Many countries employ systemic methods of protecting consumers from unfair business practices. One such practice is the use of abusive clauses in business-to-consumer (B2C) contracts, which unfairly impose additional obligations on the consumer or deprive them of their due rights. This article presents an information system that utilizes artificial intelligence methods to automate contract analysis and to detect abusive clauses. The goal of the system is to support the entire administrative process, from contract acquisition, through text extraction and the recommendation (...) of potentially abusive clauses, to the generation of official administrative documents that can be sent to court or to the owners of firms. This article focuses on the components that use machine learning methods. The first is an intelligent crawler that is responsible for automatically detecting contract templates on websites and retrieving them into the system. The second is a document analysis module that implements a clause recommendation algorithm. The algorithm employs transformer-based language models and information retrieval methods to identify abusive passages in text. Our solution achieved first place in a competition on the automatic analysis of B2C contracts organized by the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), and has since been implemented as an official tool to support the contract analysis process in Poland. (shrink)

Author: Michalski Rafał Title: ANCIENT SOURCES OF MEANING OF THE TERM “MIMESIS” (Antyczne źródła pojęcia mimezis) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2005, vol:.5, number: 2005/1, pages: 45-64 Keywords: ‘MIMESIS’, PLATO, PYTHAGORAS Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:In this article I show the evolution of meaning of the term ‘mimesis’ in ancient Greece. I distinguish its two basic meanings: copying (imitation) and expression. The older meaning (mimesis as expression) comes from the Pythagorean (...) tradition, whereas the newer one (mimesis as copying) can be traced back to the philosophy of Plato. Analysis of Plato’s dialogues step by step reveals ambivalence of the notion, and, what is most important, points out how useful it can be in epistemology, philosophy of language, psychology and aesthetics. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Nietzscheforschung Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 314-318.

The first traces the production of numerous stone tools from the period of the Plio-Pleistocene represent a deep antiquity technical processes in the context of human evolution. Determining cognitive ability needed to convey the first hominids manufacture of stone tools is a challenge for the cognitive archaeology. Currently, thanks to archaeological discoveries and the development of cognitive science we can try to restore all the necessary treatments aimed at the production and use of stone tools along with a broad understanding (...) of their underlying cognitive processes. Analyses based on empirical data derived from Lokalalei – one of the oldest archaeological sites – indicate that the hominids comprehensive understanding of the principles of producing stone tools already at their very beginning. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is a critical reconstruction of the Platonic conception of laughter, which is presented primarily in Republic and Philebus. A comic quality calls, in his opinion, to lower emotions, it throws human mind out of balance and undermines the prevailing order of values. The philosopher associates a laughter with the feeling of envy, which comes down to the joy of humiliating of someone weaker. The comic envy - as opposed to passive jealousy - almost automatically leads (...) to the activity, to the enhancement of humiliation. Laughter is caused according to Plato by a defect resulting from the ignorance about himself. The key feature of the comic situation is the asymmetry between the victim's weakness and the strength of a laughing person. Plato's concept of laughter turns out to be one-sided, when we compare it with "laughter of Democritus" which serves as a therapeutic and catharctic means. Laughter is here a clear signal that initiates the critical reflection on himself and gives impetus to a change of attitude towards the world. In his writings Plato did not include such educational and cognitive aspects of laughter because in his philosophy it becomes a specific antagonist of true knowledge. The negative attitude towards laughter does not go hand in hand with Plato’s recognition of Socrates, who used irony as a key element in his method of inquiry leading to truth. (shrink)

According to contrastivism in epistemology - advocated chiefly by Jonathan Schaffer - the knowledge relation is not binary (s knows that p) but ternary (s knows that p rather than q). Thus knowledge ascriptions are contrast-sensitive. The aim of this paper is to portray, investigate and assess the details of this view. In the first three sections I focus mainly on arguments for contrastivism. Section fourth is devoted to the contrastivist solution to the skeptical puzzle. In the last three sections (...) I present several problems for contrastivism as well as three main binary explanations for contrast-sensitivity. (shrink)

Two fundamental features of a liberal political community are usually identified in contemporary deliberations: there is an inevitable pluralism of visions of good and worthy life, blended into a wide range of religious, philosophical and ethical positions; those who are in power are under an obligation to set public matters in such a way as to avoid discrimination of any class of the ruled. In respect of and, it is presumed that the process of enacting, implementing and executing public law (...) shall be separated from any perfectionist moral position, because being impartial when making political decisions is a prerequisite for non-discriminatory politics. This kind of politics looks for proper, convincing and comprehensible reasons to establish a new legal standard of behaviour in the ‘public reason’ – a set of moral statements and political values commonly shared in an open, pluralistic and tolerant society, which does not provide decisive answers to any questions about the meaning of life and does not bring us closer to discover its ideal. This article tries to reproduce the main notions and ideas of leading, contemporary liberal philosophers – John Rawls and Charles Larmore – that deal with the very nature of impartiality of a liberal state and the ability of policymakers to be impartial. It also presents the critical views of Stephen Macedo and Nicholas Wolterstorff, who question the possibility of building a neutral state. (shrink)

The article reflects on the therapeutic and ethical potential of literature, the theme which is often marginalized and overlooked by literary critics, in the novel Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. Matilda, the main character of the analyzed novel, finds salvation in the times of war and oppression thanks to Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, Great Expectations, and the only white man on the island−her teacher, Mr. Watts. Matilda’s strong identification with Dickensian Pip and imagination make her escape to another world, become a (...) self-conscious person and reunite with her father. The paper also discusses relationships between Matilda, Mr. Watts and her mother, Dolores. I attempt to show the emotional development of the characters, their interactions, changes, sense of identity, and, having analyzed their actions, I compare them to protagonists created by Charles Dickens. Needless to say, drawing the reader’s attention to British culture and traditions, Lloyd Jones avoids focusing on the negative aspects of the postcolonial views, pointing out that “the white man” can be an example of a Dickensian gentleman. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to compare the notion of a Grzegorczyk point introduced in [19] (and thoroughly investigated in [3, 14, 16, 18]) to the standard notions of a filter in Boolean algebras and round filter in Boolean contact algebras. In particular, we compare Grzegorczyk points to filters and ultrafilters of atomic and atomless algebras. We also prove how a certain extra axiom influences topological spaces for Grzegorczyk contact algebras. Last but not least, we do not refrain from (...) a philosophical interpretation of the results from the paper. (shrink)

Legal probabilism is the view that juridical fact-finding should be modeled using Bayesian methods. One of the alternatives to it is the narration view, according to which instead we should conceptualize the process in terms of competing narrations of what happened. The goal of this paper is to develop a reconciliatory account, on which the narration view is construed from the Bayesian perspective within the framework of formal Bayesian epistemology.

With material on his early philosophical views, his contributions to set theory and his work on nominalism and higher-order quantification, this book offers a uniquely expansive critical commentary on one of analytical philosophy’s great ...

This is the first, out of two papers, devoted to Andrzej Grzegorczyk’s point-free system of topology from Grzegorczyk :228–235, 1960. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485101). His system was one of the very first fully fledged axiomatizations of topology based on the notions of region, parthood and separation. Its peculiar and interesting feature is the definition of point, whose intention is to grasp our geometrical intuitions of points as systems of shrinking regions of space. In this part we analyze separation structures and Grzegorczyk structures, and (...) establish their properties which will be useful in the sequel. We prove that in the class of Urysohn spaces with countable chain condition, to every topologically interpreted representative of a point in the sense of Grzegorczyk’s corresponds exactly one point of a space. We also demonstrate that Tychonoff first-countable spaces give rise to complete Grzegorczyk structures. The results established below will be used in the second part devoted to points and topological spaces. (shrink)

The question about reality of the difference between existence and essence in creatures was one of the main problems of medieval metaphysics. The above text is an attempt to reconstruct two answers to this question: by Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. Thomas Aquinas is a person most often associated with the problem of real difference. It seems, however, that the doctrine of Giles of Rome was also very important for the development of the problem. For example, Giles was the (...) first to call the difference between existence and essence the "real difference". The doctrines of the two authors concerning real difference were often believed to be identical. However, beside some similarities, we can also find important differences between them. Aquinas appears to teach about real composition of existence and essence, while Giles writes about the real difference between the two, and he is so radical as to say that existence and essence are two different "things". In Giles' doctrine, we can also find clear Neo-Platonic influences. Giles puts special stress on accidental character of existence. This way he returns to Avicennian essentialism, discarded by St. Thomas. (shrink)

Polish medical law does not explicitly regulate the possibility of off-label use of medicines. Such procedures therefore raise doubts in medical practice, where medicines are often prescribed beyond the Characteristic of Medicinal Product. This phenomenon particularly affects the treatment of children, as there is a lack of registered medicines in this age group, but they are registered for use in adults. Since such treatment goes beyond the scope of registration, a dilemma arises as to whether it is permissible and, if (...) so, under what conditions and whether sanctions are imposed on the medical professional using the off-label medicine. These issues are addressed in an article by Dr Maria Gutowska-Ibbs, entitled 'Off label - practical consequences of unclear legislation". The present study complements these considerations and is in part an ad vocem statement. The article attempts to differentiate between the use of off-label medicines and medical experiments, following the criterion of the purpose for which a given medical action is performed. The limits of admissibility of such actions under criminal law are also discussed in more detail. Off-label treatment is considered through the prism of the required precautionary rules, compliance with which is the antithesis of inadvertence. It is assumed that if the drug was administered in accordance with current medical knowledge and the treatment is adequate to the patient's condition, there is no violation of these rules, which excludes the imputation of inadvertence. An extensive section of the study is devoted to the issue of the patient's consent to treatment outside the indications. Above all, it emphasises the need to explain in detail to the patient the circumstances of prescribing such a drug and, on this basis, to obtain informed consent. It also stresses the importance of the written form of consent, which can have a significant evidentiary impact in potential litigation. (shrink)

W artykule proponuje się dyskusję z tezami Philipa Pettita zawartymi w książce On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy i artykule „Two Republican Traditions”. Skupiając się na tzw. tradycji włosko-atlantyckiej, Pettit wskazywał na kluczowe dla republikanizmu powiązania etosów sprzeciwu obywatelskiego (contestatory citizenry) i ustroju mieszanego (mixed constitution). Nie jest przypadkiem, że do tak pojętej tradycji republikańskiej Pettit nie zaliczył Jeana-Jacques’a Rousseau, uznanego raczej za prekursora komunitaryzmu. Trudno się jednak zgodzić z prezentowaną przez Pettita klasyfikacją tradycji republikańskiej (...) i — zwłaszcza — jego odczytaniem myśli Rousseau. Przede wszystkim to właśnie ta myśl ukazuje najlepiej, że republikanizm, uosabiający wszak ideę rządów obywatelskich, mógł przyswoić wartości ustroju mieszanego jedynie w sposób doraźny i warunkowy — jedynie dopóty, dopóki sprzyjały one ograniczeniu nieobywatelskich (niewybieralnych) czynników władzy. Trudno też przyjąć tezę Pettita, że zapoczątkowana przez Rousseau teoria zwierzchnictwa ludu musi podważać ideały kultury czujności obywatelskiej. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 141-159.

This article presents German loanwords in the Polish language. Its aim is twofold: to discuss words of German origin in Polish, as well as to stress Polish-German language contacts and their influences on vocabulary. The analysis will not only deal with the meaning and etymology of particular words, but will also scrutinize their description in the dictionaries of Polish edited by Doroszewski and Sobol.

The article reconstructs main assumptions and the theoretical context of Arnold Gehlen’s conception of institution. I argue that this conception is mainly a theory of action. At its centre Gehlen sets not so much specific institutions but rather specific forms of human activity that bring to life the over-individual normative structures. He describes them by means of a series of categories which, in his opinion, have a universal character. We do not find any genealogical analyzes here, but only a constellation (...) of concepts deduced a priori, referring to empirical facts. (shrink)

Niniejszy artykuł jest próbą wyjaśnienia pojęcia politycznego entuzjazmu, za pomocą którego Immanuel Kant wyraził stosunek do rewolucji francuskiej. Entuzjazm jako czysto rozumowy afekt, a nie jako kolektywnie przeżywana, irracjonalna euforia, pełni w rozważaniach królewieckiego filozofa ważną heurystyczną funkcję. Pozwala mu bowiem uzasadnić pozytywne znaczenie rewolucji, która na poziomie empirycznych faktów okazała się godną moralnego potępienia eskalacją przemocy. W pierwszej części przedstawiono definicję polityki, przydatne w dalszej analizy kategorii entuzjazmu. Głównym punktem odniesienia jest tu teoria polityczna Hannah Arendt. W drugiej części (...) postaram się wyjaśnić dwuznaczną postawę Kanta wobec rewolucji francuskiej, która z punktu widzenia moralnego została przez niego jednoznacznie potępiona, natomiast z punktu widzenia estetycznego i politycznego – oceniana została bardzo pozytywnie. Kluczem do zrozumienia tej ambiwalencji jest kategoria jawnej publiczności. W trzecim rozdziale przechodzę do głównego tematu tego artykułu, czyli kwestii entuzjazm w kontekście politycznym. (shrink)

Artykuł podejmuje próbę rekonstrukcji teorii wyparcia Sigmunda Freuda. Punktem wyjścia jest wykazanie sprzeczności pomiędzy dwoma odmiennymi ujęciami wyparcia: według pierwszego z nich, wyparcie polega na całkowitym wykluczeniu patogennego impulsu z obszaru świadomości, według drugiego zaś, wyparcie pozbawia odrzucany impuls energii emocjonalnej, ale nie odcina go od świadomości. W dalszej części artykułu omówione są paradoksy, które pojawiają się w topicznym i ekonomicznym modelu psychiki.

W artykule podjęto problem związków zachodzących między retoryką a współczesną antropologią filozoficzną. Głównym punktem odniesienia jest dzieło Hansa Blumenberga. Rekonstrukcja założeń antropologicznych odwołujących się wprost do tradycji retorycznej zostanie uzupełniona analizą jego programu metaforologii – dyscypliny badającej logikę poznania przedpojęciowego. Koncept człowieka jako istoty nacechowanej brakiem – zarówno biologicznymi deficytami, jak i przypadkowością egzystencji, prowadzi do interesującej zmiany paradygmatu rozumienia samej antropologii. Skoro homo defectus zdany jest na prowizoryczność wiedzy o świecie i o sobie samym, antropologia powinna zrezygnować z perfekcjonistycznych (...) roszczeń poznawczych i zwrócić się ku badaniu metaforycznych zasobów języka, które determinują zarówno dyskurs filozoficzny, jak i potoczny język. (shrink)

In this paper, we indicate how Jan Woleński’s non-linguistic concept of the norm allows us to clarify the deontic relationship between sentences and the given normative system. A relationship of this kind constitutes a component of the metalogic of relating deontic logic, which subjects the logical value of the deontic sentence to the logical value of the constituent sentence and its relationship with a given normative system in the accessible possible worlds.

Contextualism is an epistemological claim that truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing sentences depend on context in which they are uttered. The discussion concerned with its background and assumptions is predominant in recent epistemology. However, contextualism is known better as the suggested solution for skepticism about the external world. In this paper I present one of the most important contextualist theory which have been proposed in 90's by Keith DeRose. In what follows I outline this proposal's main sources, i.e. i) a relevant (...) alternative theory, ii) Nozick's definition of knowledge and iii) two earlier contextualist ideas made by David Lewis and Gail Stine. Next, I consider some weak aspects of this theory that have been pointed out by critics. (shrink)

The video game producers are currently in spotlight of market information services. Successes and huge budgets of such companies attract many readers. However, scientific studies related to this sector do not share the same popularity. A reflection on the source of value in this sector shows that what generates revenues is not disclosed in the report. Great examples are customers’ relationships or the value of employees creating the game code and story of the game. Video games producers sector presents a (...) good combination of business and culture that allows reflection on financial characteristics of knowledge based companies. Prior studies show that market’s valuation takes into account unrecognised assets but capital-intensive character of a production and intangibility of a product and its assets causes problems with exact valuation. In this paper the author asks about the impact of the characteristics on the assessment of a financial condition. The research question in this paper is whether it is possible to use and interpret correctly popular discriminant analysis model for knowledge based entities on the example of video game companies. Results are applicable by analysts and managers of this sector and help to determine the usefulness of this method, but it still depends on assumptions and accounting policies. The reflection presented also broadens the discussion on financialisation because analysed companies can oppose this trend in a specific way. (shrink)

I focus on the monastery life in Europe and its predomination of vita contemplativa upon vita activa. It is not hard to distinguish within Christianity its Manichaean component whose characteristic feature is a grudge against matter, body and sexuality. This complexity of ideas brought about the contempt of vital elements of human existence, so that its animal past, still present in Zivilisationsprozess. An alternative anthropology inspired by an evolutionism should based on the presumption that only through the appreciation of an (...) animal dimension of us—instead of monastic desire of becoming an angel—will it be possible to create new perspectives for renegotiation of the human–animal boundaries. (shrink)

This article investigates the structures of an identifiably Buddhist philosophy of religion, understood as the philosophical exposition and exploration of Buddhist religiosity. I thus theorize what forms a philosophy of religion structured according to Buddhist principles and paradigms might take, address various theoretical and methodological considerations, and survey a range of candidate schemas, which latter are arranged under textual, sectarian, and doctrinal rubrics. Overall, this project is undertaken on the understanding that the study of Buddhism, among other global traditions, need (...) not and should not replicate conceptual structures imposed upon it from without, and that philosophy of religion is enriched by attention to the resolutely plural philosophies of religions worldwide. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical reconstruction of the motivations that led to the development of mereology as we know it today, along with a brief description of some problems that define current research in the field.

The present paper puts forward a first outline of a possible agonistic theory of adjudication, conceived of as an extension of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy onto the domain of the juridical, and specifically, judicial decision-making. Mouffe’s concept of the political as the dimension of inherent and unalienable conflicts (antagonisms) which, nonetheless, need to be tamed for a pluralist democracy to function, creates an excellent vantage point for a critical theory of adjudication. The paper argues for perceiving all judicial (...) decisions as having a double nature—juridical and political. Cloaked in legal form, judgments nonetheless decide on individual instances of on-going collective conflicts, opposing workers to employers, consumers to traders, tenants to landlords, moral progressives to traditionalists, minorities to majorities and so forth. Judges, when handing down judgments, enjoy a ‘relative sovereignty’, being always already inscribed into the institutional imperatives of the juridical, on one hand, and ideological influences, on the other, but at the same time called upon to decide in the terrain of the undecidable and contingent (after all, law does not ‘apply itself’ on its own). Indeed the determinacy of legal decisions is only relative: in many cases judges can, by performing a sufficient amount of legal interpretive work, reach a conclusion which will be different from theprima facieinterpretation. The collective conflicts of a various nature (economic, ideological, socio-political), once they are juridified, become the object of judicial decisions which, in light of Mouffe’s theory, can be seen as temporary hegemonic fixations. The goal of critical legal scholarship is to destabilise such hegemonies in the name of justice. This can be done not only through an external critique of the law, but also through an internal one. The methodological approach advanced in the latter part of the paper emphasises the need for a critique of judicial decisions based on the consideration of all possible alternative decisions a court could have reached, and their evaluation in the light of conflicting interests and ideologies. (shrink)