Industrial engineering is a field dealing with optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, and materials. Hence, the scope of industrial engineering is wide and includes various fields, from manufacturing, through banking, different types of services, to administration and healthcare. Various industrial engineering tools could be implemented in healthcare settings. The use of such tools is popular in western economies. For example, simulation modelling of services is (...) popular in the US. However, there is still a very limited number of case studies on the application of such tools in healthcare that would consider the Polish economy. The aim of this paper is to present selected successful applications of lean management tools in the Polish healthcare. This may serve as an inspiration for healthcare organizations to search for and implement methodological approaches to improve their services. (shrink)

Igor Aleksander and Helen B. Morton, Int. J. Mach. Conscious. 06, 67 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400113.

Aleksander Peczenik, Lund Introduction to the Proceedings of the 21st IVR World Congress General Information This volume opens the Proceedings of the 21st ...

a This is an outline of a coherence theory of law. Its basic ideas are: reasonable support and weighing of reasons. All the rest is commentary.a (TM) These words at the beginning of the preface of this book perfectly indicate what On Law and Reason is about. It is a theory about the nature of the law which emphasises the role of reason in the law and which refuses to limit the role of reason to the application of deductive logic. (...) In 1989, when the first edition of On Law and Reason appeared, this book was ground breaking for several reasons. It provided a rationalistic theory of the law in the language of analytic philosophy and based on a thorough understanding of the results, including technical ones, of analytic philosophy. That was not an obvious combination at the time of the booka (TM)s first appearance and still is not. The result is an analytical rigor that is usually associated with positivist theories of the law, combined with a philosophical position that is not natural law in a strict sense, but which shares with it the emphasis on the role of reason in determining what the law is. If only for this rare combination, On Law and Reason still deserves careful study. On Law and Reason also foreshadowed and influenced a development in the field of Legal Logic that would take place in the nineties of the 20th century, namely the development of non-monotonic (a defeasiblea (TM)) logics for the analysis of legal reasoning. In the new Introduction to this second edition, this aspect is explored in some more detail. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to show that instrumental rationality and utility that have been used in economics for many years does not work well. What is presented in the article is how significant the influence of utilitarianism has been on economics and why the economists get rid of humans’ goals and motivations. It is shown in the article that the human who decides in present is absolutely different from the human who decides over time. Many economists neglected this (...) problem because they wanted to have an effective and simple model. Becker’s economic method is presented as a dead end to which economics has been brought to. It is impossible to connect different selves of one human being by using the utility measure. The works of Schelling and J.S. Mill are used to explain this impossibility. The conclusion of this article is that instrumental rationality and utility have affected economics significantly. But, this simplified view on human nature is no longer valid. Hence, economics needs to think not only about the means but also about the human goals. Economics needs to rebuff relativism and show people how to achieve well-being. If we want to help people with their self-governance, we will have to choose reason over emotions. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze what kind of understanding of justice prevails at the beginning of the 21st century. I will shortly show the evolution of justice, concerning on the ancient and Enlightenment understandings of this concept. I shall attempt to justify the thesis that in the contemporary world the factors that play the most important part in the evaluation of justice are aesthetic ones. The essence of the aesthetic evaluation I will describe by refer to the (...) Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” where he analyses the specific character of the judgments of beauty. I will try to show that the characteristics which Kant ascribed to beauty havebeen transferred by modern philosophy to moral judgments and categories – specially to the judgment concerning justice. Finally I will focus on the contemporary dispute concerning economic human rights – this is a good concrete example for my thesis that today our understanding of justice (or better “social justice”) is based on the aesthetics arguments. (shrink)

The phenomenon of weakness of will – not doing what we perceive as the best action – is not recognized by neoclassical economics due to the axiomatic assumptions of the revealed preference theory (RPT) that people do what is best for them. However, present bias shows that people have different preferences over time. As they cannot be compared by the utility measurements, economists need to normatively decide between selves (short- versus long-term preferences). A problem is that neoclassical economists perceive RPT (...) as value-free and incorporate present bias within the economic framework. The axiomatic assumption that people do what is best for them leads to theoretical and practical dilemmas. This work examines weakness of will to resolve some shortcomings of RPT. The concept of intention is used to provide multiple self conception with the framework to decide between selves, which had not been done before. The paper concludes that individuals should not always follow their revealed preferences (desires) but the intentions (reason) because the latter indicates what people really want. (shrink)

This paper explores Nicholas of Cusa’s framing of the De pace fidei as a dialogue taking place incaelo rationis. On the one hand, this framing allows Nicholas of Cusa to argue that all religious rites presuppose the truth of a single, unified faith and so temporally manifest divine logos in a way accommodated to the historically unique conventions of different political communities. On the other hand, at the end of the De pace fidei, the interlocutors in the heavenly dialogue are (...) enjoined to return to earth and lead their countrymen in a gradual conversion to the acceptance of rites which would explicitly acknowledge the metaphysically presupposed transcendent unity of all true faiths. In light of these two aspects of the literary framing of the De pace fidei, the question that motivates this paper concerns the extent to which the understanding of history subtending Cusanus’ temporal political aims is consistent with the understanding of history grounded in his metaphysical presupposition that there is una religio in omni diversitate rituum. In addressing this question, I shall argue that the literary strategy of the De pace fidei sacrifices Nicholas of Cusa’s apologetic doctrinal aims insofar as the text creates an allegorical space in which the tension between its literal and figurative dimensions assigns to its readers the task of choosing their own orientations to the significance of history as a foundation for future action. (shrink)

In this paper I accomplish two goals: first, I briefly reconstruct Hans-Georg Gadamer’s views on language, included foremost in Truth and Method. I discuss if and how can we analyse language in the hermeneutic way; what is Gadamer’s view on philosophy of language and linguistics; what is the hermeneutic priority of the question and why choosing the logic of question may lead to a conflict between philosophical hermeneutics and analytic philosophy. Then, on such base I show correlations, which can be (...) traced between hermeneutic philosophy and other contemporary language research disciplines – generally understood linguistics, analytic philosophy of language and interdisciplinary discourse research. Taking a closer look at each of the mentioned disciplines I focus on trying to answer the question regarding their ideological and methodological connections with the hermeneutic way of thinking. The article ends with a conclusion, that interdisciplinary discourse analysis produces the highest hopes to analyse language in a non-objective matter, which is the way that Gadamer favoured. (shrink)

Epistemicism associates vagueness with ignorance produced by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions in our language resulting from small changes in usage. The recent literature (Caie 2012; Magidor 2018; Yli-Vakkuri 2016) points to a missing piece in the epistemicist theory of vagueness, namely a clear account of the semantics of the definiteness operator Δ. The fundamentals of the epistemicist theory are well understood. However, the technical work of defining the definiteness operator has proven difficult. There are several desiderata that we (...) would like Δ to satisfy. For instance, we would like the epistemicist notion of ‘definiteness’ to interact well with modal operators and validate intuitive principles like ‘necessarily, if φ is definitely true, then φ is true’. Providing an account that would meet all such desiderata has eluded the epistemicists so far. In this paper, I present a novel version of a multidimensional model inspired by the work of Robert Stalnaker and David Kaplan. Using this model, I provide an account of epistemicist definiteness that meets our desiderata. (shrink)

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

The epistemicist theory aims to explain ignorance due to vagueness by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions across close possible worlds resulting from shiftiness in usage. This explanation is challenged by the Omniscient Speaker Puzzle (Sennet in Philos Stud 161(2):273–285, 2012). Suppose that an omniscient speaker, Barney, who knows all the facts about usage and how these facts determine the intensions of expressions, cooks up a scheme to stabilise the intension of a normally semantically plastic term like ‘rich’. It seems (...) that ‘rich’ would display all the phenomena associated with vagueness without being semantically plastic, thus making the epistemicist explanation of ignorance due to vagueness insufficient. In this paper, I present a few choice points for epistemicism that arise as a result of the puzzle. (shrink)

Legal doctrine in Continental European law (scientia iuris) consists of professional legal writings, e.g., handbooks, monographs, etc., whose task is to systematize and interpret valid law. By production of general and defeasible theories, legal doctrine aims to present the law as a coherent net of principles, rules, meta‐rules, and exceptions, at different levels of abstraction, connected by support relations. The argumentation used to achieve coherence involves not only description and logic but also evaluative (normative) steps. However, sceptics criticise juristic doctrine (...) for its normative character, ontological obscurity, vagueness, fragmentation, and locality. The author answers this criticism pointing out the following. Normative reason is possible. Liberal ontology, admitting such entities as morally justified law, is possible as well. The vagueness of legal doctrine can be construed as defeasibility. Defeasibility is inevitable in the law and in human thinking in general. Fragmentation of legal doctrine is not absolute. Its theories are linked to overarching moral theories. Finally, locality is not absolute either. Though sometimes restricted to a given state, theories of legal doctrine display relevant similarities to corresponding theories in other states. (shrink)

Much discussion on the singularity is based on the assumption that the design ability of a human can be transferred into an AI system, then rendered autonomous and self-improving. I argue here that this cannot be foreseen from the current state of the art of automatic or evolutionary design. Assuming that this will happen 'some day' is a doubtful step andmay be in the class of 'searching for the Philosopher's Stone'.