Theoretical frames for analyzing information in biological and molecular multicomponent structures are proposed. The mathematical foundations of the proposal are presented. Both the information encoded in structures is defined and the method of calculating the amount of this information is introduced. The proposed approach is applied to the operation of a molecular multicomponent machine.

It is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred (...) to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters. Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals. Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely lifelogging and self-monitoring, remote monitoring of vital signs, emotional state recognition, food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, activity and personal assistance, gesture recognition, fall detection and prevention, mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to systematize the de re/de dicto distinctions that are most frequently used in philosophy. The paper highlights the main contexts in which these distinctions may be found and their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic definitions. The article consists of four points, which are discussed in turn: 1) the principal moments in the early history of the distinction between de re and de dicto; 2) the main theoretical contexts of this distinction; 3) contemporary attempts to systematize (...) the various versions of this distinction, derived from Thomas McKay and Michael Nelson; and 4) a similar attempt, conducted by the author, to make McKay and Nelson’s systematization more precise. (shrink)

In the vast literature on architectural theory and practice, the ways in which architectural knowledge is actually taught, debated, and understood are too often ignored. The essays collected in this groundbreaking volume address the current state of architecture as an academic and professional discipline. The issues considered range from the form and content of architectural education to the architect's social and environmental obligations and the emergence of a new generation of architects. Often critical of the current paradigm, these essays offer (...) a provocative challenge to accepted assumptions about the production, dissemination, and reception of architectural knowledge. Contributors: Sherry Ahrentzen, U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Stanford Anderson, MIT; Carol Burns, Harvard U; Russell Ellis, UC Berkeley; Thomas Fisher, U of Minnesota; Linda Groat, U of Michigan; Kay Bea Jones, Ohio State U; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; A. G. Krishna Menon, TVB School of Habitat Studies, India; Garth Rockcastle, U of Minnesota; Michael Stanton, American U, Beirut; Sharon E. Sutton, U of Washington; David J. T. Vanderburgh, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium; and Donald Watson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. (shrink)

The article attempts to define the concept of “post-neo-Kantianism” based on the nature of its relationship to the concept of “neo-Kantianism”. Concerning this matter, the author poses the following tasks: to characterize the phenomenon of neo-Kantianism, to point out the problems of its definition, to identify the relevance of the term “post-neo-Kantianism” and its relation to the philosophy of I. Kant in particular. The author emphasizes the need to introduce this term in the classification of philosophy of the XX century (...) with the appropriateness of building the model of “Kantianism - Neo-Kantianism - Neo-Neo-Kantianism - Post-Neo-Kantianism”, where each new stage is determined by the nature of the reflection of thinkers of a certain period over the fundamental philosophical problems articulated in Kant's “Critics”. Among the post-Neo-Kantians, A. Noras names thinkers traditionally considered to be german phenomenologists, such as E. Husserl and M. Heidegger: it is from the philosophical concept of Husserl that one can speak of the emergence of post-Neo-Kantianism, and the semantically correct interpretation of Heidegger, according to author, is most clearly understood in the framework of Baden Neo-Kantianism. Investigating the phenomenon of post-Neo-Kantianism, the need is established for answering a question regarding the preceding Neo-Kantian tradition, within which there is still a number of contradictions unresolved in the history of philosophy regarding the classification of Neo-Kantian schools and the distinction between the two periods of Neo-Kantianism: early and late. Neo-Kantianism shows the relevance of Kantian philosophy, highlighting the ongoing debate about understanding the Kantian “Critique of Pure Reason”. Post-Neo-Kantianism plays an important role in terms of the perspectives of modern Kant studies, which include Gottfried Martin, Manfred Brelage, or Hans-Michael Baumgartner. (shrink)

On the basis of arguments put forth by (Kripke, 1977a) and (Kripke, 1980), it is widely held that one can sometimes rationally accept propositions of the form "P and not-P" and also that there are necessary a posteriori truths. We will find that Kripke's arguments for these views appear probative only so long as one fails to distinguish between semantics and presemantics—between the literal meanings of sentences, on the one hand, and the information on the basis of which one identifies (...) those literal meanings, on the other. This same failure, it will be argued, underlies the popular thesis that intersubstituting co-referring terms sometimes turns true sentences into false ones and vice versa. Though seemingly plausible, this thesis has a number of counterintuitive consequences, among them that the occurrence of “snow” in “it is true that snow is white” doesn’t refer to snow. An understanding of the distinction between semantics and presemantics suggests a way to develop a semantic system that doesn’t have these consequences and that, moreover, reconciles our intuitions concerning cognitive content with some powerfully argued theses of contemporary philosophy of language. Some of this paper's main contentions are anticipated by Andrzej Boguslawski in his 1994 paper “Sentential Complementation and Truth.”. (shrink)

The semantic rules governing natural language quantifiers (e.g. "all," "some," "most") neither coincide with nor resemble the semantic rules governing the analogues of those expressions that occur in the artificial languages used by semanticists. Some semanticists, e.g. Peter Strawson, have put forth data-consistent hypotheses as to the identities of the semantic rules governing some natural-language quantifiers. But, despite their obvious merits, those hypotheses have been universally rejected. In this paper, it is shown that those hypotheses are indeed correct. Moreover, data-consistent (...) hypotheses are put forth as to the identities of the semantic rules governing the words "most" and "many," the semantic rules governing which semanticists have thus far been unable to identify. The points made in this paper are anticipated in a paper, published in the same issue of the Journal of Pragmatics, by Andrzej Boguslawski. (shrink)

Every choice we make is set against a background of massive ignorance about our past, our future, our circumstances, and ourselves. Philosophers are divided on the moral significance of such ignorance. Some say that it has a direct impact on how we ought to behave - the question of what our moral obligations are; others deny this, claiming that it only affects how we ought to be judged in light of the behaviour in which we choose to engage - the (...) question of what responsibility we bear for our choices. Michael Zimmerman claims that our ignorance has an important bearing on both questions, and offers an account of moral obligation and moral responsibility that is sharply at odds with the prevailing wisdom. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ethics. (shrink)

In this brief note we would like to outline the main events of life and the main achievements of Stanisław Jaśkowski one of the important Polish logician and mathematician of the first half of twentieth century.

The studies of health care systems are conducted intensively on various levels. They are important because the systems suffer from numerous pathologies. The health care is analyzed, first of all, in economic aspects but their functionality in the framework of systems theory is studied, as well. There are also attempts to work out some general values on which health care systems should be based. Nevertheless, the aforementioned studies, however, are fragmentary ones. In this paper holistic approach to the philosophical basis (...) of health care is presented. The levels on which the problem can be considered are specified explicitly and relations between them are analyzed, as well. The philosophical basis on which the national health care systems could be based is proposed. Personalism is the basis for the proposal. First of all, the values, that are derived from the personalistic philosophy, are specified as the basic ones for health care systems. Then, general organizational and functional properties of the system are derived from the assumed values. The possibility of adaptation of solutions from other fields of social experiences are also mentioned. The existing health care systems are analyzed within the frame of the introduced proposal. (shrink)

The conflict between religion and science is considered from the point of view of a tension between two types of knowledge: religious and scientific. These are indicative of a fundamental conflict between two attitudes towards the world: looking at the world either from the point view of revelation or natural knowledge. I argue that religion and science can be seen as complementary, not threatening the views of each other. Science itself is neither theistic nor atheistic. It becomes such due to (...) ideological interpretation. Scientific propositions and theories neither directly support nor threaten religion; the problem of existence of God and the supernatural is beyond the capabilities of science. The argument for the neutrality of science can be grounded in the fact that both theism and atheism derive support from science. (shrink)

There are many religions in the human world, and people manifest their religiousness in many different ways. The main problem this paper addresses concerns the possibility of sorting out this complex world of human religiousness by showing that it can be phenomenologically reduced to a few very basic existential attitudes. These attitudes express the main types of ways in which a human being relates to his or herself and the world, independently of the worldview or religion professed by the individual. (...) I use Kierkegaard’s theories of the stages of existence and subjective truth as a model. The theory of the stages of existence provides five basic existential attitudes on the basis of which religious attitudes can develop: spiritlessness, the aesthetic, the ethical, religiousness A, and religiousness B. The theory of subjective truth shows how the concept of truth functions in an ethical and existential sense as the personal truth of an individual engaged in building their religious identity. In turn, I discuss the problem of the relation of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to phenomenology, briefly introduce his concept of subjective truth and the stages of existence, and show how existential attitudes can be transformed into religious ones. I also consider the problem of the demonic as the inverted order of this anthropological and existential model. Finally, I argue that the model developed herein may be useful for further research into the phenomenology of religious attitudes. (shrink)

The article aims to present the results of empirical research and theoretical analyses concerning the transfer, co-creation, and utilization of scientific knowledge by various entities, emerging at the intersection of science and practice. The research was conducted using survey techniques and in-depth interviews among scientists engaged in research collaboration with entities outside the university, and through case studies of two institutions acting as external partners. Among them were the Lublin City Office and the Lublin Culture Workshops, a municipal cultural institution. (...) The work falls within the realm of social research, which directly (Zerubavel 1997) or indirectly (Sange 1990, Douglas 2011) addresses the functioning and adaptation of various social systems (in this case, institutions and organizations) from the perspective of the communicatively mediated cognitive processes occurring within them (Luhmann 2018, Weick 1995, Lenartowicz et al. 2016a, 2016b). In this context, the subject of cognition and the user of knowledge is not an individual human, but a social system/organization with the capacity to observe itself and its environment, to learn, and to anticipate its future (Hecker 2012; Walsh 1995, Luhmann 2018; Seidl 2006, Lant, Shapira 2001). It posits the existence of a kind of supra-individual rationality, which does not require something like a system's unique self-consciousness, akin to human consciousness, but operates on the principle of L. Fleck's thought collectives, which are emergent in nature with respect to individuals (Sady 2020, Luhmann 1990, Fleck 1986). The rationality of such collectives is defined by their belonging to a functional area of society, hence they differ in the case of entities belonging to the science, economy, politics systems, etc. The research focused on situations where, due to the need for knowledge, various organizations collaborate with scientific units. This research succeeded in characterizing the main stages of establishing and implementing such collaboration, and the main requirements associated with them. The study sought to determine the impact of the interaction of different rationalities on the nature of the co-created knowledge and to identify the conditions of its usefulness, both for external entities and for the scientific system. The adopted indicator of the usefulness of knowledge for the scientific system is the publication of results in scientific journals, while for external entities, its impact on the decision-making process, such as changing operational strategies. In this case, the mechanism of translating knowledge into changes in organizational practices was also examined, paying attention to the existing mechanisms of collective learning within the organization. (shrink)

Tekst dotyczy wybranych problemów związanych z utylitaryzmem jako koncepcją etyczną. Autor prezentuje krótki zarys tej teorii, z uwzględnieniem podstawowego jej podziału na utylitaryzm czynów i utylitaryzm reguł. Zasadniczym przedmiotem zainteresowania są jednak zarzuty formułowane w stosunku do tej doktryny. Przedstawiona krytyka oraz niektóre odpowiedzi na nią dotyczą różnych budzących kontrowersje punktów utylitaryzmu. Wśród nich znajdują się odniesienia do nadmiernych roszczeń wysuwanych wobec sprawców czynów. Inne ujemne oceny odwołują się do trudności przewidywania następstw działań. Kolejne głosy wiążą się z zarzutem ignorowania (...) przez rozpatrywaną koncepcję fundamentalnych intuicji moralnych. W niektórych opiniach podnoszona jest kwestia hedonizmu charakterystycznego dla klasycznej wersji propozycji sformułowanej przez Benthama i Milla. Przedmiotem negatywnego osądu stało się też ignorowanie osobowego kontekstu moralności i idei sprawiedliwości przez koncepcję użyteczności. (shrink)

Unitary, irreducible representations of the proper, orthochronous Lorentz group comprise the main series and the supplementary series. The main series is spanned by the complete set of eigenstates of the self-adjoint Casimir operator C 1=−(1/2)M μν M μν , where M μν are generators of Lorentz transformations. The supplementary series has no such interpretation; moreover it is spurious from the point of view of functional analysis as it does not enter into the integral representation of an arbitrary test function. The (...) author describes the physical context within which the supplementary series arises, nevertheless, in a natural way: it arises if we exponentiate a massless scalar quantum field living in three-dimensional de Sitter space-time and if the appropriate coupling constant is small enough. (shrink)

Głównym przedmiotem książki jest ewolucja sensów nadawanych pojęciom wolności, tolerancji i sprawiedliwości. Rozumienie tych terminów jest istotne dla refleksji o polityce, zwłaszcza takiej, która nie unika etycznego i ekonomicznego kontekstu. Praca opisuje proces przemiany znaczenia tych idei odwołując się do obszernego materiału teoretycznego. Zarówno wolność, jak sprawiedliwość oraz tolerancja były tradycyjnie pojmowane jako brak (negatywnie). Wolność ujmowano na ogół jako niepodleganie przymusowi, tolerancję jako brak nietolerancji, a sprawiedliwość jako stan niezachodzenia niesprawiedliwości. Współcześnie upowszechnia się odmienna ich charakterystyka. Wolność bywa utożsamiana (...) z możnością działania, tolerancja z akceptacją, a nawet afirmacją odmienności, a sprawiedliwość ze „sprawiedliwością społeczną” opartą na przymusie redystrybucji dóbr. Książka oprócz rekonstrukcji tej przemiany poddaje też bardziej szczegółowej analizie jej konsekwencje. Teoretycznym zwieńczeniem owej transformacji jest koncepcja państwa opiekuńczego. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, the author presents Popper's theory of the objective knowledge and the three worlds in ten theses with a commentary, showing difficulties and vagueness of Popper's theory and trying to clarify it. The second part comprises discussion with a few Popper's theses. The author especially argues against the thesis about autonomy of the third world, and about epistemology limited to examination of only the objects from the third world. In relation to this, the author (...) shows some defects of Popper's argumentation from Objective Knowledge. The conclusion of the article is a different interpretation and an anew formulation of Popper's theory. (shrink)

Giulio Cesare Vanini, called by 17th-century theologians the „eagle of atheists”, criticized vehemently the fundamental assumption of Christian anthropology according to which virtues in their nature are something alien to the human being, and only vices and vicious inclinations should be peculiar to it. Vanini discards the theological alienation and restores the dignity of man as an individual of a reasonable and moral nature. According to Vanini, the existence of God as a giver of soul would deprive man of his (...) dignity. Thus, if man received his soul from God, nobody could in fact be father to his children, as he would not be able to transfer his essence to his offspring. An interesting item in Vanini’s considerations is his materialistic idea that men’s nature and conduct are determined by external factors, e.g., by food. As food is transformed into the „substance” of the consumer, „we consist of what we consume”. Vanini observes that rich people feed themselves differently than the poor and concludes that differences in habits may be attributed to different nutrition. Heroic deeds are explained by Vanini by that certain patterns of behaviour of people we adore or esteem are distinctly inculcated on our imagination. In certain situations these patterns „incite us to similar deeds”. To Vanini, the aim of his life was discarding lies and acting „for the enriching of the world of culture”. (shrink)

Computable limits and colimits are “recursive counterparts” of the suitable classical concepts from category theory. We present mainly some interesting problems related to computable products. Moreover, some “computable counterparts” of well-known classical facts from category theory are given. MSC: 03D45, 18A30.