The use of information technology in linguistic research gave rise in the 1950s to what is known as Natural Language Processing, but that framework was created without paying due attention to the need for logical reconstruction of linguistic concepts which were borrowed directly from barely formalised structural linguistics. The Computer-aided Acquisition of Semantic Knowledge project based on the Knowledge Discovery in Databases technology enabled us to interact with computers while gathering and improving our knowledge about languages. Thus, with the help (...) of data mining tools, as a result of revisiting two sorts of generally admitted linguistic theories, we succeeded in improving these local linguistic approaches by proposing to unify the Associative Semantics theory with the Meta-Informative Centering theory. The resulting Distributed Grammar program treats, in addition to the above types of information, the third one, para-information which – despite many studies – had no uniform theoretical background in general linguistics. This DG program aims to lay the foundations for creating the theoretical background of Conceptual Linguistics. (shrink)

In _Genealogy of Obedience_ Justyna Włodarczyk provides both a historical account of the changing methods of dog training in America since the 1850s and theoretical reflections on how the understanding of training has been entangled in conceptualizations of race, class and gender.

The purpose of the paper is to rethink the role of actuality in the branching model of possibilities. We investigate the idea that the model should be enriched with an additional factor—the so-called Thin Red Line—which is supposed to represent the single possible course of events that gets actualized in time. We believe that this idea was often misconceived which prompted some unfortunate reactions. On the one hand, it suggested problematic semantic models of future tense and and on the other, (...) it provoked questionable lines of criticism. We reassess the debate and point to potential pitfalls, focusing on the semantic dimension of the Thin Red Line theory. Our agenda transcends the semantics, however. We conclude that semantic considerations do not threaten the Thin Red Line theory and that the proper debate should be carried in the domain of metaphysics. (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)

In this article we consider linear isomorphisms over the field of rational numbers between the linear spaces ℝ2 and ℝ. We prove that if f is such an isomorphism, then the image by f of the unit disk is a strictly nonmeasurable subset of the real line, which has different properties than classical non-measurable subsets of reals. We shall also consider the question whether all images of bounded measurable subsets of the plane via a such mapping are non-measurable.

Moralne programy rezygnacji ze stosowania przemocy są zjawiskiem zasługującym na wnikliwą uwagę. W swym artykule przyjmuję, że jest moralnie pożądane, aby zakres stosowania tych programów w rozwiązywaniu konfliktów indywidualnych i grupowych ulegał rozszerzaniu. Ponadto zakładam, że najbardziej efektywne, spośród różnych systemów normatywnych regulujących zachowania jednostek w społeczeństwie, są normy moralności potocznej. Jej cechą charakterystyczną jest unikanie skrajności. W artykule staram się wykazać, że postulaty "nonviolence" mogą być traktowane jako program moralności potocznej po odrzuceniu tych programów, które z jednej strony traktują (...) postulat niestosowania przemocy jako kategoryczny nakaz moralny (absolutyzm moralny L. Tołstoja), a z drugiej zaś - w sposób wyłącznie instrumentalny (propozycje M. Lernera). (shrink)

An increasing number of drugs removed from the market because of unacceptable toxicity raises concerns regarding preapproval testing of drug safety. In the present paper it is postulated that the non-inferiority type of trial should be abandoned in favor of the superiority trial with active controls and less stringent (p<0.1, both for efficacy and toxicity) statistics. This approach will increase sensitivity of detection of drug-induced adverse effects at the expense of increasing false positive results regarding the difference in efficacy between (...) the tested and reference drug. Such a move will increase the protection of future patients. In addition, the proposed design is far more acceptable from the clinical (e.g. no need to specify the statistically expected “unimportant” number of deaths) and ethical points of view, as well as being favored by the strong incentive of involved parties. In the second part of this paper arguments are presented in favor of the hypothesis that placebo (still used in some superiority trials) does not induce adverse effects. The assertion that placebo may induce adverse effects is probably biased by the nature of the clinical experiment. Such a conclusion is supported by studies indicating that placebo-induced adverse effects are disease — and treatment — specific. The modification of clinical trials according to the proposed changes may increase the trials’ sensitivity at detecting adverse effects of drugs. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In reference to the article by Hanan Alexander ‘Education in nonviolence’, the text takes up the issue of reading Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic texts for the philosophy of education. It intends to positively answer the question about the value and potential of such inspiration, focusing on concepts from two of Levinas’s Talmudic readings. The first part of the text is devoted to the characteristics of the intellectual output of the thinker. The second part analyses and discusses Alexander’s commentary on one (...) of Levinas’s Talmudic readings, ‘Toward the Other’. Alexander aims to show the specificity of the idea of education in nonviolence, heavily indebted to the Jewish tradition and thought. The third part of the text is an extension of Alexander’s comment, focuses on another Talmudic reading by Levinas, ‘Cities of Refuge’, and aims to outline the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum. (shrink)

Jacek Urbaniec: Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics does not necessarily imply that there are links between the temporal physical world and the eternal world of mathematics..

We present the results of research carried out as a part of the project “Current Controversies about Human Origins: Between Anthropology and the Bible”, which focused on the supposed conflict between natural sciences and some branches of the humanities, notably philosophy and theology, with regard to human origins. One way to tackle the issue was to distribute a questionnaire among students and teachers of the relevant disciplines. Teachers of religion and the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics) and students of (...) theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences (specializing in biology and/or anthropology) were asked to answer eleven questions concerning the perception of the conflict between evolutionism and creationism, the definitions of creation and evolution, the existence of a human spiritual element, and the ways of interpreting the Bible, especially the first chapters of the book of Genesis. In the paper we present and analyze selected results of this questionnaire. Among interesting findings there are the following: 1) the opinion concerning the relationship between evolutionism and creationism largely depends on the respondent’s general attitude toward religion, and not on their field of study or teaching expertise, which runs contrary to the received view attributing the opinion of the conflict between science and religion to people’s educational or professional background; 2) The conflict is far more pronounced in the group of nonbelievers. This distinguishes Poland from other countries, notably the United States, where the majority of people with strong religious beliefs seem to maintain that there is a conflict between the natural sciences and religion; 3) literal understanding of the Bible was rejected by vast majority of the respondents, including those who insist on the ‘conflict view’, which seems to make the situation in Poland again quite different from that in some other countries; 4) Unsophisticated understanding of creation positively correlates with the ‘conflicting view’ on the one hand, while, on the other, erroneous understanding of the basics of the theory of evolution appears to have its bearing on too optimistic vision of certain coherence between religion and science. We suggest some hypotheses to explain these and other results of the questionnaire. (shrink)

In her books Szymborska touches many diverte subjects but it is easy to notice her predilection for some topics with which she deals in her successive books of poems. Unplanned haphazard happenings, their category and their role in the life of the man, in reality and in the world, are her main preocupations. As our century has witnessed a breakthrough in indeterminacy due to surprising discoveries in natural sciences the question of haphazard happenings has become more important and intriguing. It (...) has a great fascination for artistics. W. Szymborska giving so much attention to the category of haphazards familiorizes the man with the reality in dissaway that can result in a chaos. In her poems influenced by natural sciences the category of haphazards is not only a leitmotif but also a fascinating enigma. For her casualness and situations resulting from chance are the main mechanism that controls the course of events. In her many poems she focuses on the mystery of haphazards and their inevitability. Her poem Wszelki wypadek (It Might Have Happened) is, perhaps, her first work where she doesn’t deal but with the role of haphazards played in the life of the man. She directs her attention to situations happening in unplanned or disorderly manner thus making possible to save one’s life. Haphazards not only can save the man’s life but they also determine the angle from which he sees the world where the haphazard is ruling. Haphazards can influence all the spheres that are important for the man. The world full of haphazards pictured in the poem is mosaic-like – a number of happenings, various possibilities for the course of particular events. The language describing those events matches the structure of composition. What is happening in the sphere of the language it is precisely reflected in the meaning. Her symmetric and precise structure of the poem results in a scheme called “the tree of decision” transformed by Szymborska in a “tree of possibilities”. In the poem Terrorysta, on patrzy (He is Watching, the Terrorist) the poetess tries to paint the ruthless mechanism of a haphazard meaning the life of people. A terrorist, after having planted a bomb in a bar, is watching people coming in and out of the bar. The whole poem is a silent question about the aim and the sense of the events impossible to understand for people who are involved in them. Szymborska’s latest book of poems (Koniec i początek, The End And The Beginning) confirms her strong interest in haphazards (especially in the poem Seans). The title of the poem is a metaphor between the casualness and the man. Again one focuses on the surprised man who cannot understand the sense of the events happening with his participation. The spectators are surprised because they don’t know the way the illusionist plays his tricks. Szymborska’s man is dependent on something over which he has no influence. He is the passive protagonist of events he takes part in. At the same time the category of haphazard stresses the joyful aspect of human existence. For Szymborska both haphazards are important: the one that threatens the man’s life and the other that makes possible to save his life. So the pessimism in the poem It Might Have Happened is balanced by optimism. The poetess, inspired by everyday world and new achievements in sciences, pictures a world where the haphazard and invitability coexist and integrate and interrelate. Szymborska, in her poetry, surmounts the contradiction between those categories. (shrink)

In this paper we present a characterization of hyper-connexivity by means of a relating semantics for Boolean connexive logics. We also show that the minimal Boolean connexive logic is Abelardian, strongly consistent, Kapsner strong and antiparadox. We give an example showing that the minimal Boolean connexive logic is not simplificative. This shows that the minimal Boolean connexive logic is not totally connexive.

In this paper we investigate some basic semantic and syntactic conditions characterizing the equivalence connective. In particular we define three basic classes of algebras: the class of weak equivalential algebras, the class of equivalential algebras and the class of regular equivalential algebras.Weak equivalential algebras can be used to study purely equivalential fragments of relevant logics and strict equivalential fragments of some modal logics. Equivalential algebras are suitable to study purely equivalential fragment of BCI and BCK logic. A subclass of the (...) class of regular equivalential algebras is suitable to study equivalential fragments of ukasiewicz logics. Some subvarieties of the class of regular equivalential algebras provide natural semantics for equivalential fragments of the intuitionistic prepositional logic and various intermediate logics. (shrink)

The first part of the paper is a reminder of fundamental results connected with the adequacy problem for sentential logics with respect to matrix semantics. One of the main notions associated with the problem, namely that of the degree of complexity of a sentential logic, is elucidated by a couple of examples in the second part of the paper. E.g., it is shown that the minimal logic of Johansson and some of its extensions have degree of complexity 2. This is (...) the first example of an exact estimation of the degree of natural complex logics, i.e. logics whose deducibility relation cannot be represented by a single matrix. The remaining examples of complex logics are more artificial, having been constructed for the purpose of checking some theoretical possibilities. (shrink)

It is argued that the assignment of truth values to future contingents is threatened not by a tensed metaphysics but by a temporally “local” notion of truth, i.e., by the assumption that whatever is true at a given time needs to be grounded in what exists at that time. If this assumption is accepted, tensed and tenseless metaphysics are equally vulnerable; if it is rejected, both can accommodate true future contingents. This means that semantic decisions are largely independent of metaphysical (...) considerations. The work of Correia and Rosenkranz (2018) is a clear example of how the tensed metaphysics of the growing block can incorporate true future contingents. Two potential worries are discussed in the context of their work: (a) that their grounding strategy overgeneralizes and admits true counterfactual contingents; and (b) that the growing block theory lacks sufficient resources to distinguish the unique possible future course of events that is relevant for the grounding of future contingents. (shrink)

One of the most vigorously debated issues in attention labs concerns the nature of the coupling between the sensory-motor system and covert spatial attention. Proponents of the Premotor Theory of Attention (PToA) claim that attention should be accounted for in terms of motor preparation for goal-directed actions such as eye or hand movements. For others, it is a supramodal psychological entity that is independent of our sensorimotor machinery. Both parties also seek to articulate this controversy in terms of cognitive science (...) as a question of whether attention is embodied or disembodied cognition. The PToA is thought to advocate the embodiment of attention. We, however, are inclined to think that a more nuanced view of this conceptual framework is needed to yield some insights into how radical it actually is in terms of embodied cognition (EC). We argue that PToA still seems to bear some features of weak embodiment. Yet we suggest that it has the potential to build a stronger concept of attention as EC, but somewhat paradoxically this would require giving attention deflationary treatment and reconstructing it in other terms. We propose that the notion of pre-reflective intentionality might serve as an inspiration to this end. (shrink)

This paper is a study of similarities and differences between strong and weak quantum consequence operations determined by a given class of ortholattices. We prove that the only strong orthologics which admits the deduction theorem (the only strong orthologics with algebraic semantics, the only equivalential strong orthologics, respectively) is the classical logic.

The crux of the dispute on the mutual relations between attention and consciousness, and to which I have referred in this paper, lies in the question of what can be attended in spatial attention that obviously resonates with the phenomenological issue of intentionality. The discussion has been initiated by Christopher Mole. He began by calling for a commonsense psychology, according to which one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the (...) things that one is conscious of. In other words, attention is supposed to be a condition which is sufficient but not necessary for consciousness, i.e., consciousness is a necessary concomitant of attention, but attention is not a necessary concomitant of consciousness. Mole seeks to validate his stance with data from psychology labs. His view is, however, partly confronted, for instance, by Robert Kentridge, Lee de-Wit and Charles Heywood, who used their experimental research on a neurological condition called blindsight as evidence of a dissociation between attention and consciousness, i.e., that visual attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. In this meta-theoretical state of affairs, I would like to focus on the cognitive phenomenon most often referred to as Inhibition of Return and suggest that, following its micro dynamics from the perspective of micro-phenomenology, it can be used to actually showcase all of the options on both sides of the argument. One of my leading goals would be also to follow Mole’s attempt to link attention with agency but where we differ is that I wish to heuristically articulate the matter in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of embodied pre-reflective intentionality. (shrink)

In the paper the idea of the well-known anti-realistic argument from the so-called pessimistic meta-induction is considered. It is ascertained - contrarily to the widespread belief - that Larry Laudan is not the author of the argument, however he has noticed many of its essential aspects, especially the problem of historical continuity between changing scientific theories. It seems that as the author of the argument should be regarded rather Hilary Putnam. A similar idea of pessimistic meta-induction was already anticipated in (...) the work of Henri Poincaré. The paper finishes with conclusion, that scientific realism as a philosophical position has to take into account both the problem of the empirical success of scientific theories and the problem of continuity between them. (shrink)

By applying the MIC theory to their analyses of English, German, French, Polish, Russian, Greek, Latin, and Japanese, the authors provide comprehensive explanations of the most puzzling aspects of the pragmatic use of basic universal linguistic categories.

For nearly 80 years Biblical gardens have been present in the natural and cultural landscape. The first gardens came into existence in the US. The idea to create such gardens spread from the US mainly across Europe, Australia and Israel. These gardens are being made all the time; recently we have observed their dynamic development. This study is to show the effects of the 20 years long scientific work to formulate the original genesis of the Biblical garden idea. The characteristics (...) of 64 facilities situated in 14 countries has been presented for the first time so widely. This enabled us to show both the history of these gardens and how they are situated in the cultural and social context. The effect of various factors inspiring people of various professions to create Biblical gardens both near sacral buildings and within the secular areas has been evidenced. Biblical gardens exercise the principles of gardens of senses and learning gardens. And it is the highly developed semantic layer that makes them stand out. (shrink)

Compared to existing classical approaches to semiotics which are dyadic (signifier/signified, F. de Saussure) and triadic (symbol/concept/object, Ch. S. Peirce), this theory can be characterized as tetradic ([sign/semion]//[object/noema]) and is the result of either doubling the dyadic approach along the semiotic/ordinary dimension or splitting the ‘concept’ of the triadic one into two (semiotic/ordinary). Other important features of this approach are (a) the distinction made between concepts (only functional pairs of extent and intent) and categories (as representations of expressions) and (b) (...) the indication of the need for providing the mathematical passage from the duality between two sets (where one is a singleton) within systems of sets to category-theoretical monoids within systems of categories while waiting for the solution of this problem in the field of logic. Last but not least, human language expressions are the most representative physical instances of semiotic objects. Moreover, as computational experiments which are possible with linguistic objects present a high degree of systematicity (of oppositions), in general, it is relatively easy to elucidate their dependence on the concepts underlying signs. This new semiotic theory or rather this new research program emerged as the fruit of experimentation and reflection on the application of data science tools elaborated within the frameworks of Rough Set Theory (RST), Formal Context Analysis (FCA) and, though only theoretically, Distributed Information Logic (DIL). The semiotic objects (s-objects) of this theory can be described in tabular datasets. Nevertheless, at this stage of formalisation of the theory, lattices (not trees) can be used as working representation structures for characterizing the components of concept systems and graphs for categories of each layer. (shrink)

The starting point of the article is claim, that the well-known distinction between natural sciences as explaining and human sciences as interpreting made by W. Dilthey and distinction between idiographic and nomothetic sciences made by H. Rickert are both inadequate at present. Human sciences separate their research areas using logics and statistics and formulating many generalizations and even laws. So it can be argued that they can give explanations sensu stricto. First part of the article describes contemporary controversy naturalism-anti­naturalism in (...) formulation of M. Salmon, who presents the third middle way, that some human science as linguistics or evolutionary psychology can give causal explanations without appealing to human reasons as causes. This standpoint, however, can lead to reductionism and necessity of separating in each human science some kind of "scientific core", which seems to be undesirable. Second part of the article presents possible applications of the D-N model of explanation of C. G. Hempel in human sciences, which is connected with well-known controversy whether these sciences formulate any laws (especially history but also linguistics for example). Leaving out, however, this important question and accepting statement proposed by J. Such, that some generalizations can serve as a premises in D-N arguments, we can claim that some D-N explanations are possible also in human sciences. (shrink)