Notwithstanding the opportunities it provides, the implementation of some measures of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (EU CAP), including agri-environment-climate measures (AECMs), also generates threats. The study identifies an extremely disturbing process that can be referred to as “internal neo-colonialism”, which has been driven by the technocratic agrarian policy of the EU and transformations in Poland at the turn of the twenty-first century. The associated disadvantageous practices mainly affect areas under threat of marginalisation and peripheralisation, including Poland with its post-Socialist (...) heritage, which has shaped the attitudes and behaviour of society and has consolidated linkages between politics and business. In order to retrace such activities, the study analyses EU funds granted in support of farmers implementing AECMs, with a focus on analysing the place of residence of the “farmer” and the location of the farm. As the research shows, the attractiveness of CAP support causes Polish agriculture and Poland’s countryside, including its natural and financial resources, to be drained by so-called “suitcase farmers”, i.e. people/entities not tied to the place where the agricultural activity is pursued, many of whom live in cities. One common practice is to take over land located in legally protected areas noted for their high quality of natural environment. Not only does the practice of land grabbing strengthen the social exclusion of rural communities and the peripheralisation and pauperisation of these areas, but it also hinders discussion about environmental justice and the ecological integrity of rural areas. (shrink)

According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...) the sense that it postulates that our cognitive contact with the world is mediated by internal representations. However, the exact sense in which PCT is representational remains unclear; neither is it clear that it deserves such status—that is, whether it really invokes structures that are truly and nontrivially representational in nature. In the present article, I argue that the representational pretensions of PCT are completely justified. This is because the theory postulates cognitive structures—namely action-guiding, detachable, structural models that afford representational error detection—that play genuinely representational functions within the cognitive system. (shrink)

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has transgressed biomedical categories. According to Horton, it turned out to be a 'syndrome' that infected virtually all spheres of social life. The pandemic has created toxic social atmosphere highly unfavorable to clinical and clinic-ethical decision making. Constraints and pressures related to micro-, meso-, exo- and macro-environments framing doctors, nurses, and medical students in training were identified. These factors exacerbated moral distress (moral injury) amongst clinicians. In a joint Polish-Lithuanian project (IDUB 2020-2022) we examined predictors of moral (...) distress in pandemic clinical contexts. A survey-based, real-time, correlational and comparative study was conducted in Poland and Lithuania after the first year of pandemic with N=227 participants. Unexpected differences on regular and pandemic-type moral distress levels were found between the two national samples. Polish participants showed significantly higher moral distress levels than their Lithuanian counterparts. The following article discusses these findings and recommends the reinforcement of resilient medical decision making. (shrink)

Abstract:Invertebrates are generally excluded from ethical consideration in scientific research and in environmental protection. In this paper I present and characterize controversies related to the use of freshwater benthic invertebrates in biological monitoring in the light of diverse ethical concepts. I consider the inherent contradictions which arise from simultaneously treating wild animals as: items possessing bio-indicative value, ecologically important elements of ecosystems, representatives of rare and endangered species and finally, as sentient beings with the capacity to suffer. The analysis is (...) based on numerical data collected during projects related to biological monitoring of Polish watercourses. Among the ethical concepts discussed, only the evolutionary inclusive one allows for a coherent classification of all animals according to the innate values assigned to individuals, and only this concept provides us with convincing arguments enabling the incorporation of individual invertebrates within the scope of ethical considerations. (shrink)

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama vyresnio amžiaus asmenų diskriminacijos raiška Lietuvos darbo rinkoje. Aptariami diskriminacijos dėl amžiaus teoriniai aspektai, vyresnio amžiaus asmenų užimtumas kaip socialinės politikos problema ir pristatomi 2014 m. Lietuvoje atlikto diskriminacijos dėl amžiaus darbo rinkoje sociologinio tyrimo rezultatai. Mokslinės literatūros ir kiekybinio tyrimo duomenų analizės pagrindu galime teigti, kad vyresnio amžiaus asmenys dėl jų amžiaus, lyties, įsitikinimų ir kt. darbe susiduria su įvairaus pobūdžio diskriminacijos apraiškomis. Atliktas tyrimas atskleidė, kad diskriminacija darbinėje aplinkoje išauga su respondentų amžiumi, t. y. vyresnėse grupėse (...) diskriminacijos raiška intensyviausia. 40–50 m. amžiaus grupėje patiriama diskriminacija darbe yra žemesnė nei imties vidurkis. Su amžiumi susijusi diskriminacija išryškėja 56–60 m. amžiaus grupėje, o labiausiai reiškiasi tarp vyresnių nei 60 metų asmenų. (shrink)

As formulated by Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell, epistemological disjunctivism is the claim that perceptual experience can provide the subject with epistemic justification that is reflectively accessible and externally grounded at the same time. Pritchard calls this thesis ‘the holy grail of epistemology’, since it reconciles two traditionally rival theories of justification, namely epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism. The main objection against epistemological disjunctivism thus understood is that it does not do justice to the well-known internalist intuitions expressed in The (...) New Evil Demon and Brain-in-a-Vat scenarios. I defend epistemological disjunctivism from this objection by indicating that those who apply to such scenarios commit themselves to implausible views in the philosophy of mind. I conclude that epistemological disjunctivism accurately expresses the epistemological attitude of a non-reductive materialist regarding the body-mind problem. (shrink)

This paper centers around the notion that internal, mental representations are grounded in structural similarity, i.e., that they are so-called S-representations. We show how S-representations may be causally relevant and argue that they are distinct from mere detectors. First, using the neomechanist theory of explanation and the interventionist account of causal relevance, we provide a precise interpretation of the claim that in S-representations, structural similarity serves as a “fuel of success”, i.e., a relation that is exploitable for the representation using (...) system. Then, we discuss crucial differences between S-representations and indicators or detectors, showing that—contrary to claims made in the literature—there is an important theoretical distinction to be drawn between the two. (shrink)

Are perceptual experiences epistemically appraisable? In this paper, I argue, contra Siegel (Rationality of perception, Oxford 2017) that they are not (§§ 2–3). I also show how the problem of hijacked experience can be solved without endorsing the view that perceptual experience is epistemically appraisable (§§ 4–5). A key idea behind my proposal is a disjunctivist view on rationalising and epistemic powers of perceptual experience.

The aim of this article is to critically examine what I call Action-Centric Theories of Representation (ACToRs). I include in this category theories of representation that (1) reject construing representation in terms of a relation that holds between representation itself (the representational vehicle) and what is represented, and instead (2) try to bring the function that representations play for cognitive systems to the center stage. Roughly speaking, according to proponents of ACToRs, what makes a representation (that is, what is constitutive (...) of it being a representation) is its being functionally involved in preselecting or guiding the actions of cognitive systems. I intend to argue that while definitely valuable, ACToRs are underconstrained and thus not entirely satisfying, since there exist structures that would count as representations according to ACToRs, but which do not play functional roles that could be nontrivially or in an explanatorily valuable way classified as representing something for a cognitive system. I outline a remedy for this theoretical situation by postulating that a fully satisfying theory of representation in cognitive science should have two factors; i.e., it should combine the pragmatic, action-oriented aspect present in ACToRs with an element that emphasizes the importance of the relation holding between a representational vehicle and what is represented. (shrink)

Disputes over causes play a central role in legal argumentation and liability attribution. Legal approaches to causation often struggle to capture cause-in-fact in complex situations, e.g. overdetermination, preemption, omission. In this paper, we first assess three current theories of causation to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses in capturing cause-in-fact. Secondly, we introduce a semi-formal framework for modelling causal arguments through strict and defeasible rules. Thirdly, the framework is applied to the Althen vaccine injury case. And lastly, we discuss the need (...) for new criteria based on a common causal argumentation framework and propose ideas on how to integrate the current theories of causation to assess the strength of causal arguments, while also acknowledging the tension between evidence-based and policy-based causal analysis in law. (shrink)

The article argues that altruistic giving based on anonymity, which is expected to promote social solidarity and block trade in human body parts, is conceptually defective and practically unproductive. It needs to be replaced by a more adequate notion which responds to the human practices of giving and receiving. The argument starts with identification of the main characteristics of the anonymous altruistic donation: social separation of the organ donor from the recipient, their mutual replaceability, non-obligatoriness of donation, and non-obligatoriness of (...) reciprocation on the recipient’s part. Since these characteristics are also central to typical market relations, anonymous altruistic donation not only cannot promote solidarity but may encourage proposals for markets of transplantable organs. Thus, transplant ethics needs to be reframed. It needs to be rooted in, rather than promote, the practices of giving and receiving known to human societies. As the basis for such reframing, the idea of sharing in another’s misfortune is proposed. It relies on the human practices of giving and receiving and, with appropriate regulatory safeguards, can provide a better conceptual basis for blocking commercial exchanges of human body parts. (shrink)

This paper presents Michael Heller’s notion of “philosophy in science” and re-introduces Michael Heller’s classical text that first presented this concept of philosophy entitled How is “philosophy in science” possible?. The paper discusses the historical context of Heller’s idea as it emerged from the discussions and works of the Krakow philosophical scene and discusses the basic tenants of this philosophy, its analytic character, the role of intellectual tradition in the development of this philosophy, and the critical role played by an (...) interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, science, and theology. Despite the idea of philosophy in science having emerged about 40 years ago, this concept still inspires and fuels innovative research. The notion of “philosophy in science” lies at the foundations of the philosophy published in two journals: Philosophical Problems in Science and Philosophy in Science. (shrink)

This paper aims to present and discuss an argumentation against the Turing test (TT), which we shall call the CCSC (Complete Conversation System Claim). Exemplary arguments of the CCSC type include Lem’s “Space Gramophone,” the “machine equipped with a dictionary” proposed by Shannon and McCarthy, Block’s “Aunt Bubbles,” and Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument. CCSC argumentation is constructed to show that the TT is not properly designed and, consequently, is not a good hallmark of intelligence. Based on the original TT rules (...) reconstruction, I argue that CCSC-type argumentation seems to be aimed at a certain interpretation of the TT, which, as I demonstrate, commits the straw man fallacy. In light of the results presented by Łupkowski and Wiśniewski, I also discuss whether a complete conversation system is theoretically possible. (shrink)

This article examines the concept of “perspective” as an embodied metaphor with ontological and epistemological implications for the modeling of historical understanding of contested pasts. The metaphors employed in modeling past reality shape how we make sense of the controversial past. In particular, I explore how perspectival metaphorical models conjure the notions of presence/proximity/engagement and absence/distance/detachment. To open this up, the paper juxtaposes two distinct models of seeing and knowing as sources of embodied metaphor: 1) static and distancing optical metaphors (...) of cognition, and 2) a “post-cognitive” process of interaction. I argue that the shift towards the affective, experiential and immersive forms of engagement in historical representation is indicative of the growing importance of dynamic, embodied and interactive features in mediated models of the past. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of virtual reality as an emergent medium that offers a new way of modeling the past. Despite its novelty, however, virtual reality raises age-old questions about the dynamics of engagement and detachment in historical understanding. (shrink)

After a brief look at Drafts on Polish philosophy of the twentieth century you could get the impression that this is a work dedicated to the most recent works of Polish philosophy. However after a moment of consideration, it seems hard to believe that a contemporary philosopher would write a history of twentieth century philosophy which could be considered neither as his history nor his philosophy. The distinction between history and philosophy in this case is not accidental since Wojciech Słomski (...) does not try to present a completely closed view of philosophical thought in the last century but aims at expressing that which he himself considers most valuable in contemporary Polish philosophy. It turns out that despite first impressions, we are not dealing with a systematic lecture, maintaining a cold and impartial approach to the subject but with a text written by an independent philosopher who cannot write differently about philosophy than Wojciech Słomski has done. For this reason too, the philosophy in Drafts is a living philosophy, made up of the most current propositions considered by W. Słomski as more important than the task of executing clear distinctions and pigeonholing of presented views into categories created by philosophers. (shrink)

Today, for cultural institutions, in particular, for libraries, the issue of evaluating the effectiveness of their activities is particularly relevant. There is still no single assessment methodology that takes into account the interests of all stakeholders: outside experts, library managers and staff, investors and sponsors of library activities. The purpose of the study is to develop an integrated methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of state cultural institutions, taking into account the needs of all potential users. The scientific novelty lies in (...) the development, based on the results of an empirical study, of an indicator for measuring the effectiveness of the activities of state cultural institutions, as well as an integrated methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of the library, taking into account the economic and non-economic interest of the activity and providing a comprehensive application of financial and managerial, information and organizational, control and analytical measures, which together contribute to improving the effectiveness of the activity. As a result, the author proposed a unified methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of state cultural institutions on the example of the Kostroma Regional Universal Scientific Library. (shrink)

The article examines the subjective attitudes towards life chances of the Lithuanian youth (aged 18–35). Following the concept of life chances introduced by M. Weber (1920) (cited by Grusky 2001), the theoretical aspects of life chances are analysed. The empirical part of the paper is to survey the research results on the life chances of young people in Lithuania in 2023. Based on the analysis of scientific literature and survey research data, we can state that the subjective attitudes of young (...) people to life chances vary depending on age, gender, employment, and parents’ socio-economic status when the respondent is 14–15 years old. The survey research revealed that young people, who are currently not working or studying, or who identify themselves and their family with the lowest social class, most unfavourably evaluate their life chances. The scientific research is funded by the Lithuanian Science Council researchers group’s Project ‘Socio-economic Factors of Youth Life Chances Differentiation in Lithuania’ (Reg. No. S-MIP-22-42, contract date 18.03.2022). (shrink)

Metaphysical nihilism can be defined as the view that there might be no con-crete objects. One may argue for this view defining a finite procedure of sub-traction on a set of concrete, contingent objects juxtaposed across possible worlds, which procedure will eventually terminate in an empty possible world. Obviously, this subtraction argument is not applicable if all non-empty possible worlds contain an infinite number of objects. In this paper, I will discuss in detail the limitations of this argument and then (...) investigate whether and how they can be relaxed. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the occurrence of the so called day of the week effects in market return time series from the period of January 2003 to September 2013. The study focuses on four indices of the Warsaw Stock Exchange and additionally five indices of major world stock exchanges. The main data sample was divided into three subperiods in order to determine whether or not the intensity of day of the week anomalies is constant in time. (...) The study revealed a substantial number of the day of the week anomalies in earliest subperiods and very limited evidence of those effects in later ones, giving rise to the conclusion that the intensity of the day of the week anomalies is diminishing with time. The most common effect identified on the WSE was a positive Friday effect. The Monday effect often described in early literature on the subject matter seems to currently occur very rarely. The study also indicates that the day of the week effects were more persistent among stocks with smaller market capitalization on the WSE. (shrink)

Traumatic brain injuries to the frontal lobes are associated with many maladaptive forms of behavior. We investigated the association between brain damage and impulsivity, as measured by the rate of delay discounting. The main aim of this study was to test the hypothesis of steeper discounting of different amounts in a group of patients with frontal lobe damage. We used a delay discounting task in the form of a structured interview. A total of 117 participants were divided into five groups: (...) three neurological groups and two groups without brain damage. Our analyses showed that patients with focal damage to the frontal lobes demonstrated steeper delay discounting than other participants. Other clinical groups demonstrated similar discounting rates. The data pattern related to the magnitude effect on the group level suggested that the magnitude effect is absent in the group of patients with damage to the frontal lobes; however, results were less consistent on an individual level. Amount-dependent discounting was observed in only two groups, the healthy control group and the neurological group with other cortical areas damaged. (shrink)

Tongan people in Aotearoa New Zealand experience higher rates of mental health challenges than Tongans born in Tonga. Engagement with services is lower for Pacific Island groups than it is for the dominant population in Aotearoa New Zealand. Meanwhile, the Pacific population is growing in Aotearoa New Zealand year after year. This paper explores how services could use evidence to support more appropriate responses for Pacific Islanders, in particular, Tongan communities. It takes recovery in mental health and explores the relevant (...) concepts that would better support engagement and response for Tongans in Aotearoa New Zealand. (shrink)

The article deals with the consideration that in spite of the fact that artistic creation is firstly an active work, the artist sometimes is not the only determinant factor of the value of the artwork, therefore some senses of the work that have not been predicted or consciously embodied by the artist might emerge. Creative inspiration, which creates the conditions for the appearance of something unpredicted, has been usually explained as the highest form of the creativity of the artist. We (...) reconstruct Heidegger’s innovative thought about the creativity as a partly passive attitude of the artist in the first chapter of the article. The second part deals with the development of the ideas of creation as a specific form of inactivity of the artist in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Theodor Adorno and later French philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Alain Badiou. We look into their concepts that are formulated on purpose to explain the possibilities of the artistic creation, which might interrupt the standardized, stereotypical life, to promote the appearance of something unplanned and unforeseen. (shrink)

Psychedelic substances elicit powerful, uncanny conscious experiences that are thought to possess therapeutic value. In those who undergo them, these altered states of consciousness often induce shifts in metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental structure of reality. The contents of those beliefs range from contentious to bizarre, especially when considered from the point of view of naturalism. Can chemically induced, radically altered states of consciousness provide reasons for or play some positive epistemic role with respect to metaphysical beliefs? In this paper, (...) I discuss a view that has been underexplored in recent literature. I argue that psychedelic states can be rationally integrated into one’s epistemic life. Consequently, updating one’s metaphysical beliefs based on altered states of consciousness does not have to constitute an instance of epistemic irrationality. (shrink)

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light (...) of its rational etiology. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the notion of internal representation has - at least according to some - a fundamental role to play in the sciences of the mind, not only has its explanatory utility been under attack for a while now, but it also remains unclear what criteria should an explanation of a given cognitive phenomenon meet to count as a representational explanation in the first place. The aim of this article is to propose a solution to this latter problem. (...) I will assume that representational explanations should be construed as a form of mechanistic explanations and proceed by proposing a general sketch of a functional architecture of a representational cognitive mechanism. According to the view on offer here, representational mechanisms are mechanisms that meet four conditions: the structural resemblance condition, the action-guidance condition, the decouplability condition, and the error-detection condition. (shrink)

In this paper, I use the predictive processing theory of perception to tackle the question of how perceptual states can be rationally involved in cognition by justifying other mental states. I put forward two claims regarding the epistemological implications of PP. First, perceptual states can confer justification on other mental states because the perceptual states are themselves rationally acquired. Second, despite being inferentially justified rather than epistemically basic, perceptual states can still be epistemically responsive to the mind-independent world. My main (...) goal is to elucidate the epistemology of perception already implicit in PP. But I also hope to show how it is possible to peacefully combine central tenets of foundationalist and coherentist accounts of the rational powers of perception while avoiding the well-recognized pitfalls of either. (shrink)

In a series of works published over the last thirty years, Rudolf Makkreel accomplished what can be called a hermeneutical rehabilitation of Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Such a rehabilitation has been formulated in explicit opposition to the negative hermeneutical image of Kant’s aesthetics which originated in the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and according to which the subjectivization of aesthetics perpetrated by Kant reduced aesthetic judgments to a mere communication of feelings, sanctioning thereby their hermeneutical irrelevance. In this essay I do (...) not intend to evaluate the legitimacy of Makkreel’s considerations about the hermeneutical importance of Kant’s Third Critique. Rather, I aim to question the pertinence of those considerations for Gadamer’s criticism of Kant, specifically in relation to the notion of sensus communis, which plays a central role both in Gadamer’s and Makkreel’s analyses. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a study investigating the links between emotion regulation and identity. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the two variables. On the basis of neo-eriksonian theories, an attempt to specify the role of emotion regulation in the process of identity formation was made. The study involved 849 people aged 14-25. The participants attended six types of schools: lower secondary school, basic vocational school, technical upper secondary school, general upper secondary school, (...) post-secondary school, and university. The research was conducted with the use of two questionnaires: Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Dimensions of Identity Development Scale. The analysis of the results points to a partial confirmation of the assumed hypotheses about the differences between people with different identity statuses in respect of the six investigated dimensions of emotion regulation. Also, the hypotheses about the links between the dimensions of emotion regulation and dimensions of identity in the subgroups with different identity statuses were partially confirmed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, it aims to analyze the philosophical debate between Gadamer and Blumenberg concerning the notion of secularization, which, in the author's view, has received less attention than it deserves; secondly, it intends thereby to shed light on an ontological ambiguity in Gadamer's hermeneutics, unintentionally detected by Blumenberg in his reply to Gadamer's review of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. The importance of the paper is both historical-philosophical and theoretical: it spells out different (...) aspects of a philosophical discussion whose relevance concern not only the secularization debate, but more generally the philosophy of history and the role of metaphors in understanding. The most relevant original contribution consists in the usage of Blumenberg's notion of background metaphorics as a tool for interpreting the role of the notion of history of effects in Gadamer's hermeneutics. (shrink)

This study aims to establish ideological effects of the pre-pandemic metaphor use in the mainstream media on users’ perceptions of their relationship with technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve that, 120 media articles from global mainstream media sources during the pre-pandemic period were collected and analysed at three levels: (1) metaphor identification; (2) deconstruction of conceptual source domains; (3) the coding of metaphorical expressions into psychological types of interpersonal relationships that are projected on technologies. The established metaphorical patterns were (...) tested in an online survey with 100 young adults and adults from Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic period of 2019-2020. The research findings resulted in the ideological perceptions of Reversed Agentivity and Mechanised Action characterising our relationship with technology and pointing out to the loss of individual autonomy, a lack of personal growth and more fragmented personal identity during the pandemic. (shrink)