Can we see the expressiveness of other people's gestures, hear the intentions in their voice, see the emotions in their posture? Traditional theories of social cognition still say we cannot because intentions and emotions for them are hidden away inside and we do not have direct access to them. Enactive theories still have no idea because they have so far mainly focused on perception of our physical world. We surmise, however, that the latter hold promise since, in trying to understand (...) cognition, enactive theory focuses on the embodied engagements of a cognizer with his world. In this paper, we attempt an answer for the question What is social perception in an enactive account? In enaction, perception is conceived as a skill, crucially involving action, an ability to work successfully within the set of regularities, or contingencies that characterize a given domain. If this is the case, then social perception should be a social skill. Having thus transformed the question of what social perception is into that of what social skill is, we examine the concept of social contingencies and the manner in which social skills structure—both constrain and empower— social interaction. Some of the implications of our account for how social and physical perception differ, the role of embodiment in social interaction and the distinction between our approach and other social contingency theories are also addressed. (shrink)

Financial misconduct has come into the spotlight in recent years, causing market regulators to increase the reach and severity of interventions. We show that at times the economic benefits of illicit financial activity outweigh the costs of litigation. We illustrate our argument with data from the US Securities and Exchanges Commission and a case of investment misconduct. From the neoclassical economic paradigm, which follows utilitarian thinking, it is rational to engage in misconduct. Still, the majority of professionals refrain from misconduct, (...) foregoing economic rewards. We suggest financial activity could be reimagined taking into account intrinsic and prosocial motivations. A virtue ethics framework could also be applied, linking financial behavior to the quest for moral excellence and shared flourishing. By going beyond utilitarian thinking and considering alternative models, we offer a fuller account of financial behavior and a better perspective from which to design deterrence methods. (shrink)

In four major parts, this study investigates the phenomenon of scrolling. Its first task is to argue in favor of a specific quality of the experience of scrolling, distinguishing it from other forms of distraction, notably from the flow experience. Scrolling takes the shape of aimless drifting. Secondly, it investigates the phenomenon of scrolling against its relevant historical, economic, social, and cultural backdrop, with the intention of understanding scrolling as a typical phenomenon of today, rather than subscribing to a biased (...) and superficial critique of its wastefulness or outright pathological character. The third part presents a comprehensive analysis of the temporal makeup of scrolling. Its temporality is expressed in the specific impatience of scrolling. Furthermore, scrolling amounts to a temporal reduction in the sense of favoring the present moment (and suppressing the temporal dimensions of the past and the future). The reductiveness of scrolling pertains to the semantic content as well. I argue that scrolling does not allow for certain experiences (such as, e.g., profound sadness). The temporality of scrolling is one of experiencing lived time as the permanence of passing. In the last section, I connect scrolling to boredom, and argue that scrolling accomplishes the task of allowing for an existential distractedness. In conclusion, I propose a nuanced evaluation of scrolling: in a Pascalian sense, scrolling responds to a profoundly human need of distraction. Yet I find scrolling dangerous in how easily available such distraction becomes, and in how it accustoms the users to a reductive existential experience. Scrolling, unlike art (but also, in principle, photography, movies, books), shields the user from challenging and enriching experiences. (shrink)

Perceptual modalities have been traditionally considered the product of dedicated biological systems producing information for higher cognitive processing. Psychological and neuropsychological evidence is offered which undermines this point of view and an alternative account of modality from the enactive approach to understanding cognition is suggested. Under this view, a perceptual modality is a stable form of perception which is structured not just by the biological sensitivities of the agent, but by their goals and the set of skills or expertise which (...) they are deploying at a given time. Such a view suggests that there is no such thing as an experience that is purely visual, auditory, or otherwise modal and that our attempts to understand consciousness and the mind must be conducted within a framework that provides an account of embodied, goal-directed adaptive coping with the world. (shrink)

The Uppsala School in philosophy and the Vienna Circle are prima facie similar currents in contemporary philosophy. Both reject metaphysics, claim that reality is a spatio­‑temporal realm and adhere to noncognitivism in terms of values. However, justifications of these assumptions are quite different. In the following article we reconstruct main theses of both mentioned currents and then we indicate their impact on one of the major jurisprudential movements, namely Scandinavian Legal Realism. We focus on Alf Ross’ legal philosophy, as it (...) was an attempt to accommodate both: the philosophy of the Uppsala School and of the Vienna Circle. We trace those two sources of inspiration in Ross’ theory of legal validity and of legal concepts. (shrink)

Multi-agent systems where the agents are developed by parties with competing interests, and where there is no access to an agent’s internal state, are often classified as ‘open’. The members of such systems may inadvertently fail to, or even deliberately choose not to, conform to the system specification. Consequently, it is necessary to specify the normative relations that may exist between the members, such as permission, obligation, and institutional power. We present a framework being developed for executable specification of open (...) multi-agent systems. We adopt a bird’s eye view of these systems, as opposed to an agent’s perspective whereby it reasons about how it should act. This paper is devoted to the presentation of various examples from the NetBill protocol formalised in terms of institutional power, permission and obligation. We express the system specification in the Event Calculus and execute the specification by means of a logic programming implementation. We also give several example formalisations of sanctions for dealing with violations of permissions and obligations. We distinguish between an open multi-agent system and the procedure by which an agent enters and leaves the system. We present examples from the specification of a role-management protocol for NetBill, and demonstrate the interplay between such a protocol and the corresponding multi-agent system. (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 uniqueness of Poland’s experience with the 2020 coronavirus lays in the interplay of two factors: the decisive governmental response to the pandemic, and the overlap of the pandemic with the country’s presidential election scheduled on May 10, 2020. The government’s fast reaction, combined with the citizens’ discipline, resulted in the suppression of the virus’s spread. The ratings of the current President Duda skyrocketed well above 50% needed for re-election in the first round. However, the expectation was that they would (...) be going down with the pandemic and lockdown fatigue. For almost two months, the government tried to organize the elections under the normal schedule while the opposition tried to block them. Finally, the opposition won, and the elections were rescheduled on June 28, with the President Duda’s ratings substantially lower. Nevertheless, in the runoff on July 11, Duda won. Our conclusion goes against the common opinion that electoral engineering is always one-sided. The reconstruction of the pre-electoral political maneuvers shows that many independent players were simultaneously involved in complex engineering, and that the final outcome was hard to predict until almost the very end. (shrink)

The present paper consists of two parts. In the first, some issues related to the character of biological experiments conducted under in vitro cultures are portrayed. The relevant aspects of these procedures are explicated from the viewpoint of the experimental botanist. It is a case study for the considerations in the second part, which presents selected philosophical and legal issues involved in biological experiments from the general perspective of philosophical investigations concerning the problem of plants’ axiology. Obviously, the nature of (...) the considerations is limited; not all important questions from the perspective of biology and philosophy have been raised. Nevertheless, the authors hope that the analyzed issues may be interesting for both biologists and philosophers. (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)

This essay is an introduction to a lecture course "Elements of Descriptive Psychology" delivered by Anton Marty in around 1903/04. Marty offered courses on descriptive psychology at regular intervals in the course of his career at the University of Prague. The content of these courses follows closely the ideas of Marty’s teacher Franz Brentano, though with some interesting divergences and extrapolations. The present work is a historical and systematic introduction to an extract from notes taken of Marty’s lecture, with some (...) discussion of the work of Dilthey on similar topics, and of Marty’s influence on Franz Kafka and on the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. (shrink)

The world of Jedi is very different from our own, that their awareness of the universe is more encompassing, richer. The Jedi call that mystical aspect of reality they perceive the Force. Jedi younglings and padawans must put their body to new uses, perform new tasks, and learn new skills in physical activities that have profound effects on the way they see the world around them. What the Jedi say more than anything else about the Force is that it flows. (...) Jedi who are able to coordinate their actions with that flow can work with the full potency of the universal relationship between all things. Jedi do not need a special Force‐organ to perceive the Force. The Force is not something Jedi just see, or hear, or taste, or touch, but rather it is something they experience on its own terms, probably using their whole body to do it. (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)

We shall look for the essence of the contemporary crisis: whether it is only the economic crisis which results in the drop of income, production, demand, crash on the stock exchange and the spectre of bankruptcy of whole states, or whether the economic phenomena originate in the sphere of human spirit and moral values, acquired insufficiently or simply questioned. We put forward a thesis that the economic crisis has its source in the sphere of spirit. Denying the natural law and (...) God’s law included in the Ten Commandments does not make a man happy but introduces divisions, social conflicts and exploitation. For that reason the moral renewal of individuals and societies, showing respect for the dignity of a human being and his/her natural rights must go along with reasonable political and economic actions for the sake of solving the contemporary ‘social issue’. Without moral renewal any other solutions, sooner or later shall turn against a man and cause irreparable damages. (shrink)

The study focuses on the relationship between K. Jaspers and S. Kierkegaard. First, it evaluates the current scholarship regarding Jaspers’ reception of Kierkegaard’s thought; second, it offers an independent analysis of Jaspers’ early work (especially the 1909 Heimweh und Verbrechen, and then the Psychologie der Weltanschauungen). It is demonstrated that Jaspers’ early work on nostalgia presents the first case study of limit situations (Grenzsituationen). The paper traces the link between Kierkegaard’s conception of aesthetic existence and Jaspers’ concept of limit situations. (...) It is shown that Jaspers’ study of nostalgia can be considered the original inspiration for the idea of limit situations, and that, at the same time, it was arguably Kierkegaard who had helped Jaspers to develop this germinal idea into a broader notion of limit situations. (shrink)

The boundary between spiritual experience and mental disorder remains unclear and should invite collaboration between psychiatry and other disciplines, including theology. Jackson and Fulford (1997), using the tools of analytic philosophy, have proposed a model allowing principled differentiation between spiritual experience and psychotic symptoms based on the personal values of the subject, a cognitive problem-solving model. Spiritual experience is described as positively evaluated psychotic experience, which enables the subject to do more than he or she normally does. In the present (...) paper, it is claimed that values and actions cannot alone always discriminate between religious experience and psychopathology. With reference to three case studies, drawn from the practice of one of us, it is argued that spirituality is not all about experience and that it cannot be understood without reference to the subject's personal history and spiritual tradition, however implicit or fragmented. This approach would allow an account of ordinary religious experience in those who have suffered ego disablement during mental illness. Drawing primarily on the Christian tradition, we argue that the use of theological criteria may allow levels of discrimination between spiritual experience and mental disorder not allowed for by philosophical psychopathology. (shrink)

W artykule analizuje się pojęcie „proposition" (sądu w sensie logicznym) wprowadzone w pracy D. Vandervekena "What is a Proposition", stosując metody algebraiczne. Analiza ta umożliwia głębsze zrozumienie tego pojęcia, prowadzi m.in. do uogólnienia pojęcia „mocnej implikacji" (§5), jej głównym rezultatem jest pewna reprezentacja pojęcia „proposition” (§ 6).

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 main aim of the paper is to show an existential religious model of business leadership. We want to defend the thesis that leaders, who consider existing norms and regulations, have the greatest influence on how organisational aims are achieved. Thus, based on the concept of Kierkegaard’s modes of existence, we show that the individual values and motives of leaders’ behaviour influence the shape of the leadership itself as well as the management of an organisation. On the basis of a (...) literature review, we propose the following connections: an aesthetic mode with instrumental motives which result in the shareholder perspective; an ethical mode of existence with normative motives which lead to the stakeholder perspective; and the spiritual mode of existence with transcendental motives which enable leaders to introduce a holistic perspective of management. However, we cannot link certain motives with a particular type of leadership, as leaders with different modes of existence might practice the same type of leadership (i.e., leadership based on values, authentic leadership) and combine various types of leadership in their actions. The paper might provide a theoretical basis for empirical research on leadership and managerial behaviour. (shrink)

The origin and early evolution of animals marks an important event in life's history. This event is historically associated with an important variable in Earth history – oxygen. One view has it that an increase in oceanic oxygen levels at the end of the Neoproterozoic Era (roughly 600 million years ago) allowed animals to become large and leave fossils. How important was oxygen for the process of early animal evolution? New data show that some modern sponges can survive for several (...) weeks at low oxygen levels. Many groups of animals have mechanisms to cope with low oxygen or anoxia, and very often, mitochondria – organelles usually associated with oxygen – are involved in anaerobic energy metabolism in animals. It is a good time to refresh our memory about the anaerobic capacities of mitochondria in modern animals and how that might relate to the ecology of early metazoans. (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)