develop a more nuanced method of ‘reading’ such images. Our survey of select late-medieval fight books shows that equipment, and even body parts, are regularly distorted in their depictions in the fight books to better communicate the subject matter, especially where textual descriptions would be complicated. Interpreted in Gestalt terms, this phenomenon may serve as an example of historical pragmatic application of the cognitive principle of holism – that the whole is something different than the sum of its parts. (shrink)

Recent research observed a sensitive window, at about 14 years of age, in the acculturation rates of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Tapping an online sample ofusimmigrants, we tested these relationships in a broader population and explored connections with new potentially causally related variables: formal education, language ability and contact with heritage-culture and mainstream United States individuals, both now and at immigration. While we found that acculturation decreased with age at immigration and increased with years in theus, we did not observe (...) a similar sensitive window. We also present an exploratory path analysis, exposing the relationships in our sample between acculturation and the variables above. The novel relationships documented here can improve theorising about this rich and complex empirical phenomenon. (shrink)

Many irreconcilable accounts of ratio legis in legal science, often concerned with legal interpretation, suffer from being disconnected from practical reasoning. Different theories of legal interpretation which result in one-sided views of ratio legis are by-products of one-sided semantics. The first part of the chapter diagnoses this problem by providing a model of three types of one-sided semantics—upstream, midstream and downstream—and explaining how they translate into respective accounts of legal interpretation and ratio legis. The second part of the chapter presents (...) an alternative to one-sided semantics in legal theory. The alternative account which combines semantics and practical reasoning in legal theory is based on Brandom’s inferential pragmatism. The usefulness of inferential pragmatism in legal theory with regard to the problem of ratio legis is tested and followed by extending an inferentialist account of ratio legis provided by Canale and Tuzet. A model of agent’s actions and reasons, and their impact on the reasoning of interpreters and decision-makers is the essential part of this extension. (shrink)

By definition, the implicit commitment of a formal theory $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th consists of sentences that are independent of the axioms of $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th, but their acceptance is implicit in the acceptance of $$\textrm{Th}$$ Th. In Cieśliński (2017, 2018), the phenomenon of implicit commitments was studied from the epistemological perspective through the lenses of the formal theory of believability. The current paper provides a comprehensive proof-theoretic analysis of this approach and compares it to other main theories of implicit commitments. We argue (...) that the formal results presented in the paper favour the believability theory over its main competitors. However, there is still a fly in the ointment. We argue that in its current formulation, the theory cannot deliver all the goods for which it was defined. In particular, being amenable to a generalised conservativeness argument, it does not support the view that the notion of truth is epistemically light. At the end of the paper, we discuss possible ways out of the problem. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate (...) results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between attitudes toward physical activity and participation in water sports events and to recognize the main motives for involvement in these kinds of events. A written paper–pencil diagnostic survey was conducted among 394 participants in two traditional and two modern sports events on water held in Poland to ascertain whether innovative events are needed in society, and whether they cause an increase in interest in physical activity. The research results showed (...) that modern sports events on water did not have any more power to attract physically inactive people than traditional water events, did not produce a greater desire to lead an active lifestyle, and did not encourage people to more regularly practice water sports. Moreover, modern events, compared to traditional events, were only a one-time experience and the people who completed survey often wanted to return to traditional sports events which provided participants with greater positive emotions than a modern event. In the case of socio-demographical variables, there was no statistically significant relationship between gender and choice of modern or traditional event, but older people were more likely to choose a traditional event than younger people; modern water events were an attractive option primarily for young people under 30 years of age, furthermore, modern events more often attracted people who had completed higher education. However, it turned out that a modern event on water often attracted more people who had had no experience in this sport discipline rather than people who chose traditional water events. In a sense, modern events are therefore effective in promoting water sports in Polish society. We also distinguished five main groups of participants: healthy lifestyle managers, lovers of sports emotions, water sports malcontents, water sports enthusiasts, and neutrals to water sports. Additionally, we looked into gender-related motives for participation in modern and traditional water events: social and health-related motives proved to be more important for women and men who participated in modern water events. The research results presented in the article expand on the current state of knowledge about mass participation in sport, the impact of sporting events on the promotion of physical activity, and show the motivation behind participation in modern and traditional water sporting events. (shrink)

The author presents a few consumer cases, which serves him to argue that customers frequently are victims of corporate arrogance and preponderance. In case of conflict between consumer expectations and corporate interests, corporations tend to put immediate profits above fairness, solidarity, the spirit of service or other non-material moral values. The power of corporations seems to be so immense today that we can talk about a form of corporate tyranny. Business companies resemble absolutist states of the past. In this context, (...) it is difficult to imagine how the "principle of gratuity and the logic of gift", a key proposal of the Encyclical Caritas in veritate, could be embraced by the business world. Gift, gratuity and communion require flexibility, prudence and freedom in decision making on the side of customer assistance and ground floor managers, which is an impossible prerequisite in a highly verticalised, centralised and standardised corporate world. The author warns that the arrogance and tyranny of corporations may become a source of human estrangement and oppression in the long run, as well as it may become a means of a "servile state". The author finishes claiming that the profit motive is not always the best incentive for corporate performance and that excellent business leadership is matter of balance between following rules and using common sense. He asks whether it is really possible to be efficient, profitable, prudent and humane in business at the same time? (shrink)

This paper’s aim is to provide a new interpretation of Martha C. Nussbaum’s and Richard Rorty’s views on the ethical role of literature. I pursue this aim in a threefold manner. First of all, I shortly discuss and provide a critique of previous comparisons by other authors. Afterwards, based on the presented critique of other comparisons, I present concise summaries of their respective views. Finally, I propose a double context for interpreting and assessing their views together. The main claim of (...) the paper is the following: despite several differences in their philosophical underpinnings, Nussbaum’s and Rorty’s views on literature can be interpreted together using the context of John Rawls and Jacques Rancière. This interpretation consists of showing how uncovering a shared Rawlsian characteristic of Nussbaum’s and Rorty’s views paves a way for explaining how literature actually does ethical work, using some concepts of Rancière. Such a contextual reading allows for both a more thorough understanding of their respective projects and assessing their shared shortcomings. (shrink)

It is possible to overcome dificulties connected with vagueness of natural language with the help of mathematical tools such as fuzzy sets and characteristic functions. The main goal of this paper is to propose an interpretation of generalised characteristic function as identical with the probability calculated from density function (probability distribution) defined on certain set. This set is identified with the quasi-model interpretation of unary predicate of a natural language.

The paper develops a speech act-based model of verbal irony. It argues, first, that ironic utterances are speech actions performed as conforming to a socially accepted procedure and, second, that they are best understood as so-called etiolated uses of language. The paper is organized into four parts. The first one elaborates on Austin's doctrine of the etiolations of language and distinguishes between the normal or serious mode of communication and its etiolated mode. The second part discusses the dominant approaches to (...) verbal irony and argues that the irony-as-a-trope theories can be viewed as attempts to describe ironic utterances as cases of normal speech, whereas the metalinguistic theories seem to treat them as etiolated uses of language. The third part proposes a set of felicity conditions for ironic acts and puts forth a hypothesis that echo and overt pretence are complementary techniques of linguistic etiolation used for ironizing. The fourth part uses the proposed model to discuss the social dimension of ironizing and argues that utterances intended as acts of ironizing may trigger the accommodating process of context-repair. The take-home message is that ironic utterances are essentially social actions: acts performed by invoking a socially accepted procedure. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a speech-act based account of presumptions. Using a score-keeping model of illocutionary games, I argue that presumptions construed as speech acts can be grouped into three illocutionary act types defined by reference to how they affect the state of a conversation. The paper is organized into two parts. In the first one, I present the score-keeping model of speech act dynamics; in particular, I distinguish between two types of mechanisms—the direct mechanism of illocution and the (...) indirect one of accommodation—that underlie the functioning of illocutionary acts. In the second part, I use the presented model to distinguish between the unilateral act of individual presumption, the point of which is to shift the burden of proof by making the hearer committed to justifying his refusal to endorse the proposition communicated by the speaker, whenever he refuses to endorse it, the bilateral act of joint presumption—‘bilateral’ in that it is performed jointly by at least two conversing agents—the function of which is to confer on the proposition endorsed by the speaker the normative status of jointly recognized though tentative acceptability, and the indirect or back-door act of collective presumption, the purpose of which is to sustain rules and practices to which the conversing agents defer the felicity of their conversational moves. (shrink)

In this paper we present a solution to Saul Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief Meaning and use, Dordrecht, 1979) based on Kaplan’s metaphysical picture of words. Although it is widely accepted that providing such a solution was one of the main incentives for the development of Kaplan’s theory, it was never presented by Kaplan in a systematic manner and was regarded by many as unsatisfactory. We agree with these critiques, and develop an extension of Kaplan’s theory by introducing the notion of (...) “conservative” word uses, as well as arguing for the restriction of Kripke’s Disquotational Principle only to such uses. This restriction allows us to solve Kripke’s Puzzle by arguing that the assent of the puzzle’s protagonist does not allow disquotation and ascription of corresponding inconsistent belief, as it contains the non-conservative use of a proper name. At the end of the paper, we defend two of Kaplan’s theses that we find essential for our argument to work: that individuation of word tokens involves taking into account the intention of the speaker, and that different uniquely referring proper names of the same shape should be regarded as different homonymous words. (shrink)

Piotr Kropotkin był najważniejszym przedstawicielem tzw. darwinizmu rosyjskiego oraz teorii pomocy wzajemnej, która podkreślała znaczenie współpracy wewnątrzgatunkowej w procesie doboru naturalnego oraz walki o byt. Na jej kanwie rosyjski badacz wysunął tezę o ewolucyjnych źródłach moralności, będącej problem badawczym w niniejszym artykule. Stanowi to jednocześnie powód dlaczego poza przedstawieniem wspomnianej tezy i jej założeń, w publikacji zilustrowana została także teoria pomocy wzajemnej. Zaproponowana przez Kropotkina wizja moralności suponowała, iż stanowi ona „przyrodzoną” właściwość ludzkiej natury. Podstawę dla niej stanowić ma instynkt (...) społeczny oraz jego przejawy, takie jak: równość, solidarność, sprawiedliwość, itd., a także pomoc wzajemna. Stawiało to propozycję rosyjskiego darwinisty w opozycji wobec dominujących trendów w myśleniu o ludzkiej moralności na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, zwłaszcza wobec tzw. darwinizmu społecznego i charakterystycznego dlań dualizmu moralnego. Ponadto zrywała z antropocentryzmem zakładając, iż poza gatunkiem ludzkim, także inne gatunki cechują się uczuciami moralnymi. (shrink)

Author: Musiał Maciej Title: INTIMACY AND CULTURE. ANTHONY GIDDENS’ CONCEPTION OF PURE RELATIONSHIP IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIO-REGULATIVE THEORY OF CULTURE (Intymność a kultura. Czysta relacja Giddensa w perspektywie społeczno-regulacyjnej koncepcji kultury) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.12, number: 2011/1, pages: 347-360 Keywords: INTIMACY, CULTURE, PURE RELATIONSHIP, FUNCTIONAL AND AUBJECTIVE-RATIONAL EXPLANATION Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The aim of the thesis is an attempt to applicate Jerzy Kmita’s theory of culture (...) into the issues included in the domain of intimacy. The first part of the paper is focused on intimacy as a part of culture. To be precise, if the concept of culture is understood after Kmita, it follows that, intimacy is considered as a set of norms and directives respected by the community and regulating intimate praxis in rational-subjective terms. The second part of the thesis is concentrated on the conception of “pure relationship” created by Anthony Giddens, which constitutes one of the most interesting approaches of describing contemporary tranformations of intimacy. Although, the author agrees with most of Giddens’ ideas, he perceives the conception of “pure relationship” as one-sided. Theory of culture created by Kmita, especially the idea of functional and aubjective-rational explanation, is used as a tool to indicate methodological mistakes, which are the reasons for sidedness of Giddens’ perspective. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical analysis of the skeptic’s conviction that his doubts about the truth of thought on existence of the world outside the mind are not equivalent to real the doubts about existence of the world alone, but they are only a theoretical and speculative problem of knowledge. The main case of this criticism is based on the Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s philosophy, precisely, on his theory of truth.

Numerous diagnoses of contemporary transformations of love and eroticism emphasise the fact that the intimate life has become democratised and liberated. Anthony Giddens argues that personal relationships increasingly become compatible with the model of pure relationship, which means that they are more egalitarian and that both partners are free to choose and to negotiate the shape of their relations. Jeffrey Weeks claims that in “the world that we have won”, women, homosexuals and queers are increasingly considered as equal to heterosexual (...) men. Most scholars agree that feminism is one of most important factors that enabled the democratisation of intimacy. Yet, it is possible to distinguish some interesting approaches that examine the unintended consequences of women’s emancipation. Sociologists like Arlie Russell Hochschild and Eva Illouz recognise the importance of feminism in democratising intimacy, thus they also claim that liberation of women has entailed rationalisation and commercialisation of intimacy. One of Hochschild’s main thesis is that feminism commercialises intimacy by legitimising “the commercial spirit of intimate life”. What is more, she argues that instead of humanizing men feminism is capitalising women. On the other hand, Illouz persuades that feminism – together with therapeutic discourse – rationalises intimacy by emphasising the necessity of analysing and quantifying all aspects of intimate life. Hochschild and Illouz claim that feminism unintentionally makes intimacy “cold” – that is that it suggests focusing on personal autonomy and perceiving warm and close bonds as an endangerment for that autonomy. The cooling entails loosening of family and intimate relationships and making individuals more attached to the market. In the end, both sociologists agree that “cool” branches of feminism make women similar to men and intimacy similar to the market. (shrink)

Martha C. Nussbaum w oparciu o teorię sprawności tworzy wizję powszechnego ładu politycznego opartego na szacunku i tolerancji. Czy rzeczywiście jej teoria może stać się podstawą międzynarodowego liberalizmu politycznego? Wszak nosi ona wyraźne cechy opcji światpoglądowej – etyki moralnej autonomii jednostki. W dyskusji z Lindą Barclay Nussbuam odcina się od takiej interpretacji. Podkreśla pluralistyczny i uniwersalistyczny charakter swoich rozwiązań. Chce, aby konsensus oparty na teorii sprawności przekroczył bariery kultur, religii i narodowości. Stawia więc cele ambitniejsze niż sam Rawls, czołowy polityczny (...) liberał. Wskazuje też inne, poza Rawlsem, źródła idei liberalizmu politycznego. Piętnuje dostrzegany u Berlina i Raza brak szacunku wobec religii. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, the author examines Mitchell Green’s account of the expressive power and score-changing function of speech acts; second, he develops an alternative, though also evolutionist approach to explaining these two hallmarks of verbal interaction. After discussing the central tenets of Green’s model, the author draws two distinctions – between externalist and internalist aspects of veracity, and between perlocutionary and illocutionary credibility – and argues that they constitute a natural refinement of Green’s original conceptual (...) framework. Finally, the author uses the refined framework to develop an alternative account of expressing thoughts with words. In particular, he argues that in theorising about expressing thoughts with words – as well as about using language to change context – we should adopt a Millikanian view on what can be called, following Green, acts of communication and an Austinian approach to speech or illocutionary acts. (shrink)

The paper focuses on a specific type of referring legal provisions, in which the referring phrase contains a component that indicates the position of a certain fragment of the same text of a normative act by determining the position of that fragment in relation to the fragment in which the given referring phrase is located. Despite the fact that these referrals, called deictic, may be perceived as uncomplicated in structure and as functioning correctly in legal texts, many theoretical as well (...) as practical problems arise during their drafting and legal interpretation. The article attempts to reveal, organize and name these problems basing on the conceptual grid formulated by Studnicki, Łachwa, Fall and Stabrawa as a universal, although not widely known outside Polish jurisprudence, tool for analysing and solving referring provisions as elements of various legal systems, especially continental ones. Texts of selected Polish Codes have been chosen as an illustrative material of deictic referrals which have been incorrectly formulated as leaving space for interpretative doubts in terms of place of indication and place of reference, which also causes a potential problem of the deferred ostension phenomenon noticed by Quine. The author argues that proper drafting of referring legal provisions with deictic indication requires that the legislator should have extensive pragmalinguistic knowledge and is an essential part of law-making oriented towards achieving comprehensibility of texts of normative acts, especially as important as Codes. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reformulate the Linguistic Underdeterminacy Thesis by making use of Austin’s theory of speech acts. Viewed from the post-Gricean perspective, linguistic underdeterminacy consists in there being a gap between the encoded meaning of a sentence uttered by a speaker and the proposition that she communicates. According to the Austinian model offered in this paper, linguistic underdeterminacy should be analysed in terms of semantic and force potentials conventionally associated with the lexical and syntactic properties of (...) the pheme uttered by the speaker; in short, it is claimed that the conventionally specified phatic meaning of an utterance underdetermines its content and force. This Austinian version of the Linguistic Underdeterminacy Thesis plays a central role in a contextualist model of verbal communication. The model is eliminativist with respect to rhetic content and illocutionary force: it takes contents and forces to be one-off constructions whose function is to classify individual utterances in terms of their representational and institutional effects, respectively. (shrink)

Celem tego tekstu jest rekonstrukcja i analiza argumentów przedstawianych za Psychologiczną Zasadą Niesprzeczności, stwierdzającą, że żaden podmiot nie może mieć sprzecznych przekonań lub być opisany jako posiadający sprzeczne przekonania. Poprzez rozróżnienie dwóch możliwych interpretacji PZN, deskryptywnej i normatywnej, oraz dokładne zbadanie argumentacji przedstawionej dla każdej z nich z osobna, wskazuję zawarte w nich błędy oraz problemy związane z uzgodnieniem ich z wynikami badań prowadzonych w psychologii poznawczej i klinicznej. Uzasadniam, dlaczego PZN nie może być wyprowadzona z żadnego ze stanowisk metafizycznych (...) dotyczących nastawień sądzeniowych i że posiadanie sprzecznych przekonań powinno być uznane za możliwe. Następnie piszę, dlaczego zinterpretowanie niektórych podmiotów jako posiadających sprzeczne przekonania może być bardziej efektywne w wyjaśnianiu przypadków nieracjonalnego zachowania niż rozwiązania zgodne z PZN. (shrink)

This paper examines how Japan has embraced advanced technologies to address the challenges of an aging society and shrinking labor markets. Using Japan as a case study, this paper explores the relationship between human dignity, the intrinsic value of work, and the fourth industrial revolution. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section describes the scale of aging and shrinking labor markets in Japan, and the measures that the Japanese government has used to tackle these problems. The second (...) section offers a selection of five mini cases that show how advanced technologies are used in different sectors of the Japanese economy. The third section outlines some ethical concerns that go beyond utilitarian benefits of using advanced technologies to address the problem of aging. The perspective of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) is adopted as a main advocate of a person-centered social ethics. The fourth section offers an assessment of Japan’s experiment and outlines further research opportunities. (shrink)

This chapter explores the axiological convergence between classical liberalism and Catholic Social Thought (CST). The chapter argues that CST and classical liberals should build on their complementary values to strengthen public support for liberal democracy and a free-market economy among Catholic voters and in society at large. Although populist regimes, especially far-right conservative nationalists, portray liberalism as an antithesis of Catholicism, this chapter shows that there is a broad consensus between the two traditions. Contrary to far-right populist positions, the chapter (...) argues that it is possible to maintain Catholic values in a liberal market democracy without denouncing one’s religious identity. The chapter emphasizes the importance of re-constructing a centrist tradition of Catholic liberal thought to mitigate populist assault on political, economic, and social freedoms. (shrink)

The paper develops a score-keeping model of illocutionary games and uses it to account for mechanisms responsible for creating institutional facts construed as rights and commitments of participants in a dialogue. After introducing the idea of Austinian games—understood as abstract entities representing different levels of the functioning of discourse—the paper defines the main categories of the proposed model: interactional negotiation, illocutionary score, appropriateness rules and kinematics rules. Finally, it discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in illocutionary games and (...) argues that the proposed model presupposes an externalist account of illocutionary practice. (shrink)

The paper aims to develop an interactional account of illocutionary practice, which results from integrating elements of Millikan's biological model of language within the framework of Austin's theory of speech acts. The proposed account rests on the assumption that the force of an act depends on what counts as its interactional effect or, in other words, on the response that it conventionally invites or attempts to elicit. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first one reconsiders Austin's and Millikan's (...) contributions to the study of linguistic practice. The second part presents the main tenets of the interactional account. In particular, it draws a distinction between primary and secondary conventional patterns of interaction and argues that they make up coherent systems representing different language games or activity types; it is also argued that the proposed account is not subject to the massive ambiguity problem. (shrink)

Author: Chlewicki Maciej Title: A HUNDRED YEARS OF THE DISPUTE ABOUT PLATO (Stulecie Sporu o Platona) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 559-571 Keywords: PLATO, WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, MARBURG NEO-KANTIAN SCHOOL, THEORY OF IDEA Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The aim of this paper is to present the main theses and the importance of Tatarkiewicz’s article The dispute about Plato (Spór o Platona) in polish reception of Plato’s philosophy. (...) This article – which was published by Tatarkiewicz a hundred yeas ago (1911) – was the first presentation of the new and interesting interpretation of Plato’s theory of ideas which was inspired by Marburg neo-Kantian school. In Tatarkiewicz’s view the Plato’s philosophy is not some kind of metaphysics but it is generally the theory of knowledge. We can agree this is still unusual approach to Plato and we have a good reason to remind this early Tatarkiewicz’s essay. (shrink)

This paper investigates the phenomenon of judicial law-making in the practice of the highest courts dealing with criminal matters in Germany and Poland on the basis of 200 of their decisions. While German jurisprudence principally acknowledges the right of the judiciary to create new law, the Polish legal theory generally rejects this notion. Still, research indicates that, in practice, the differences in the frequency and intensity with which these courts pass creative rulings are not as substantial as the discrepancy in (...) the theoretical stance would suggest. Owing to circumstances, both the German Federal Court of Justice and the Polish Supreme Court are willing to create new legal norms, but the dimensions of judicial law-making presented by these bodies deviate from each other. In the research sample, the German Federal Court of Justice was more inclined to introduce legal institutions that were foreign to the statutes and rule against the will of the lawmaker explicitly stated in the preparatory works. On the other hand, the Polish Supreme Court used logical conclusions more often, but did not also refrain from passing rulings against the clear wording of the statutory law, and was just as willing to go beyond the wording of the law as was the German Federal Court of Justice. Notably, only the German apex court is willing to openly admit that it creates new legal norms, whereas the Polish Supreme Court does not concede in the reasons that its decisions are of a law-making nature, especially when it applies so-called “interpretation in the wider sense”—which is, in essence, a “concealed” way of creating new legal norms. (shrink)

Staram się podjąć z Witkiewiczem „dialog” niepozbawiony elementów krytycznych i odniesień do współczesnego stanu badań. Traktuję więc jego propozycję filozoficzną nie jako obiekt jedynie muzealny, ale żywą myśl, z którą można i należy dziś podjąć dyskusję. Wynika to z przeświadczenia, że myślenie filozoficzne stanowi kontinuum i „rozmowa” z filozofami przeszłości może wnieść sporo do badań prowadzonych obecnie. System stworzony przez Witkiewicza nie był nigdy projektem jednorodnym, jego badania stanowiły raczej splot wątków, trudno jest wskazać jedno, dominujące zagadnienie. Jeśli jednak miałbym (...) wymienić taki leitmotiv jego filozofii, to byłby to problem istnienia ożywionego, upsychicznionego i cielesnego bytu, jakim jesteśmy my sami, a w przekonaniu Witkiewicza również wszystkie inne byty, z których składa się materia (stąd tylko pozornie) nieożywiona. Zawężając zakres tego zagadnienia, dochodzimy do klasycznego problemu psychofizycznego w wersji jednak dość oryginalnej z racji wspominanego odrzucenia materii martwej. O ciągłym zainteresowaniu problemem stosunku ciała do umysłu świadczy tytuł ostatniej większej rozprawy filozoficznej Witkiewicza: Zagadnienie psychofizyczne. Prezentowana praca jest próbą pokazania drogi, którą przebył polski filozof, poszukując odpowiedzi na pytanie o problem psychofizyczny, aż do swoistej wersji cielesno-biologicznego panpsychizmu. (shrink)