The author of the article deals with the causes of anti-naturalism in culture today from the point view of both a philosophical conception of evolutionary ontology, and the psychology of environmental problems. He highlights the real potential for a biophilic transformation of culture in the context of current knowledge on cognitive psychology, where emphasis is placed on the limits to the phenomena of cognitive dissonance. The author of the article seeks certain options to repress these limits in Gestalt theory, which (...) on some aspects corresponds substantially to the insights and goals of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

In this paper I present the Ingardenian distinction between inseparability and dependence. My considerations are both historical and systematic. The historical part of the paper accomplishes two goals. First, I show that in the Brentanian tradition the problem of existential conditioning was entangled into parts—whole theories. The best examples of such an approach are Kazimierz Twardowski’s theory of the object and Edmund Husserl’s theory of parts and wholes. Second, I exhibit the context within which Ingarden distinguished inseparability and dependence. Moreover, (...) Ingarden’s motivations are presented: the problem of understanding the Husserlian concept of “immanent transcendence,” the issue of the existence of purely intentional objects, and finally the problem of the relationship between individual objects and ideas. The systematic part deals with the ambiguity of Ingarden’s definition of inseparability. I seek to improve this definition by reference to the distinction between absolute and summative wholes. I also present some divisions of inseparability and dependence and investigate whether these types of existential conditioning are reflexive, symmetric, or transitive. (shrink)

Marx extrapolated the relations of production of the factories of his time into his predictions about the development of the working class. These predictions are among the most important theses of Marxism-Leninism relative to the socialist world-revolution which the working class was to carry out.The physics of Marx'' era was not very developed. Marx could have no inkling of the future development of physics and of its application to technology. This is why his predictions had to be in simple and (...) direct proportion to the development of the relations of production of the time. (shrink)

Die logische Analyse psychologischer Begriffe wird gedeutet als die Untersuchung logisch-kategorialer wie auch inhaltlicher Merkmale des Psychischen im Allgemeinen (Kennzeichen des Erlebnismäßigen, Unterscheidungen zum Nicht-Psychischen) und im Speziellen (Kennzeichen der einzelnen psychischen Phänomene, Unterscheidungen innerhalb des Psychischen). Brentanos deskriptive Psychologie wird als eine derartige analytische Philosophie der Psychologie aufgefaßt, und Chisholms These, daß Wittgensteins Philosophie der Psychologie als deskriptive Psychologie angesehen werden kann, wird mit einigen Einschränkungen und Ergänzungen übernommen. Bei der Darstellung der deskriptiven Psychologie als Begriffsanalyse, als einer Wissenschaft (...) a priori, wird vor allem eine Rekonstruktion des Terminus "aus den Begriffen einleuchten" versucht. (shrink)

In the last two decades, major cities in Malaysia have witnessed a spate of urban redevelopment including commercial and retail complexes, and residential estates. The current urban transformations taking place in Malaysian cities are mainly market-driven and characterized by fast-track development with a strong priority on the road infrastructure. This is a typical example of an intensive property-led development that is becoming a central driver of the national economy. This article provides a deeper understanding of the complexity of urban development (...) in Malaysia. Here, the major aim is to understand the Malaysian cities' transitions in the trajectory of their colonial past, national identity, multi-cultural community, culture, and religion. Focusing on South East Asian urbanism, this article determines how internal and external forces and global trends such as neoliberalism and property-led development affect the transformation of urban landscapes and expansions in Malaysia. The outcomes of this paper will indicate how much property-led development and globalisation have affected the traditional and tropical climate-responsive urban environment in Malaysia. It will also identify sustainable design and planning measures that should be implemented in the cities of Malaysia to combat the ill-effects of globalisation. (shrink)

Jeden z kontrargumentów do argumentu z ukrycia Boga, który zyskuje popularność w ostatnich latach, odnosi się do niepojętości Boga. Jeśli Bóg jest transcendentny, twierdzą zwolennicy tego argumentu (tj. Michael Rea i Roger Pouivet), to nie wiemy, czy Boska miłość wyraża się w otwarciu na osobiste relacje ze skończonymi istotami, jak twierdzi pierwsza przesłanka argumentu o ukrytości. Oskarżają J. L. Schellenberga o kształtowanie koncepcji Boga na wzór współczesnych koncepcji człowieka. W odpowiedzi wskazuję na fakt, że chociaż w pismach Schellenberga istnieje niebezpieczeństwo (...) antropomorfizmu, personalistyczny teizm musi zaakceptować pierwszą przesłankę argumentu z ukrycia. Uzasadniam swoją tezę, odwołując się do zasady scholastycznej, która pozwala przypisać Bogu wszystkie doskonałości, i argumentując na rzecz tezy, że osobowość (rozumiana w kategoriach racjonalności i wolności) jest jedną z doskonałości. (shrink)

Die Intentionalität des Psychischen charakterisiert Meinong als Erfassen eines Gegenstandes durch das erfassende Erlebnis, wobei der erfaßte Gegenstand weder zu existieren noch zu bestehen braucht. Ein Gegenstand ist geradezu bestimmt als das, was erfaßt werden kann; der erfaßte Gegenstand ist aber nicht Teil des erfassenden Erlebnisses. Gleichsam als subjektives, psychisches Korrelat stellt Meinong dem erfaßten Gegenstand den entsprechenden Erlebnisinhalt gegenüber, der zu dem betreffenden Gegenstand in einer Adäquatheitsrelation steht. Ziel des Aufsatzes ist es, einige der Schwierigkeiten zu besprechen, die die (...) Einführung von derartigen psychischen Inhalten mit sich bringen. M.E. gibt es keinen brauchbaren Anhaltspunkt, herauszufinden, wie die psychischen Inhalte ihre Aufgabe, auf die Gegenstände zu referieren, sie dem Erfassen darzubieten, zu erfüllen vermögen. Weitere schwerwiegende Probleme ergeben sich aus der Frage, welche Gegenstände hinweisendem Denken entsprechen und wie es gelingen kann, durch einen Hilfsgegenstand den Zielgegenstand zu erfassen. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe, by Erik J. Wielenberg.

This study aims to identify various meanings of the expression (name) “dignity”, with particular emphasis on the meanings of this expression as it appears in the text of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. The meaning of the name “dignity” is the concept of dignity; in turn, the different concepts of dignity encompass dignity of particular types. Twelve different meanings of the expression “dignity” are indicated – twelve different concepts of dignity, and thus twelve types of dignity. Half of (...) them are meanings (concepts) that recognize dignity as something belonging to a human being as a subject of law. They were considered in the essay Godność jako właściwość osoby. Typy godności – propozycja systematyzacji [Dignity as a Quality of Person – a Proposed Systematisation]. This group of meanings includes three concepts of dignity which recognize dignity as something constitutive of being a person: (1) inherent dignity of the person, (2) dignity established by qualities specific to a thinking being, and (3) dignity as a historically emergent social status of all human beings. The second group of meanings, treating dignity as something with which the human being (the person) is endowed, includes concepts which encompass (4) personal dignity (honour and good reputation), (5) dignity as moral excellence, and (6) dignity as appropriateness of attitude or behaviour. -/- Dignity as an attribute of collective entities and dignity as an institutionally grounded attribute are a subject of this paper. The Constitution of the Republic of Poland speaks of (1) the dignity of the Nation, (2) the dignity of office or function, and (3) public dignity. The expression “the dignity of the Nation” can be understood in four different ways: (i) analogously to the understanding of dignity of the person, (ii) of personal dignity, (iii) of dignity as moral excellence, and (iv) of dignity as appropriateness of attitude or behaviour. The expression “dignity” when designating something institutionally grounded can designate (4) the dignity of social roles, (5) the dignity of a profession, and – specifically to the Polish language – (6) dignity meaning a surname. -/- The author argues that it is unacceptable to ascribe different concepts of dignity to the expression “dignity” appearing in a specific legal provision. (shrink)

The fact of religious diversity is vital for the philosopher of religion but also, to some extent, for the believer of a given faith. It takes place in such a dimension in which the views of a given believer or the meaning of the practice of a given religion presupposes the truthfulness of specific claims concerning a given religion or the beliefs included in it. If now on the part of the philosopher of religion or the followers of another religion, (...) there is a direct or indirect challenge to such a key proposition, religious disagreement with epistemic dimension is involved. At the same time, it is not the case that any religious diversity is a case of epistemically significant religious dissent. The paper, by distinguishing different aspects of religions and functions performed by religion, tries to show in which situations religious diversification leads to religious disagreement. Both the follower of religion and the philosopher of religion can and should seek the truth in matters of crucial importance to religion. The difference is that the follower of a given religion is more interested in the salvific and practical functions of religion, along with the associated sense of value and meaningfulness of life and, to a lesser degree, the theoretical certainty that her religion is correct at crucial points. On the other hand, the achievement of ‘the soteriological’ purpose of religion based on false belief is impossible, just as the meaningfulness of life 'based on the sand and not on the rock’. It is because the false foundation is devoid of higher value. That is why there is a community of a philosopher of religion and a follower of a given religion to search for the truth of it. (shrink)

Artykuł przedstawia polskie regulacje prawne z lat 1998-2007 będące podstawą lustracji. Analizuje szereg aktów prawnych prezentując zakładane cele lustracji, jej zakres, procedury i przewidywane sankcje karne. Celem autora jest identyfikacja aksjologicznych podstaw regulacji prawnych dotyczących lustracji. W trakcie analiz wskazuje on m. in. na brak proporcji między sankcjami karnymi a winą jednostek, zwłaszcza w niektórych przypadkach penalizacji oświadczeń lustracyjnych niezgodnych z prawdą lub penalizacji niezłożenia oświadczeń. Autor argumentuje także, że analizowane rozwiązania zakładały – wbrew deklarowanym celom – przeniesienie odpowiedzialności za (...) zło systemu politycznego z jego aktywnych twórców na jednostki wbrew woli poddane działaniu tego systemu. Ponadto argumentuje, że lustracja oparta na przeprowadzanym przez państwo „teście moralności” radykalnie ingeruje w wewnętrzną sferę moralności jednostki i stąd zakłada elementy typowe dla aksjologii systemów totalitarnych; państwo nakazuje dokonać działania, które bezpośrednio i wprost zmierza do realizacji ściśle wewnętrznej wartości moralnej opartej na zgodności oświadczenia z przekonaniami, i jednocześnie państwo ustanawia siebie nie tylko obserwatorem i sędzią realizacji tej wartości, ale także autorem wzorca przekonań, z którymi oświadczenie ma być zgodne. (shrink)

The author proves that rejecting the existence of permissive norms and limitation of norms to prohibitions and commands alone is possible only with reducing the idea of a function. The essence of the function is then the ability of the expression to generate independently the universal norm formation. Such manipulation is easy on the level of logical analysis, but proves risky from other points of view. If we want the deontic logic, which we construct, to consider the fact that permission (...) is pragmatically necessary for the law-maker to convey his normative preferences, we must solve the consequences of the adopted structure of the function of norms, which originate on the socio-linguistic level. It appears, however, that due to a lack of a pragmatic theory useful for lawyers, there is no proof that the pragmatically strong permission can be expressed by means of a lot of prohibitions and commands (dos and don’ts). Besides, reducing permissions only to the language of legal rules is an obligation to accept the structure of an act of communication, which can find its full motivation in the Husserl’s structure of the direct cognition. (shrink)

S pamfletom Avtoemancipacija! (1882), temeljnim besedilom zgodnjega judovskega nacionalizma, je Leon Pinsker po nekaterih argumentih uveljavil sionizem kot nemško govoreče in pišoče gibanje. Kmalu po izidu pamfleta je priznani jidiš pisatelj Šolem Jankev Abramovič objavil njegov prevod v jidiš (1884). V Abramovičevi različici so nemški oziroma zahodnoevropski politični in kulturni koncepti ter besednjak prirejeni vzhodnoevropskemu, judovskemu, jidiš govorečemu okolju, kar vključuje spremembe v besedišču, retoričnih strategijah in kulturnih referencah. Abramovič je pamflet predelal v skladu s svojim razmislekom o stiski Judov (...) v Ruskem imperiju in njeni mogoči nacionalistični rešitvi, s čimer se je ukvarjal tudi v svojih sočasnih romanih. V članku primerjam, kako so v obeh besedilih izraženi nekateri družbenopolitični koncepti, da bi ugotovil, ali Abramovič s svojo ideološko skepso prefinjeno priredi tudi vsebino nacionalistične teze. (shrink)

The material subject of Catholic social science is man and his actions taken in the fields of politics, the economy and society. According to its rules each person should be engaged in building the world through the realization of his or her vocation. One kind of vocation might be leading people by acting in accordance with the Gospel and teachings of the Church. The most important values for the leader in this case would be: respect for human dignity and human (...) rights, freedom, justice, the subsidiarity principle and cooperation due to creating the common good. The listed rules are realized by servant leadership, the idea functioning in the field of management that derives its origins from Christ’s speech: whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant (Mt 20:27). (shrink)

The primary objective of this article is to analyse functions that experimental models have in the process of creating medical knowledge. When fulfilling this objective, we will refer to findings proposed by R. Harre and like this author; we will distinguish a special type of experimental models do called domesticated models. We will claim that constructing such models initiates three independent cognition activities undertaken in the process of establishing medical knowledge that is applied in clinical practice. Stabilisation of the model (...) process is the first activity. Recognising this process is the second one and its extrapolation is the third one. Findings that we will make, will enable us to bring the process of establishing medical knowledge closer and point out at a category of problems that hinder the development of this process. (shrink)

A number of nonmonotonic reasoning formalisms have been introduced to model the set of beliefs of an agent. These include the extensions of a default logic, the stable models of a general logic program, and the extensions of a truth maintenance system among others. In [13] and [16], the authors introduced nonmonotomic rule systems as a nonlogical generalization of all essential features of such formulisms so that theorems applying to all could be proven once and for all. In this paper, (...) we extend Rieter's normal default theories, which have a number of the nice properties which make them a desirable context for belief revision, to the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Reiter defined a default theory to be normal if all the rules of the default theory satisfied a simple syntatic condition. However, this simple syntatic condition has no obvious analogue in the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Nevertheless, an analysis of the proofs of the main results on normal default theories reveals that the proofs do not rely on the particular syntactic form of the rules but rather on the fact that all rules have a certain consistency property. This led us to extend the notion of normal default theories with respect to a general consistency property. This extended notion of normal default theories, which we call Forward Chaining normal , is easily lifted to nonmonotomic rule systems and hence applies to general logic programs and truth maintenance. (shrink)

Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, I believe can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of (...) a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance I believe it is raining shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as I believe it is raining, but it is not raining (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering It is not raining and what is shown by silently uttering I believe it is raining. The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively. (shrink)

Gelfond and Lifschitz proposed the notion of a stable model of a logic program. We establish that the set of all stable models in a Herbrand universe of a recursive logic program is, up to recursive renaming, the set of all infinite paths of a recursive, countably branching tree, and conversely. As a consequence, the problem, given a recursive logic program, of determining whether it has at least one stable model, is Σ11-complete. Due to the equivalences established in the authors' (...) previous nonmonotone rule systems papers ), this applies equally to truth maintenance systems and default logics. (shrink)

Growth modelling is of interest to scientists in various disciplines. In our article, we will collect 17 models designed for growth modelling, appraise these models and contribute to the discussion of their applicability. The merit of the paper lies in studying the convergence properties of nonlinear regression in selected models. Our studies will be performed mainly concerning the quality of the obtained estimates, which are closely related to the intrinsic curvature of the model according to Bates and Watts. This curvature (...) determines the size of the linearization domains. Only if the initial solution is in this domain, then the convergence of the estimate in nonlinear regression is guaranteed. The primary goal is to design a methodology for selecting a growth model. We will demonstrate fruitfulness of our methodology on the weight measurements of 10 calves under 25 months of age from cowsheds in the village Záluží in the Czech Republic. Estimated parameters of growth curves, sizes of linearization domain, calculated residues and coefficients of determination indices will be the subject of discussion. (shrink)

Leon Pinsker’s pamphlet Autoemancipation! (1882), a seminal text of early Jewish nationalism, arguably established Zionism as a movement functioning in the German language. Soon after its publication, the renowned Yiddish writer Sh. Y. Abramovitch produced a Yiddish language version (1884). Abramovitsh’s rendering is above all an adaptation of German or Western European political and cultural concepts and vocabulary to the Jewish, Eastern European Yiddish-speaking milieu, with changes in vocabulary, rhetorical strategies, and cultural references. Abramovitsh reworked the pamphlet according to his (...) own thinking on the plight of Jews in the Russian Empire and a possible nationalist solution, as exemplified in his contemporary novels. In the article, I compare the language in which several socio-political concepts are expressed in the two texts in order to determine whether Abramovitsh, in his ideological skepticism, also subtly adapts the content of the nationalist thesis. (shrink)

History and the philosophy of science have played a very important role in dialectical materialism; their results have been destined to support the correctness of the ideas of Marxist philosophers, especially in their application in historical materialism.From this point of view, the circumstances of the origin of the works of the Marxist classics cannot be neglected: Engels wrote hisDialectics in Nature in the period of classical physics, and Lenin published hisMaterialism and Empirio-Criticism at the beginning of the 20th century when (...) our modern physics first began: shortly before the publication of Lenin's book, Röntgen and Becquerel discovered new kinds of radiation, Balmer published his ideas concerning the regularity of the hydrogen spectrum, Plank wrote his first articles about the elementary quantum and Einstein published his three famous articles (1905). (shrink)

Consistent application of dialectical materialism leads Marxism-Leninism to the assertion that matter is infinite in its properties. However, the history of physics shows that the various levels of matter possess geometric dimensions that originate at the lowest level and continue through the others. The search for absolute natural constants — which Planck called the most pleasant task of physics — shows the conviction of the physicists that there is a limit to the parameters, a limit beyond which matter is no (...) longer divisible. (shrink)

The confusion/non-consequential thinking explanation proposed by Newstead, Girotto, and Legrenzi (1995) for poor performance on Wason's THOG problem (a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task) was examined in three experiments with 300 participants. In general, as the cognitive complexity of the problem and the possibility of non-consequential thinking were reduced, correct performance increased. Significant but weak facilitation (33-40% correct) was found in Experiment 1 for THOG classification instructions that did not include the indeterminate response option. Substantial facilitation (up to 75% correct) was obtained (...) in Experiment 2 with O'Brien et al.'s (1990) one-other-THOG classification instruction. In Experiment 3, a revised version of O'Brien et al.'s pre-test problem format also led to substantial facilitation, even with the use of the standard three-choice THOG classification instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of Newstead et al.'s theoretical proposal and possible attentional factors. (shrink)