This paper includes an analysis of a fragment of Cicero’s address in pro Balbo 24.54, which contains interesting, yet highly laconic information regarding one of the leges de repetundis – i.e. lex Servilia Caepionis. The analysis of the fragment led to the determination that the basic purpose of issuing that act was to cover the issue of changing the personal composition of judges sitting on the de reptundis tribunal. Apart from that, it seems that the genesis of the institution of (...) divinatio can also be found in that statute. (shrink)

There is a current effort to borrow the concept of trauma from medicine and psychiatry and to introduce it into sociological theory. The author explicates the notion of cultural trauma as applicable to the theory of social change. He defines cultural trauma as the culturally defined and interpreted shock to the cultural tissue of a society, and presents a model of the traumatic sequence, describing typical conditions under which cultural trauma emerges and evolves. Drawing on the work of Robert K. (...) Merton on anomie, and of Anthony Giddens on risk, he suggests a number of typical strategies by which societies cope with cultural traumas. Cultural trauma is treated as a link in the ongoing chain of social changes; depending on the number of concrete circumstances, cultural trauma may be a phase in the constructive morphogenesis of culture or in the destructive cycle of cultural decay. (shrink)

The objection raised by Davidson against Kuhn in article "On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme" that the argument presented in "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" was inconsistent is incorrect. Kuhn's conception belongs to psychology and sociology and his work could be titled "An Outline of Psychology and Sociology of Scientific Research". Consequently he is interested only and only in psychologi-cal reasons that affect scientists' theoretical decisions. E.g. his considerations concerning neutral observational language are polemous against thesis that language like (...) that could be somehow useful for interpretation of what scientists do and also against thesis that it could be useful for scientists themselves. The difficulty of un-derstanding above paradigmata does not consist on conceptual schemata meant logically as Davidson reads it but on different cognitive attitude and different manual sets of concepts. To explain the controversy logical and psychological concepts of meaning are distinguished. Davidson means the proper, Kuhn does the latter. Psy-chological meaning concists on what associations and feelings are evocated by utterances in the recever's mind. When Kuhn says that after a revolution scientists live in another world he means only that the language with witch they describe the reality has different psychological meaning. And this is that kind of meaning that cannot be translated and is lost when you discuss above paradigmata. From Kuhn's point of view it is possible to translate logical meaning of scientific utterances from before a revolution, and he does it. The psychological meaning can be only described but not translated. (shrink)

The measure of trust that people vest in their fellow citizens or institutions depends on three factors: the `reflected trustworthiness' of the target as estimated by themselves in a more or less rational manner, the attitude of `basic trustfulness' deriving from socialization, and the `culture of trust' pervading their society and normatively encouraging the trusting orientation. The author presents a model of a structural context conducive for the emergence of the culture of trust, and then argues that democratic organization contributes (...) to trust-generating conditions, such as normative certainty, transparency, stability, and accountability. This influence is found to be doubly paradoxical. First, democracy breeds the culture of trust by institutionalizing distrust at many levels of democratic organization. And second, the strongest influence of democracy on the culture of trust may be expected when the institutionalized distrust remains a resource used sparingly and only when there appear significant breaches of trust. (shrink)

The article focuses on the anti-naturalism of Menger and Mises. It presents a methodological approach formulated by both scholars as stemming from epistemological anti-naturalism and demonstrating similarities to social phenomenology. The article also discusses the development of the anti-naturalistic perspective on the basis of Hayek’s conception of sensory order. The latter allowed addressing the problem of validity of methodological dualism and established a sound foundation for the methodological approach of the Austrian School of Economics.

Given the adage “older and wiser,” it seems justified to assume that older people may be stereotyped as more moral than younger people. We aimed to study whether assessments of a person’s morality differ depending on their age. We asked 661 individuals from seven societies (Australians, Britons, Burusho of Pakistan, Canadians, Dani of Papua, New Zealanders, and Poles) whether younger (~20-year-old), middle-aged (~40-year-old), or older (~60-year-old) people were more likely to behave morally and have a sense of right and wrong. (...) We observed that older people were perceived as more moral than younger people. The effect was particularly salient when comparing 20-year-olds to either 40- or 60-year-olds and was culturally universal, as we found it in both WEIRD (i.e. Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) and non-WEIRD societies. (shrink)

The Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS) is an international scholarly program, founded in 1992 by Robert Ginsberg, that publishes philosophical books in all areas of value inquiry, including social and political thought, ethics, applied philosophy, aesthetics, feminism, pragmatism, personalism, religious values, medical and health values, values in education, values in science and technology, humanistic psychology, cognitive science, formal axiology, history of philosophy, post-communist thought, peace theory, law and society, and theory of culture. --Book Jacket.

Values, Valuations, and Axiological Norms in Richard Rorty's Neopragmatism sympathetically discusses Richard Rorty's neopragmatist philosophy. This book brings together a range of interpretations and possibilities on a variety of humanistic topics, including philosophy, literature, culture, film, economics, social issues, politics, and more. Skowroński involves the work of philosophers such as Kant, Dewey, Santayana, and Kołakowski as he delves into various philosophical problems using the lens of Rorty’s neopragmatist thought.

Human fascination with art has deep evolutionary roots, yet its role remains a puzzle for evolutionary theory. Although its widespread presence across cultures suggests a potential adaptive function, determining its evolutionary origins requires more comprehensive evidence beyond mere universality or assumed survival benefits. This paper introduces and tests the Collector Hypothesis, which suggests that artworks serve as indicators of collectors’ surplus wealth and social status, offering greater benefits to collectors than to artists in mating and reproductive contexts. Our study among (...) Indigenous Papuan communities provides preliminary support for the Collector Hypothesis, indicating that, compared to artists, collectors are perceived as having higher social status and greater attractiveness to women. These findings provide unique insights into Papuan communities and contribute to the ongoing discussion about art’s adaptive significance of art by suggesting that artistic capacities may benefit not only creators but also those who accumulate and display art. Further research in diverse cultural contexts is needed for a comprehensive understanding of this interplay. (shrink)

The paper is a continuation of A deductive-reductive form oflogic: general theory and intuitionistic case and considers the problem of definability of modal operators on the intuitionistic base. Contrary tothe classical case, it seems that the fact whether the connective is Heyting’sor Brouwerian is essential for the intuitionistic logic. The connective of possibility has the classical interpretation, i.e. w |= ✸α iff ∃t, if it is defined on the base of the logicwith Brouwerian connective of coimplication.

There is a long-standing dispute among scholars concerning Berkeley’s supposed commitment to an emotivist theory of meaning as the very first (and an early modern) instance of non-cognitivism. According to this position, the domains of religious and moral language do not refer to facts about the world, but rather express the emotional attitudes of religious or moral language users. Some scholars involved in the dispute argue for taking Berkeley to be an emotivist (non-cognitivist), while others hold that we should not (...) do so. This paper puts forward an interpretation that lends support to the non-cognitivist reading of his stance, but in expressivist rather than emotivist terms. It argues that the label “expressivism” does more justice to the textual evidence concerning his understanding of moral language, as what is distinctive where this philosopher is concerned is his interest in explaining the nature of our practice of employing moral language (i.e. how we come to formulate moral statements as expressions of our non-referential attitudes, and the meta-level considerations pertaining to morality associated with this), rather than whether morality is just a matter of our emotions or feelings (i.e. such first-order considerations about morality as whether moral rightness and wrongness correspond merely to our emotional states). (shrink)

The paper revises the biographical data about Michel Foucault’s stay in Poland in 1958-1959. The main inspiration comes from the recent very well documented literary reportage book by Remigiusz Ryziński, Foucault in Warsaw. Ryziński’s aim is to present the data and tell the story, not to analyse the data within the context of Foucault’s work. This paper fulfills this demand by giving additional hypotheses as to why Polish authorities expelled Foucault from Poland and what the relation was between communism and (...) homosexuality. The Polish experience, the paper compels, might have been inspiring for many of Foucault’s ideas in his Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. On the other hand the author points to the fact that Foucault recognized the difference between the role of the intellectual in the West and in communist countries but did not elaborate on it. In this paper the main argument deals with the idea of sexual paranoia as decisive, which is missing in Foucault's works, although it is found in e.g. Guy Hocquenghem. (shrink)

The Middle English Pearl is known for its mixture of genres, moods and various discourses. The textual journey the readers of the poem embark on is a long and demanding one, leading from elegiac lamentations and the erotic outbursts of courtly love to theological debates and apocalyptic visions. The heterogeneity of the poem has often prompted critics to overlook the continuity of the erotic mode in Pearl which emerges already in the poem’s first stanza. While it is true that throughout (...) the dream vision the language of the text never eroticizes the relationship between the Dreamer and the Pearl Maiden to the extent that it does in the opening lines, the article argues that eroticism actually underlies the entire structure of the vision proper. Taking recourse to Roland Barthes’s distinction between the erotic and the sexual to explain the exact nature of the bond which connects the two characters, the argument posits eroticism as an expression of somatic longing; a careful analysis of Pearl through this prism provides a number of ironic insights into the mutual interactions between the Dreamer and the Maiden and highlights the poignancy of their inability to understand each other. Further conclusions are also drawn from comparing Pearl with a number of Chaucerian dream visions. Tracing the erotic in both its overt and covert forms and following its transformations in the course of the narrative, the article outlines the poet’s creative use of the mechanics of the dream vision, an increasingly popular genre in the period when the poem was written. (shrink)

The article investigates the canonical plays of William Shakespeare—Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest—in an attempt to determine the nature of Shakespeare’s position on the early modern tendency to demonize fairy belief and to view fairies as merely a form of demonic manifestation. Fairy belief left its mark on all four plays, to a greater or lesser extent, and intertwined with the religious concerns of the period, it provides an important perspective on the problem of religion in (...) Shakespeare’s works. The article will attempt to establish whether Shakespeare subscribed to the tendency of viewing fairies as demonic agents, as epitomized by the Daemonologie of King James, or opposed it. Special emphasis will also be put on the conflation of fairies and Catholicism that one finds best exemplified in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. The article draws on a wealth of recent scholarship on early modern fairies, bringing together historical reflection on the changing perception of the fairy figure, research into Shakespeare’s attitude towards Catholicism and analyses of the many facets of anti-Catholic polemic emerging from early modern Protestant discourse. (shrink)

The paper considers whether virtue ethics should be regarded as excluding duty ethics or any of its essential elements. The argument suggested here consists of two steps: (1) an argument that there are two different versions of virtue ethics (moderate and strong) and that moderate virtue ethics does not exclude the duty ethics; (2) an analysis of various difficulties with the strong version of virtue ethics, which shows that moderate virtue ethics is more plausible because of its capacity to avoid (...) these difficulties. This capacity makes moderate virtue ethics more attractive as an ethical theory because it covers the entire range of moral phenomena described both by strong versions of virtue ethics and by duty ethics without the attendant difficulties. (shrink)

Schizophrenia still poses the greatest theoretical problems in contemporary psychopathology. These problems should be investigated through the works of authors who deal with schizophrenia representing different psychological theories. The author takes into consideration psychoanalytic and phenomenological point of view. The statements of those theories are encountered in the field of humanistic psychology.

Participants of polemics connected with the psychotherapeutic aspect of psychoanalysis, discuss the most often about technique. Controversies considerable relating to psychological theory and philosophy, lying at bases of this technique, are treated as secondary. This approach creates conflicting directives of therapeutic technique, forges its ethical dimension and description of psychical life of individual, introduces in the area of culture notions and phenomena not dependent on the social control. Threats resulting from these should be counteracted by psychotherapist's theoretical and philosophical reflection.

Development of notion of energy resulted in appearing different interpretations in fields of physics and psychology. To psychology this concept was introduced by Mesmer. He believed that an influence of a physically perceptible fluid is the essence of therapeutic action. It was Freud who reformulated Mesmer's theory explaining that this influence should be understood as a transference. At the same time, the 19th century disputes between vitalism and mechanistic school of physiology brought a widespread consensus about the unity of all (...) types of energy. This consensus led later to a gradual elimination of the concept of energy from psychology. In the 20th century interpretation of notion libido caused that idea of a specific vital energy returned in Reich's pieces. It is important that Reich was one of the most prominent psychotherapists of the 20th century. He created contemporary Bioenergetic Therapy. Representatives of this kind of therapy claim today that a notion of energy announces a rise of a new paradigm in science. Actually this notion creates a danger of introducing activities independent of any rational valuation into a field of healing procedures. (shrink)

The high point of the falsification of physical theories in a standard view of the philosophy of science is the so-called crucial experiment. This experiment is a kind of manipulated empirical test, which provides the criterion for distinguishing between two rival hypotheses, where one is an acceptable theory due to passing the test, and the other turns out to be an unacceptable theory as it does not pass the test. The crucial experiment was supposed to play a significant role because, (...) in virtue of an empirical disconfirmation of one theory, the experiment was assumed to confirm the other as true. However, in 1906, in La théorie physique, son object et la structure (hereafter quoted in English translation as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906/1954)), Pierre Duhem famously argued against this view and stated that crucial experiments in physics are impossible as they are necessarily ambiguous and logically incomplete. His contention rested on the claim that, “[a] physical theory is not an explanation [of true reality in itself in virtue of some broad metaphysical ramification of physics]. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as accurately as possible a set of experimental laws” (ibid., p. 19). Furthermore, different theories could be equally suitable to represent a given group of experimental laws. And, assuming holism, no hypothesis could be tested in isolation, but merely as a part of a set of an entire scientific theory. The problem which Duhem identified in 1906 was slightly overshadowed and neglected in mainstream philosophy of science until the appearance of a challenging paper by Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951 and entitled “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Quine’s paper caused a revival of interest in Duhem’s original formulation and gave a new impulse towards the problem in the form of the so-called Duhem-Quine thesis. The aim of this paper is to reconsider whether Duhem was right to argue that there are no crucial experiments in physics. In order to assess the validity of the thesis, first, this paper makes an exposition of Duhem’s arguments in their favour, and analyses the major criticisms of this position offered in the subject-literature of Adolf Grünbaum, who explicitly attacked the arguments for the thesis as inconclusive and false. Then, this paper presents possible modes of defence of the Duhem-Quine thesis and argues that the original formulation of the thesis is well qualified and plausible. Finally, this paper offers a pragmatic interpretation of the theory choice. (shrink)

This paper considers the alleged pragmatism of Berkeley’s philosophy using the two Sellarsian categories of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images of the world and human beings. The ‘manifest’ image is regarded as a refinement of the ordinary way of conceiving things, and the scientific image is seen as a theoretical picture of the world provided by science. The paper argues that the so-called Berkeleian pragmatism was an effect of Berkeley’s work towards a synthesis of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images through the creation (...) of one unified synoptic vision of the world and was a part of a new conceptual framework within which these two images could be combined. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to asses critically McDowell's argument to the effect that all experience is conceptualized and explain the role that this thesis plays within his general philosophical project. It has been argued that McDowell's conception of experience leads to idealism. I will demonstrate why this charge could be made and whether it is a charge which McDowell can adequately respond to. The paper will clarify McDowell's conception of conceptualized experience, and evaluate its efficacy for his philosophical (...) aim. In order to accomplish these goals, the paper will contain the following two components: a reconstruction of McDowell's position, and its critical analysis. To reconstruct the position of McDowell, I will try to establish his motives, and the sources of inspiration for his thought and its and context ; and to explain his arguments and his defence against the charge of idealism. In order to critically analyse his position, I will try to evaluate it in terms of whether his defence against the objections to his proposal, in particular the charge of idealism, is successful. (shrink)

This paper is a study of the essential property of human existence - transcendence, whose characteristics can be derived from Karl Stern’s works. By criticizing the model of contemporary psychology for its mechanistic character, Stern tries to prove that it is psychoanalysis that enables us to found a humanistic base for understanding human transcendence towards God. In this way, Stern passes over the fact that the humanistic sense of transcendence was established in Victor Frankl’s philosophy of existence. Stern blemishes the (...) basic meanings of Freud’s psychoanalysis, which, as such, is not suitable for Stern’s procedure of humanization. (shrink)

Lay perceptions of lying are argued to consist of a lie prototype. The latter was found to entail the intention to deceive, belief in falsity and falsity. We proposed and found that the perceptions of the benefits of others are also an important factor that influences the extent, to which an act of intentional misleading someone to foster a false belief is labeled as a lie. Drawing from the intuitionist model of moral judgments we assumed that moral judgment of the (...) behaviour would mediate the relationship. In Study 1 we analyzed data coming from a crosscultural project and found that perceived intention to benefit others was negatively related to lie labeling and that this relationship was mediated by the moral judgment of that act. In Study 2 we found that manipulating the benefits of others influenced the extent, to which an act of intentional misleading in order to foster a false belief is labeled as a lie and that, again, this relationship is mediated by the moral judgment of that act. (shrink)

A subset of the Cantor cube is null-additive if its algebraic sum with any null set is null. We construct a set of cardinality continuum such that: all continuous images of the set into the Cantor cube are null-additive, it contains a homeomorphic copy of a set that is not null-additive, and it has the property $\unicode{x3b3} $, a strong combinatorial covering property. We also construct a nontrivial subset of the Cantor cube with the property $\unicode{x3b3} $ that is not (...) null additive. Set-theoretic assumptions used in our constructions are far milder than used earlier by Galvin–Miller and Bartoszyński–Recław, to obtain sets with analogous properties. We also consider products of Sierpiński sets in the context of combinatorial covering properties. (shrink)

The critique of Robert K. Merton in terms of the criteria relevant for the history of methodology is misdirected. Merton has never been a methodologist, and his influential notion of middle-range theories has been merely a polemical position taken both against pure abstract, conceptual constructs, and narrow fact-finding. It helped sociology to sustain fruitful directions of research, free from abuses of "grand theory" as well as pure empiricism. Merton's true and many "arrivals" (read: contributions to sociology) have been substantive and (...) not meta-theoretical. Because of them he is a classic of twentieth-century sociology. Key Words: middle-range theory • history of methodology • sociological theory. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to present the possibility of using Diagnosis- Related Groups (DRG) in the hospital management process and to analyse the need for business performance management on the part of hospital management staff. The following research methods were used: literature analysis, case studies, and poll analysis. It is not possible to increase the effectiveness of operation of healthcare entities without increasing the importance of IT systems and using DRG more effectively in the management process. Training users (...) in IT and the use of DRGs is important to achieving hospital effectiveness. The increased importance of analyses and planning in a hospital should be reflected in the organisational structure of service providers. Hospital controllers should have a similar role to those present in most companies in other industries. (shrink)

Przyroda otaczająca człowieka w naturalny sposób poddawana była rozmaitym interpretacjom, które stawały się faktami kulturowymi i zakorzeniały się życiu społeczeństw. Autorzy zebranych w tomie artykułów przedstawiają interpretacje przyrody w różnych kontekstach historycznych i geograficznych, a tym samym eksponują różnorodność ujęć interpretacji przyrody. Przyglądając się „człowiekowi w czasie”, pokazują „alternatywne przyrody”. Kolejne artykuły pozwalają czytelnikowi przede wszystkim zapoznać się z nimi w „działaniu”. Śledząc wraz z autorami takie tematy, jak: praktyki okołołowieckie, poszukiwanie zależności między pojęciami „wojna”, „pokój” i „zwierzęta”, niezwykły czyn (...) Oktawiana Augusta, poddanie świata wszelkich istot żywych influencji kosmicznej, wątek jelenia w dawnej kulturze, symboliczne karanie zwierząt, badania przyrodnicze Johanna Wolfganga Goethego, wiadomości o przyrodzie zawarte w prasie, obecność elementów roślinnych w europejskiej symbolice wojskowej, funkcjonowanie myślenia mityczno-magicznego i jego obecność w kulturze współczesnej − obserwujemy ich kulturową materialność. (shrink)