Intrauterine insemination is one of many treatments provided to infertility patients. Many factors such as, but not limited to, quality of semen, the age of a woman, and reproductive hormone levels contribute to infertility. Therefore, the aim of our study is to establish a statistical probability concerning the prediction of which groups of patients have a very good or poor prognosis for pregnancy after IUI insemination. For that purpose, we compare the results of two analyses: Cluster Analysis and Kohonen Neural (...) Networks. The k-means algorithm from the clustering methods was the best to use for selecting patients with a good prognosis but the Kohonen Neural Networks was better for selecting groups of patients with the lowest chances for pregnancy. (shrink)

The paper offers a new model of politics adequate for the Anthropocene epoch. It uses the concept of ‘heterotopia’ to argue for the environmental potential of Arendtian political philosophy. The adopted meaning of heterotopia combines its Foucauldian (as interpreted by L. De Cauter and M. Dehaene) and medical sources. It is argued that, thus understood, the concept can be applied to the Arendtian idea of judgment. In this capacity, the concept of heterotopia is both politically foundational and environmentally relevant. It (...) helps us maintain the idea of politics as humanely construed activity, while recognising that political actors are also natural beings, whose actions draw on and affect the non-human world. (shrink)

Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in (...) the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state. (shrink)

One of the most influential views in privacy scholarship is that privacy protects individual autonomy. On the early liberal view, the exercise of autonomy requires detachment from social and political life and privacy facilitates it. This view of privacy still informs current legal and political practice. As this view of privacy presupposes a tension between privacy and society, it is responsible for the underrating of privacy in legal and political practice. Over the last decades, liberal reflection on autonomy has shifted (...) from the early liberal understanding of autonomy as calling for detachment from social life to the idea of autonomy as socially embedded. This development has brought about a corresponding adjustment in the liberal concept of privacy: privacy has come to be seen as a social rather than merely an individual interest. The social turn in thinking about privacy has gone a long way to change the problematic image of privacy in legal and political practice. It has not gone far enough, however, to draw conclusions regarding the political relevance of privacy. I argue that we should understand autonomy as politically embedded. Revised along these lines, privacy has a political value: when we claim privacy, we do not make a claim to withdraw from political life, but rather make a claim to protect certain forms of political engagement. (shrink)

Many studies examine a stressors-professional burnout (PB) relation, but only few consider the role of ethical conflicts (ECs) in this context. The aim of this study was to characterize ECs' frequency and level of burden with them among nurses and to establish the relations between ECs' frequency, burden and PB. One hundred nurses participated in this study. ECs' frequency and burden were tested with an originally developed questionnaire. PB was examined with Maslach Burnout Inventory. Most frequent ECs concerned a nurse-patient (...) relationship. PB was positively related to ECs' frequency (r = .54; p = .001) and burden (r = .22; p = .03). Frequency of specific conflict did not imply burden with it and vice versa. ECs' frequency seems more important for PB than a level of burden with them. The most frequent and the most burdening conflicts may lead to development of PB but the less frequent and less burdening ones are also dangerous. (shrink)

Palma Dewory Moszego Kordowera jako egzemplifikacja żydowskiej kabalistycznej doktryny etycznej pod postacią imitatio dei Artykuł podejmuje zagadnienie żydowskich kabalistycznych dyrektyw etycznych,, sformułowanych w Palmie Dewory autorstwa żydowskiego mistyka kabalisty Moszego Kordowera. Czyni to w oparciu o fundamentalną ideę mistyki judaizmu – kategorię dziesięciu sefirot, które w tutejszym systemie etycznym zostały, każda z osobna, skorelowane z pożądanymi i zalecanymi ludzkimi sposobami postępowania, zachowania się wobec bliźniego. Rezultatem zalecenia wehalachta bederachaw, tj. idei naśladowania Boga – wyrażającej się tu w regule naśladowania sefirot, (...) tj. uwewnętrz¬niania, „zaszczepiania” w sobie cnót, cech moralnych immanentnych poszczególnym sefirotycznym atrybutom – jest człowiek doskonały etycznie, ergo podobający się Bogu, co stanowi wartość najwyższą religijnego Żyda. (shrink)

The concept of the responsibility to protect has generated considerable controversy since its formulation in the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereig...

The paper is focused on the problem of identification in perception. I attempt to inquire on what ground the cognitive system is able to identify an object of perception (I restrict my analysis to visual perception). Although this is an empirical question for cognitive science, I consider it using a philosophical method of analysis. But my considerations in great part are heuristic, I ask questions and rather search for the answers than give a ready solution. The questions I ask arise (...) from a theoretical philosophical inquiry made in the context of cognitive science. The key question of my paper is whether perceptual identification has any cognitive basis, i.e. does it require any concepts or any prior knowledge. I especially pay attention to the problem of representation, asking if perceptual identification is representational or not. These questions are topical today and show that the traditional philosophical approaches to perception require revision and a new critical look at old problems and controversies. (shrink)

Richard III’s courtship of Lady Anne in William Shakespeare’s King Richard III is a blend of courtly speech and sexual extravaganza. His sexual energy and power of seduction were invented by Shakespeare to enhance the theatrical effect of this figure and, at the same time, to present Richard as a tragic character. Richard’s eroticism in Act 1 Scene 2 makes him a complicated individual. Playing a seducer is one of the guises he uses to achieve his political aims on the (...) one hand, and, on the other, the pose of a sexually attractive lover enables him to put his masculinity to the test. Throughout the scene Richard is haunted by his deformity that, together with his villainy, makes him a stranger to the world and an enemy to his family and the court. In order to overcome his self-image of a disproportional cripple he manifests his sexuality towards Anne to boost his self-esteem and to confirm that the lady will accept him despite his obvious physical shortcomings. This article uses Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism and erotic desire to characterize Richard as a tragic individual and to explain the reasons behind his unexpected sexual behaviour in the seduction scene. (shrink)

Artykuł zajmuje się problemem struktury i specyfiki twierdzeń dyscyplin praktycznych wyodrębnionych obok teoretycznych w naukach empirycznych. Wymieniony problem, jak i kwestia dychotomicznego podziału nauk empirycznych, jest ciągle powodem licznych kontrowersji. Aktualnie rozpowszechniona jest, różna od pozytywistycznej, koncepcja prawa empirycznego jako zdania ściśle ogólnego, gwarantującego prawdziwość odpowiednich warunkowych zdań kontrfaktycznych. W poglądach metodologów i badaczy, uprawiających refleksję metodologiczną, zarysowały się dwa główne stanowiska o dyrektywalnej i niedyrektywelnej - opisowej strukturze twierdzeń nauk praktycznych. W ramach pierwszego stanowiska decydujący wpływ na poglądy wielu (...) metodologów wywarły koncepcje T. Kotarbińskiego i A. Podgóreckiego. W obu przypadkach kwestią wielce problematyczną jest wartość logiczna tak podejmowanych twierdzeń, analiza przykładów wykazuje, że nie są one zdaniami w sensie logicznym. Pozostałe propozycje w ramach dyrektywalnej koncepcji twierdzeń posiadają wymienione i inne niedopatrzenia natury metodologicznej. Zwrot w poglądach dotyczących twierdzeń nauk praktycznych datuje się od stwierdzenia H. Stonerta, iż nauki empiryczna nie różnią się pod względem twierdzeń. Stanowisko to nie zyskało aprobaty, ale skierowało poszukiwania uzasadnienia wyróżniania nauk praktycznych na płaszczyznę idealizacyjnej teorii nauki, również kontrowersyjnej. Zwolennicy tej koncepcji stoją na stanowisku niedyrektywalnej postaci twierdzeń i przyjmują, iż są to twierdzenia idealizacyjne, spełnione w dziedzinie typów idealnych bądź faktualno-idealizacyjne. Twierdzenia idealizacyjne są wg L. Nowaka w naukach praktycznych twierdzeniami optymalizacyjnymi, podającymi warunki realizacji ideałów i wzorów. Analiza przykładów twierdzeń optymalizacyjnych w pedagogice przeprowadzona w artykule wykazała, iż twierdzenia te charakteryzują się podrzędnością instrumentalną i aksjologlozną. Wgląd w czynności badawcze prowadzone w ramach nauk praktycznych pozwolił na ustalenie etapów poprzedzających formułowanie twierdzeń optymalizacyjnych, będących podstawą projektowania modeli realnych, a tychże modelach twierdzenia optymalizacyjne dotyczą kolejnych rozwiązań postawionego problemu optymalizacji, czyli realizowania przyjętego kryterium efektywności, równoznacznego np. z kryterium jakości w naukach technicznych. Twierdzenia optymalizacyjne są elementami teorii optymalizacyjnej, określają zależność i między wartością postulowaną w kryterium efektywności a czynnikami, od których zależy jej realizacja. Przedstawione rozważania wskazują na fakt, że metodologia nauk praktycznych jest dziedziną aktualnie rozwijającą się. Należy przypuszczać, iż wyniki jej badań znajdą zastosowanie w doskonaleniu procedury badawczej i budowanych teorii w poszczególnych naukach praktycznych. (shrink)

LEIBNIZ’S CONCEPT OF OPTIMISM IN THE INTERPRETATION OF JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET The article aims to analyze the problem of Leibniz’s optimism in the interpretation of José Ortega y Gasset. His reflections on the philosophy of Leibniz are certainly characterized by originality and innovation. Ortega is trying to set Leibniz in modern times and show the influence of his intellectual ideas on the twentieth-century philosophy. For this purpose, the Spanish thinker evokes the most popular of Leibniz’s doctrines—the doctrine of optimism. (...) Keywords: LEIBNIZ, JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET, THE DOCTRINE OF OPTIMISM Discipline: PHILOSOPHY. (shrink)

The paper revises the idea of speech as a fundamental political faculty in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. First, it is argued that, rather than as a subsystem of language, speech should be conceptualised as the expression of the embodied capacity of voice (in this respect, the paper follows Adriana Cavarero’s [2005] argument). Secondly, vocality is linked to the faculty of taste (understood as in Arendt’s reading of Kant) to locate politics in the broader order of materiality (physis).

The author raises the question of whether secret uses of power by democratic states can form a legitimate exercise of democratic authority. On the face of it, the answer seems negative. First, it is commonplace to think that in a democracy, political decisions are legitimate only if they are authorized by citizens. From this perspective, secret uses of power seem to lack democratic authority because, one argues, people cannot authorize what they are denied knowledge about. Second, the exercise of democratic (...) authority requires that citizens be able to hold officials accountable, and to do that citizens must know what officials are doing and why. Yet how can citizens call their representatives to account for secret political decisions and processes if they are denied knowledge of them? The author analyses each of these two dimensions of democratic governance and argues that secrecy, under certain conditions, may be a legitimate form of democratic governance. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to focus on pragmatic teaching in a modern school. Getting knowledge should always be connected with improving certain skills (linguistic, analytic, critical etc.). Firstly, in this work the methods of teaching and forms of statement of pragmatic aims were shown. It is pointed out what kind of skills students acquire when particular methods of leaching are used (e.g. discussions, methods of plan, dramas, press conferences, or projects) and how teaching various forms of expressing ideas (...) influences gaining competence of a sender and a receiver of messages. It is also presented how the methods let the young people develop their minds, imagination, and critical attitudes. In other words, all this allows the students to use their knowledge functionally. Moreover, the article raises the importan issue of linguistic, literary and cultural education in the sense of pragmatic teaching. Learning about a language should predominantly provide the students with learning the language (M. Nagajowa). Literary education demands some analytic skills, and encouraging to participate in culture, improving the abilities of reception of various forms of art by creative activities aim at making the young people be aware of practical usage of their knowledge. The article also underlines reading comprehension skills – extremely important with a view to the new linal secondary-school exams (Matura 2002) coming soon, and it has, according to S. Bortnowski, some ‘utilitarian dimension’. To sum up, the modern school should educate pragmatists, who experiment, initiate and use. (shrink)

Quality in clinical research may be defined as compliance with requirements together with credibility and reliability of the data obtained. Sponsors usually apply Quality Management Systems (QMS) to ensure, control, maintain, and improve quality. These systems encompass several preventive measures, tools, and controls. Standard QMS applied by clinical research sponsors may be based on ISO 9000.

This exploratory study aims at integrating the psychometric approach to studying creativity with an eye-tracking methodology and thinking-aloud protocols to potentially untangle the nuances of the creative process. Wearing eye-tracking glasses, one hundred adults solved a drawing creativity test – The Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP) – and provided spontaneous comments during this process. Indices of visual activity collected during the eye-tracking phase explained a substantial amount of variance in psychometric scores obtained in the test. More importantly, however, clear (...) signs of methodological synergy were observed when all three sources (psychometrics, eye-tracking, and coded thinking-aloud statements) were integrated. The findings illustrate benefits of using a blended methodology for a more insightful analysis of creative processes, including creative learning and creative problem-solving. (shrink)

English title: Ricoeur and Derrida — the Heritage of Death. In this article the author juxtaposes two different attempts of defending life against Heidegger’s horizon of death (Sein zum Tode) (the survie (survival) of Jacques Derrida and the “Living up to Death” of Paul Ricoeur). Their false proximity introduces a new insight into the discussion about the paradoxical positiveness of deconstruction. Ricoeur’s concept of life makes impossible the understanding of deconstruction as faithfulness to the other not in his identity, but (...) precisely in his otherness. (shrink)

The paper brings together Steven Vogel’s concept of the environment and the category of the world in Hannah Arendt’s and Malcom Ferdinand’s interpretations. First, the similarities between the concepts are shown: they both refer to the networks of things and relationships and, as such, emphasize the political dimension of ecological concerns. Second, it is argued Vogel’s discursive model of politics can be enriched with the aid of the model of non-appropriative relating implied by the concept of the world. Two amendments (...) to Vogel’s project are analyzed. It is shown that non-appropriative relating provides additional support for the central value of Vogel’s approach, i.e., non-domination. In the next step, it is argued the model offers insights into the problem that Vogel considers important but impossible to solve, namely—the question of politically relating to non-human beings. (shrink)

This article is of both a historical and philosophical nature. It aims to present the intellectual relationship between the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset and one of the most influential German thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century, Nicolai Hartmann. It is based on hitherto unknown and unpublished correspondence that the philosophers conducted intermittently between 1907 and 1912. The correspondence was found in the archives of the José Ortega y Gasset – Gregorio Marañón Foundation in Madrid along (...) with other letters that show the relationship between the Spanish author and representatives of the neo-Kantian Marburg School, including its founder Hermann Cohen, as well as Paul Natorp, Ernst Cassirer, and Heinz Heimsoeth. (shrink)

Język nauk pedagogicznych wielokrotnie poddawany był krytyce. Jego porządkowanie należy rozpocząć od sprecyzowania pojęć: „wychowanie”, „kształcenie” i „nauczanie”, uważanych za podstawowe pojęcia pedagogiczne, a dotąd nieokreślone w sposób zyskujący aprobatę przynajmniej większości pedagogów. Większość kontrowersji i sporów dotyczy przede wszystkim treści i zakresu pojęcia „wychowanie ". Różnorodność ujęć i sposobów użycia tego terminu powoduje trudności w porozumiewaniu się, wieloznaczność i chaos w dyskusjach i rozważaniach pedagogicznych. Analiza literatury ze zwróceniem szczególnej uwagi na definicje omawianego pojęcia i codzienna praktyka pedagogiczna pozwoliły (...) na przeprowadzenie próby uświadomienia wszystkim posługującym się językiem nauk pedagogicznych trudności, z jakimi borykają się pedagodzy teoretycy w precyzowaniu swego języka. (shrink)

The main thesis of the paper is very simple, namely that the cognitive system is a representational system. The cognitive system will be defined as a system which is able to realize cognitive functions such as perception, symbolic thinking, understanding and reflection. Such a system is further characterized as: cognitively open and at the same time relatively isolated, representational, structurally complex and many-dimensional, dynamic and having functional plasticity (cognitively adaptive) and also having the capacity for self-determination. The analysis will be (...) focused on the characterization of representation (which will be defined as a certain kind of content) and on the types of representations in the cognitive system (i.e. perceptual and conceptual representations, the representation of the body and the representation of "self"). (shrink)

In the teaching of John Paul II’s the need of solidarity globalization is particularly stressed out as well as that of humanization of globalization processes. With the aim of doing it, one should be guided by unchanging social values: the truth, freedom, justice, solidarity, subsidiarity, love. The globalization has two faces: ▪ the benefits which it brings to the world, individual countries and its main beneficiaries, that is international corporations. ▪ negative effects which the developing countries and all people of (...) the world experience (climatic changes, emission of harmful substances, drug addiction, moral nihilism, gradual decrease of human importance). It happens that complex processes caused by economical globalization make their way towards changing a human being into an element of a market, a bartered good or a factor devoid of meaning for decisive choices. As a consequence, a person may feel annihilated by impersonal mechanisms on a world’s scale and may gradually lose his own identity and personal dignity. Key words. (shrink)