At the turn of 1960s and 1970s, Stanisław Lem devoted some of his non-fiction writing to a discussion and considerations of semiotics. Most of them were expressions of a critical approach mainly directed against structuralism. However, Lem also formulated some positive statements although they were not developed systematically. The article offers an analysis of Lem’s semiotic ideas from the perspective of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc, mainly considering its two main components: contextualism and typological approach. Special attention is paid to (...) the latter because both Pelc and Lem proposed some original solutions in this respect. What is meant here is the multidimensional typology of symbolic uses of signs developed by Pelc and Lem’s multidimensional typology of the situations of the reception of texts. Although they are independent form each other, these proposals show some convergence both in their ways of construction and roles they are supposed to perform. Henceforth, one can say that Lem was a crypto-functionalist. (shrink)

In light of current findings under the culture-driven view, the present article proposes a co-shaping interactive relation between the human brain and culture, and a further notion that semiosis actually serves as the central link that connects external models and internal models, initiating what is known as unlimited semiosis, which coincides with the neurological process of cognition. Empirical studies on the differences of neural activities pertaining to distinct cultural modeling systems, such as the Chinese orthography, the English and the (...) French alphabets, have also provided clear evidence that the human brain exists in an adaptive relation to the corresponding culture, in which semiosis proves to be one of the fundamental mechanisms of how culture exerts its influence. Besides the cultural specificity of semiosis and brain functions, this paper also proposes that it is essential to pay constant attention to semiosic individuality, as this will secure a comprehensive unbiased perspective of semiotic and cognitive studies. (shrink)

In biosemiotics, living beings are not conceived of as the passive result of anonymous selection pressures acted upon through the course of evolution. Rather, organisms are considered active participants that influence, shape and re-shape other organisms, the surrounding environment, and eventually also their own constitutional and functional integrity. The traditional Darwinian division between natural and sexual selection seems insufficient to encompass the richness of these processes, particularly in light of recent knowledge on communicational processes in the realm of life. Here, (...) we introduce the concepts of semiotic selection and semiotic co-option which in part represent a reinterpretation of classical biological terms and, at the same time, keep explanations sensitive to semiosic processes taking place in living nature. We introduce the term ‘semiotic selection’ to emphasize the fact that actions of different semiotic subjects (selectors) will produce qualitatively different selection pressures. Thereafter, ‘semiotic co-option’ explains how semiotic selection may shape appearance in animals through remodelling existing forms and relations. Considering the event of co-option followed by the process of semiotic selection enables us to describe the evolution of semantic organs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to identify the verbal-ideological conditions in which Judeo-Christin values in tension in the conceptualization of hell are installed as Western collective memory even out of the religious segment and, this way, frame a cosmovision. Theoretically, the discussion is preponderantly based on a dialogic reading (BMV Circle) of the Halbwachian notion of collective memory and on a socio-cognitivist approach to polysemy. Methodologically, apocrificity is used as a resource to trace de conceptual path constituting the (...) semiosis of hell in dialog with canonical texts. The paper demonstrates that hell, by compressing the transit between cultures and by permeating Christian values in other fields of ideological creation, activates a moral-causal domain that, at the same time, defers to these values and denies their religious principles, making the sacred and sublime also prosaic. The sacred/prosaic ambivalence that occurs not alternatively, but simultaneously, as typical of the dialogic tension, frames a collective structure of memory. (shrink)

The main purpose of this work is to provide a semiotic ontology for redescription of active cognitive externalism, recently developed by the paradigm 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended cognition). In our approach, distributed cognitive systems (DCSs) are described as semiosis, signs in action. We explored the relationship between semiosis and cognition, as conceived by C. S. Peirce, in association with the notion of distributed cognitive system (DCS). We introduce Peircean externalist approach with an emphasis on the notion of temporal distribution (...) of semiosis, and describe DCSs, and their elements, as “sign in action”. To develop this argument, we describe an example of DCS -- verbal-musical improvisation of repente, repentismo, or viola singing. It is a phenomenon of verbal-musical improvisation that takes the form of a challenge in versified oral poetry. We describe the phenomenon as the embodiment of the formal structure of a cognitive task and an inferential process. This embodiment corresponds to a semiotization of the repente performances as DCSs. The temporally distributed tendency of repentismo organizes the DCS as a system that performs metasemiotic experiments on the action of signs. (shrink)

This paper suggests and discusses an answer to the following question: What distinguishes causal from non-causal or coincidental co-occurrences? The answer derives from Elizabeth Anscombe’s idea that causality is a highly abstract concept whose meaning derives from our understanding of specific causally productive activities, and from her rejection of the assumption that causality can be informatively understood in terms of actual or counterfactual regularities.Keywords: Elizabeth Anscombe; Causality; Explanation; Inhibition.

Hospital ethics committees have evolved as a response to complicated legal, ethical, and social dilemmas that accompany modern medicine. In the United States, their growth has been augmented by Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and the Patient Self-Determination Act. There appears to be an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices are relatively similar. Finally, there is heightened awareness of the needs for quality standards and assessment of the outcomes of ethics consultations.

Empirical studies largely support the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. Despite of previous research efforts, the exact formulation of the continuity hypothesis remains vague. The present paper focuses on two aspects: the differential incorporation rate of different waking-life activities and the magnitude of which interindividual differences in waking-life activities are reflected in corresponding differences in dream content. Using a correlational design, a positive, non-zero correlation coefficient will support the continuity hypothesis. Although many researchers stress the importance of emotional involvement (...) on the incorporation rate of waking-life experiences into dreams, Hartmann formulated the hypothesis that highly focused cognitive processes such as reading, writing, etc. are rarely found in dreams due to the cholinergic activation of the brain during dreaming. The present findings based on dream diaries and the exact measurement of waking activities replicated two recent questionnaire studies. These findings indicate that it will be necessary to specify the continuity hypothesis more fully and include factors which modulate the incorporation rate of waking-life experiences into dreams. Whether the cholinergic state of the brain during REM sleep or other alterations of brain physiology are the underlying factors of the rare occurrence of highly focused cognitive processes in dreaming remains an open question. Although continuity between waking life and dreaming has been demonstrated, i.e., interindividual differences in the amount of time spent with specific waking-life activities are reflected in dream content, methodological issues have limited the capacity for detecting substantial relationships in all areas. Nevertheless, it might be concluded that the continuity hypothesis in its present general form is not valid and should be elaborated and tested in a more specific way. (shrink)

Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company's positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence (...) to suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. (shrink)

This article examines the government affairs activities of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. The article develops hypotheses founded on resource dependence theory that examine organizational and environmental factors that might influence subsidiary government affairs activities. Primary data were gathered from 91 foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based companies. Results from the empirical tests suggest that subsidiary top managers have a strong influence on the administration of their subsidiaries' government affairs activities.

R.S. Peters' arguments for the worthwhileness of theoretical activities are intended to justify education per se, on the assumption that education is necessarily a matter of initiating people into theoretical activities. If we give up this assumption, we can ask whether Peters' arguments might serve instead to justify the academic curriculum over other curricular arrangements. For this they would need to show that theoretical activities are not only worthwhile but, in some relevant sense, more worthwhile than (...) class='Hi'>activities of other kinds. I argue that Peters' hedonistic and transcendental arguments do not show this, but that his account of theoretical activities is suggestive of an instrumental argument which might fit the bill. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Apeiron Jahrgang: 47 Heft: 2 Seiten: 230-244.

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom concerning the impact of the Citizens United v. FEC decision by examining the flow of corporate money into the 2012 election. The decision, which is consistent with most prior case law and was not a radical departure, promoted the use of super PACs and 501-c committees for political money that were not widely used by corporations, and the super PACs and c-4 committees were largely ineffective in the 2012 election. They also did not produce (...) a marked advantage for the Republican Party, especially in the presidential election. The Citizens United decision did, however, lead to other legal and regulatory developments in an effort to promote greater disclosure, though those developments have not been successful. Investors have been somewhat more successful in promoting limits on corporate political spending through shareholder proposals. Some state laws and upcoming court cases maylimit other restrictions on political contributions. (shrink)

Problems with religion have always been and remain one of the most important in the context of organization of state and public life.And today for Ukraine the issues of guaranteeing, full protection, protection of the right to freedom of conscience, religion, activities of religious organizations, including religious minorities are very relevant.This is due, above all, to those historical scales, the processes that have taken place during the last decade in all spheres of social life, including in the spiritual, religious-ideological (...) plane of it. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends a way to translate Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations from a semiotic standpoint. This turn builds on Semiosic Translation. 102–130), a framework that advances the interaction of sign systems as a necessary point of departure in the translation process. From this vantage, the key term “Bild,” is analyzed, explained and retranslated into English. This term evinces high levels of complexity and variability that cannot be captured by traditional linguistic translations. In applying a (...) semiotic approach, any iteration of Bild is characterized as reflecting the author’s intentions at a given moment. This semiotic reading seeks to provide semioticians, translators, and philosophers with new conceptual tools leading to an understanding of translation as a systemic operation not confined to the realm of subjective interpretation. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume offer the first comprehensive effort to describe and analyse the collection, classification, presentation and methodology of information in the knowledge society of medieval Islam, as well as the rational sciences of Hellenistic origin.

Frankfurt gave an account of “bullshit” as a statement made without regard to truth or falsity. Austin argued that a large amount of language consists of speech acts aimed at goals other than truth or falsity. We don't want our account of bullshit to include all performatives. I develop a modification of Frankfurt's account that makes interesting and useful categorizations of various speech acts as bullshit or not and show that this account generalizes to many other kinds of act as (...) well. I show that this illuminates some of Graeber's classification of “bullshit jobs,” though it doesn't fully agree with it. (shrink)

Load monitoring in basketball is fundamental to develop training programs, maximizing performance while reducing injury risk. However, information regarding the load associated with specific activity patterns during competition is limited. This study aimed at assessing the external load associated with high-intensity activities recorded during official basketball games, with respect to different activity patterns, playing positions, and activities performed with or without ball. Eleven male basketball players competing in the Lithuanian third division were recruited for this study. Three in-season (...) games were assessed via time-motion analysis and microsensors. Specifically, the high-intensity activities including sprints, high-intensity specific movements and jumps were identified and subsequently the external load [PlayerLoad™ and PlayerLoad™/min ] of each activity was determined. Linear mixed models were used to examine differences in PL, PL/min and mean duration between activity pattern, playing positions and activities performed with or without ball. Results revealed PL was lower in jumps compared to sprints [p < 0.001, effect size = 0.68] and HSMs, while PL/min was greater in sprints compared to jumps. Jumps displayed shorter duration compared to sprints and HSMs, with HSMs lasting longer than sprints. Jumps duration was longer in backcourt than frontcourt players. When considering activity patterns combined, PL and duration were greater without ball. Regarding HSMs, PL/min was higher with ball, while duration was longer without ball. The current findings suggest that external load differences in high-intensity activities exist among activity patterns and between activities performed with and without ball, while no differences were found between playing positions. Practitioners should consider these differences when designing training sessions. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial for raising public awareness and support toward addressing the climate crisis. However, using climate change mitigation as the cause for blockage, vandalism, and harassment activities might be counterproductive and risk causing negative repercussions and declining public support. The paper describes a dataset of metadata of 89 blockage, vandalism, and harassment events happening in recent years. The dataset comprises three main categories: 1) Events, 2) Activists, and 3) Consequences. For researchers interested in environmental activism, climate change, (...) and sustainability, the dataset is helpful in studying the effectiveness and appropriateness of strategies to raise public awareness and support. For researchers in the field of security studies and green criminology, the dataset offers resources to study features and impacts of blockage, vandalism, and harassment events. The Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed to validate the dataset. Consequently, the estimated result aligns with the Mindsponge Theory’s theoretical reasoning. (shrink)

According to an influential account of the new mechanistic philosophy of science, entities and activities compose mechanisms. However, the new mechanists have paid too little attention to activities. Critics have charged that accounts of activities in the new mechanism literature are philosophically uninformative and opaque. This paper defends a novel account of causally productive activities, which I call the Hybrid Account, that marries the two dominant philosophical approaches to causation: production and difference-making. The Hybrid Account of (...) Activities (HAA) identifies causally productive activities as robust difference-makers to the next stage of a mechanism. The Hybrid Account provides attractive solutions to causal identification and causal selection problems faced by earlier activities views. (shrink)

The purpose of the study. This study aims to identify the prevalence of participants in physical activities, the motivation needed by the students to engage in the activity, challenges encountered by the implementors, health benefits, and recommendations and suggestions needed for the improvement of the implementation. -/- Materials and methods. A systematic analysis of the data from different articles was conducted using Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) scoping review framework. -/- Results. It was found that the implementation of active recreational (...) activities offers different health benefits to the youth, physical literacy and orientation and motivation played a vital role in the implementation of the recreational activities. -/- Conclusions. Therefore, the implementation of active recreational activities must be strengthened in schools not just for the sake of participation but because they are motivated to. And engagement in these activities must not only be limited to school grounds but also engaged at home and in the community. (shrink)

This study introduces 'time-specific' analysis of economic processes. Economic processes are conventionally analysed from one point in time to another over a series of time units - days, weeks, or years. By contrast, these time-specific models focus on the temporal character of events within the unit time - their timing, duration, and sequence - utilizing the information that is lost in the macroscopic time perspective of standard economic theory. What time-specific analysis reveals are economic and technological characteristics of goods and (...) services - prices and cost behaviour and temporal mobility or immobility within the unit time - that affect capital productivity and its utilization, optimal schedules of production, work, and consumption, least-cost methods of producing time-shaped outputs, and efficient welfare-maximizing behavior in time-specific, including peak-load, markets. (shrink)

The examination of "Taiwanese Philosophy" is intricately influenced by the complex meanings of its terms4, fostering a range of interpretations and understandings that play a crucial role in the methodological discussions on how Taiwanese philosophical ideas are analyzed and developed. I highlight that the conventional approaches to interpreting "Taiwanese Philosophy" are mainly divided into two models: the PIT framework, signifying "Philosophical activities in Taiwan," and the TP framework, indicating "Taiwanese Philosophy noted for its unique subjectivity" (see Hung & Gao (...) 2018)5. In the early twentieth century, Mou Zongsan's emergence of New Confucianism shaped the academic reception towards the PIT model and elicited critiques of the TP perspective. This trend guided scholars in Chinese philosophy towards the CPIT (Chinese Philosophy in Taiwan) approach for deciphering "Taiwanese Philosophy," typically viewing it as a form of "Chinese philosophical endeavors in Taiwan." The prevailing contemporary academic opinion posits that initial supporters of New Confucianism failed to recognize Taiwanese philosophy’s unique characteristics and position following colonialism, reducing it to the CPIT model. This stance places "Taiwanese Philosophy" within the broader realm of Chinese Philosophy, highlighting the hierarchical differences between Chinese and Taiwanese philosophical traditions, which later drew substantial critique from supporters of Western liberalism and decolonization efforts. Recently, the importance of "Taiwanese Philosophy" and "Taiwanese Theory" has been increasingly acknowledged, with a growing agreement that "Taiwanese Philosophy," ideally interpreted through the TP model6, mirrors Taiwan's collective ethos and academic value rather than the more exhaustive PIT classification, which encompasses diverse philosophical lineages. Proponents of TP recognize the historical importance of the PIT model in documenting the evolution of Taiwanese Philosophy but strongly dispute its completeness for grasping the essence of "Taiwanese Philosophy." I intend to argue that, notwithstanding the recent criticisms against the PIT approach, revisiting PIT with the aid of extensive textual collections, cultural archives, and the study of intellectual history might offer a solid basis for a deeper appreciation of TP. It will explore how the PIT model can lead to significant misunderstandings by introducing two main biases: the belief that PIT sufficiently encapsulates "Taiwanese Philosophy," and the limitation of PIT to a mere geographical context. In addressing these biases, I offer a potential amicable reinterpretation and reassess the critical elements for a metaphysical description of the subjectivity emphasized in TP. -/- Keywords: Optimal interpretation of Taiwanese Philosophy, Subjectivity and Agency, Genealogy of Knowledge, Methodology of Constructing Theories, Characteristics of Regional Philosophy. (shrink)

Since its formation in 1947, the World Medical Association (WMA) has been a leading voice in international medical ethics. The WMA’s principal ethics activity over the years has been policy development on a wide variety of issues in medical research, medical practice and health care delivery. With the establishment of a dedicated Ethics Unit in 2003, the WMA’s ethics activities have intensified in the areas of liaison, outreach and product development. Initial priorities for the Ethics Unit have been the (...) review of paragraph 30 of the Declaration of Helsinki, the expansion of the Ethics Unit section of the WMA website and the development of an ethics manual for medical students everywhere. (shrink)

Since its formation in 1947, the World Medical Association (WMA) has been a leading voice in international medical ethics. The WMA’s principal ethics activity over the years has been policy development on a wide variety of issues in medical research, medical practice and health care delivery. With the establishment of a dedicated Ethics Unit in 2003, the WMA’s ethics activities have intensified in the areas of liaison, outreach and product development. Initial priorities for the Ethics Unit have been the (...) review of paragraph 30 of the Declaration of Helsinki, the expansion of the Ethics Unit section of the WMA website and the development of an ethics manual for medical students everywhere. (shrink)