I investigate: to what extent do folk ascriptions of lying differ between casual and courtroom contexts? to what extent does motive to lie influence ascriptions of trust, mental states, and lying judgments? to what extent are lying judgments consistent with previous ascriptions of communicated content? Following the Supreme Court’s Bronston judgment, I expect: averaged lying judgments to be similar in casual and courtroom contexts; motive to lie to influence levels of trust, mental states ascriptions, and patterns of lying judgments; retrospective (...) judgments of lying, after being presented with the state of the world, to be inconsistent with previous judgments of communicated content: participants hold the protagonist responsible for content she did not communicate. I performed a survey experiment on the Qualtrics platform. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. I employed standard Likert scales and forced-choice questions. I found that: average lying judgments are similar in casual and courtroom contexts; motive to lie decreases trust ascription and increases lying judgment; judgments of lying are inconsistent with previous judgments of communicated content: participants hold the protagonist responsible for content they did not communicate. Perjury ascriptions are inconsistent. The Supreme Court’s worries expressed in the Bronston judgment are well founded. This article helps reforming jury instructions in perjury cases. (shrink)

Legal and moral luck goes against the basic principle of criminal law that responsibility ascriptions are based on the mental state of the perpetrator, rather than merely the outcome of her action. If outcome should not play a decisive role in responsibility ascriptions, the attempt versus perpetration distinction becomes more difficult to justify. One potential justification is that we never know whether the attempter would not have resigned from pursuing her criminal intent even at the last moment. However, this paper (...) argues that resigning from criminal intent and trying to stop the criminal outcome, which is called the renunciation defense, can be just as subject to outcome luck as the attempt versus perpetration distinction. And yet the availability of the renunciation defense in court is outcome dependent. I show with a series of experiments (N = 479) that outcome dependence for the renunciation defense is perceived as unjust and discuss the implications for the renunciation defense as well as attempt versus perpetration distinction. (shrink)

In the present paper we argue that although the semantics of both legal and moral statements can be explained with the use of a unified framework called hybrid or quasi-expressivism (Finlay & Plunkett, 2018), there still is an important difference in the semantics of moral and legal terms. Namely, while the truth conditions of legal statements are widely intersubjectively shared, this is not the case with moral statements. We demonstrate this difference using the example of the ex aequo et bono (...) adjudication method. In the first background section we explain what is hybrid or quasi-expressivism as well as what is the standard account of the semantics of moral and legal statements. In the next section, we explain in detail how we aim to demonstrate that the semantics of legal terms and the semantics of some moral terms, such as ‘goodness’ or ‘fairness’, differ importantly. In order to illustrate the difference, we next explain the ex aequo et bono adjudication method and provide examples of cases in which this method has been employed. Crucially, this method is extremely rarely used, which highlights the difference between the semantics of legal and moral statements. Finally, we provide our interpretation of why ex aequo et bono adjudication is so seldom employed and what consequences this has for a theory of the semantics of legal and moral terms. (shrink)

The essay “Practising ‘cruel optimism’: Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel” delves into Mantel’s novel through the lens of Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism. Berlant’s construct, rooted in the pursuit of conventional notions of a fulfilling existence, highlights the protagonists’ endeavors in Saudi Arabia as a postcolonial adventure bound to end in disillusionment. Mantel’s portrayal of Frances Shore and her husband Andrew illuminates the tension between their aspirations for financial security and the disconcerting realities of cultural displacement and (...) legal constraints under Sharia law. The city’s architecture mirrors Frances’s sense of unease, resembling oppressive structures associated with fascist regimes. The portrayal of Jeddah’s construction environment, echoing totalitarian aesthetic reminiscent of fascist regimes, serves as a compelling allegory for Frances’s sense of entrapment within a society where her agency is circumscribed by gendered and legal strictures. Casting Frances as a contemporary iteration of the Gothic heroine ensnared within her domicile, Mantel explores the disjuncture between the alleged benevolence of religious doctrine and the punitive nature of its legal apparatus. Frances’s interrogation of this dissonance not only underscores the pervasive nature of cruel optimism but also hints at the inherently paradoxical nature of faith systems that simultaneously offer solace and impose constraints. Through its fluid engagement with concepts of cruel optimism, urbanity, and gender dynamics, the essay invites readers to contemplate the multifaceted interplay between individual aspiration and systemic coercion within the affluent and autocratic socio-cultural landscape. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie wyzwań i trudności, jakie mogą pojawić się w procesie oceny przez komisje etyczne projektów badawczych bazujących na jakościowych technikach gromadzenia danych uzyskiwanych od osób świadczących różnego rodzaju usługi seksualne. Badania te zwykle podlegają ocenie komisji etycznych ze względu na ryzyko krzywdy dla uczestników, którzy postrzegani są jako szczególnie „podatni na zranienie”. Jednocześnie ze względu na stygmatyzację społeczną, jaka wiąże się ze świadczeniem usług seksualnych, zarówno badacze, jak i osoby uczestniczące w badaniu i wchodzące w skład komisji (...) etycznych mogą mieć swoje wyobrażenia i oczekiwania co do tego, jak powinny przebiegać etyczne badania w tym obszarze. Odwołując się do doświadczeń badaczek anglosaskich, omówię, jak te oczekiwania oraz wymagania komisji etycznych zderzają się, stawiając badaczy przed koniecznością spełniania rozbieżnych czy wręcz sprzecznych oczekiwań różnych aktorów społecznych. Zaproponuję także, w jakim kierunku mógłby zmienić się sposób działania rodzimych komisji etycznych, aby proces uzyskiwania ich aprobaty był bardziej demokratyczny i otwarty na zróżnicowane potrzeby tak badaczy, jak i osób uczestniczących w badaniach. (shrink)

Le Discours contre le Discours « De Domnus » rend compte d’un triple débat, dans lequel trois personnages interviennent sur la question des « incorporels », point difficile de la doctrine stoïcienne. La polémique rédigée par le stoïcien Bardesane, en réaction aux positions du platonicien Albinus, a été examinée par Éphrem le Syrien, chrétien et polémiste antibardesanite. Il est l’auteur du Discours et notre seule source d’information sur cette controverse. Or, la manière dont Éphrem aborde la question litigieuse est spontanément (...) platonicienne, parfois proche du stoïcisme, mais fondamentalement, il s’agit d’une étonnante lecture théologique d’un thème qui fait débat entre les écoles philosophiques. (shrink)

The original text of the Constitution of the United States of America, written over 200 years ago, constitutes the supreme source of law in the American legal system. The seven articles and twenty seven amendments dictate understanding of fundamental principles of the federation’s functioning and its citizens’ rights. The paper aims to present the evolution of the U.S. Constitution’s language interpretation as provided by its final interpreter - the Supreme Court of the United States. Example of the Second Amendment will (...) be analyzed to present the change in understanding of the language grammar and, as a consequence, the sense of the right to keep and bear arms in the light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of District of Columbia v Heller ). It will argue for the accuracy of statement of Charles Evans Hughes, former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is...”. (shrink)

Bullying has damaging short-term and long-term consequences. Research suggests that perpetrators have low empathy and high moral disengagement, but relations between these variables are unclear and are rarely integrated in a single study. Thus, the objective of this study was to discover if empathy and moral disengagement mechanisms were related to bullying perpetration. This study was conducted with 904 Polish adolescents enrolled in 6 rural and urban upper secondary schools. High affective empathy predicted lower bullying perpetration. Moral-disengagement mechanisms such as (...) moral justification, euphemistic language, advanced comparison, and distorting consequences were uniquely related to increased bullying perpetration. Low affective empathy was also uniquely related to increased perpetration. These findings have important implication for school policy and practice. (shrink)

In this paper I will tackle three issues. First, I aim to briefly outline the backbone of semantic minimalism, while focusing on the idea of ‘liberal truth conditions’ developed by Emma Borg in her book ‘Minimal Semantics’. Secondly, I will provide an account of the three principal views in legal interpretation: intentionalism, textualism and purposivism. All of them are based on a common denominator labelled by lawyers ‘literal meaning’. In the paper I suggest a novel way of viewing this common (...) denominator as almost identical to the Borgian ‘liberal truth conditions’, at least at a conceptual level. In the third section I will focus on the conceptual similarities between the two ideas. I intend to depict that, although legal theorists do not admit it explicitly, they treat literal legal meaning as minimal propositional content that can be ascribed liberal truth conditions. There are two main objections to liberal truth conditions: their under-determinacy and unintuitive character. Both objections can be applied to ‘literal meaning’. However, the idea of liberal truth conditions gives an adequate account of what lawyers call literal meaning and is helpful in explaining the mechanism of understanding of provisions and reasons leading to the necessity of statutory interpretation. (shrink)

Comme l’attestent les textes relatifs à la cosmologie de Bardesane, le monde est venu à l’existence à partir des esṭuksē / ītyē, qui correspondraient aux éléments primordiaux de la tradition philosophique grecque. Bien que la cosmologie de Bardesane soit déjà étudiée, les témoignages au sujet des esṭuksē / ītyē contiennent des contradictions difficiles à expliquer. Le présent article propose une nouvelle interprétation de la doctrine de Bardesane, fondée sur la comparaison avec la cosmologie d’Aristote. L’approche aristotélicienne du mouvement des éléments, (...) de leurs qualités et leurs actions réciproques, donne une meilleure compréhension des points obscurs de la doctrine bardesanite et permet de retrouver la cohérence de celle-ci. En outre, le débat engagé par Aristote avec les théories atomistes aide à comprendre la place des perdē – atomes – dans le système de Bardesane. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 191-222, June 2022.

In the present study, clinically depressed and non-depressed adults described the events that happened to them each day for two weeks, and these descriptions were content analys...

This book proposes a novel, descriptive theory that unveils the linguistic mechanisms lurking behind judicial decisions. It offers a comprehensive account of the ongoing debate, as well as a novel solution to the problem of understanding legal pragmatics. Linguistic pragmatics is based on a theory created by Paul Grice, who observed that people usually convey more than just the amalgam of the meaning of the words they use. He labeled this surplus of meaning a “conversational implicature.” This book addresses the (...) question of whether implicatures occur in the legal language, firstly illustrating why the classic Gricean theory is not applicable to the description of legal language and proposing a novel approach based on a modification of Andrei Marmor’s “strategic speech.” Subsequently, it analyzes neo-Gricean theories and their limited use for describing the mechanisms of legal interpretation, and discusses the possibility of pragmatic enrichment of legal content as well as the notion of completeness of a legal proposition. Lastly, it illustrates how the developed theory works in practice, with examples from penal and civil law cases. The book is helpful to legal practitioners, since it provides insights into the reasons for and linguistic mechanisms behind courts’ decisions, but also to philosophers of law, philosophers of language, linguists and non-experts wishing to better understand the mechanisms of legal decision making. (shrink)

The education is, no doubt, a fundamental question in Plato’s thought. The Republic, considerate by many people as his masterpiece, takes care of this aspect, not without directing it through a political obliquity. In the greek society that honoured, above all, the formation of free citizens, education and politics were necessarily together. Nevertheless, we want to punctuate how, to Plato, both of them are subordinate to the ontological question.

Le livre d’Alexandre (Zeke) Mazur [= AZM] est une édition posthume de sa thèse de doctorat soutenue en 2010 à l’Université de Chicago. Cette publication était très attendue, car, bien avant que la soutenance ait eu lieu, les vues originales d’AZM sur la mystique plotinienne attiraient l’attention des spécialistes. Dans les années 2003-2004, le jeune chercheur a fait une entrée remarquée dans le débat universitaire, en publiant un long article en deux parties : « Unio Magica, Part 1 : On (...) the M... (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present ways in which gestures combine with the verbal layer of an utterance, thus reflecting embodied thinking and the rooting of abstract concepts in human bodily experience. The article discusses two different ways in which gestures, described in the literature as metaphoric, illustrate both linguistically expressed metaphors and abstract concepts that are not verbally expressed as metaphors. The data analyzed in this paper have been taken from speeches of politicians and other public figures.

Every professionally managed project is performed accordingly to precise defined principles, methods and a plan. As well, IT projects, which are major business ventures globally these days, are governed with similar approach. Defining objectives and project framework, selecting resources, drafting schedules are a fundamental skills, which can be taught at every basic business course. It seems to be that it is enough to acquire appropriate knowledge in area of project management to be successful IT manager in spite of the size (...) and the type of the venture. Still, only 16% ERP projects are successful, 84% projects do not meet deadlines and business goals and 78% projects overrun budgets. By paradox, to solve above presented business, economic problem it is necessary to address it by developing axiological research. It is based on the principle that empathy is the third perspective that is build in to the well know Game Theory model which consists of two perspectives: trust and loyalty (Deutsch). In this case, in the process of selecting an appropriate type of the game, between a customer and a vendor, we have to base on a better understanding of needs and axiological profiles on both sites. In other words, if the business goal of the partner is better defined and understood and if it is assumed that the success of one site depends on the other, the final effect, by definition, is almost guaranteed. To achieved that, it is a must for every IT manager to work on developing, the so called business empathy instead of just useless promoting the assertive business philosophy. (shrink)

At the beginning of my article I present the themes, symbols and quotations which refer to the Bible and I discuss their functions. Afterwards, I show the image of God embodied in Różewicz’s poetry. First, this God is helpless and submissive to history and poeple. Then, he is the almighty Creator who supports a man. Subsequently, I present Różewicz as a poet who converted from atheism to faith. Early on, the author was demonstrating his departure from God caused by his (...) war experiences. He felt that God had died and in this connection all the values precious for a man had died too. In spite of this, the faith remained in the local point of Różewicz’s autlook on life. The author often looked back on his childhood when he had been close to the Lord. He became aware of lack of spiritual prime in his liľe. He also knew that life without God turns into merely a phisical existence. Finally, he found the real faith and wrote pieces which we can consider as his declaration. (shrink)

The structure of everyday communication reflects metaphorical thinking. People speak about the presence or absence of problems in terms of weather. Problems appear in every¬day life and so does the weather topic. Bad weather often evokes sadness, therefore it can be to said to constitute a problem; similarly, good weather is often equated with cheerful mood. Thus, in view of the above analysis, weather can be seen as an im¬portant experiential basis for conceptual metaphors.

The study tested how the use of positive- (e.g. beautiful) and negative-valenced (e.g. horrible) words in natural language and its change in time affects the severity of depression and anxiety symptoms among depressed and non-depressed individuals. This longitudinal mixed methods study (N = 40 participants, n = 1440 narratives) with three measurements within a year showed that at the between-person level the use of negative-valenced words was strongly associated with the increase in anxiety and depression symptoms over time while the (...) use of positive-valenced words was slightly associated with the decrease in anxiety and depression symptom. These effects were not supported for within-person level (i.e. changes in word usage). No significant differences were observed in the effects between depressed and non-depressed groups. Summing up, the overall use of positive- and negative-valenced words (particularly negative-valenced words) had a stronger effect on the severity of psychopathological symptoms than their change over time. The results were discussed in the context of natural language processing and its application in diagnosing depression and anxiety symptoms. (shrink)

In the present paper, I argue against the claim that ex aequo and bono adjudication cannot be epistemically objective. I start with a survey of legal rules allowing the parties to resort to ex aequo et bono adjudication. Next, I argue that decisions taken on ex aequo et bono basis are not subjective for three main reasons. First, they are analogous to decision making in hard cases. Second, theories of practical reasoning and hybrid expressivism provide a precise theoretical account of (...) the mechanisms at stake. Third, the context of adjudication provides substantial constraints on judicial tasks. (shrink)

L’oeuvre de Bardesane († 222), un philosophe chrétien gnosticisant de langue syriaque, nous est parvenue sous forme d’un traité, «Livre sur les lois des pays», et de nombreux fragments, souvent transmis par les adversaires de Bardesane et de ses disciples. Tel est le cas des quelques fragments sur la résurrection, conservés par Éphrem le Syrien († 373) dans un Discours contre Bardesane. L’analyse du texte, visant à séparer les positions de Bardesane et celles d’Éphrem, permet de proposer une nouvelle interprétation (...) de l’anthropologie bardesanite dans le contexte de sa théologie de la résurrection. Ainsi on peut noter chez lui une certaine influence de la doctrine stoïcienne de l’âme corporelle, connue également par des auteurs chrétiens du IIe siècle : surtout Tatien († 182) et Tertullien († 220). Le rapprochement avec Justin Martyr († 165) et Athénagore († 190) permet une relecture des idées de Bardesane sur la résurrection et souligne notamment son manque de références aux épîtres de Paul et la conviction que l’âme humaine est la seule concernée par le péché d’Adam et par la résurrection du Christ. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 111-124.

O COMPARECIMENTO ELEITORAL FACULTATIVO E O RETROCESSO DEMOCRÁTICO.

W. Baude’s and S.E. Sachs’s paper entitled “The Law of Interpretation” is a fascinating survey of a plethora of cases from the American common law system. The main conclusion of the article is extremely interesting from both philosophical and practical points of view. Namely, the authors claim that there exists something additional in the law that has not been identified before, and this is the law of interpretation. This law of interpretation is claimed to be a set of both written (...) and unwritten rules, including the canons of construction. However, a closer look at the examples provided by Baude and Sachs throughout their paper proves some nonhomogenous nature of the unwritten rules of the law of interpretation. I claim that this nonhomogeneity comes precisely from different, more fundamental facts to which these unwritten rules of interpretation are related. Moreover, I argue that the elements of the law of interpretation that are indeed incorporated into the law are in fact scarce, and I investigate the reasons for this state of affairs. Two main reasons are analyzed—the nature of context and the structure of all-things-considered moral arguments. (shrink)