Expression of physical motion (e.g.,man runs by) shows systematic variability not only between language types (i.e., inter-typological) but also within a language type (i.e., intra-typological). In this study, we asked whether the patterns of variability extend to metaphorical motion events (e.g.,time runs by). Our analysis of randomly selected 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) event descriptions from written texts originally produced by German, Polish, and Spanish authors showed strong inter-typological differences in the expression of both event types. (...) German and Polish speakers differed from Spanish speakers in how they packaged manner and path components of a motion event; they also differed in how extensively they expressed each component in their lexicalization of motion. The strong inter-typological differences were accompanied by more modest intra-typological variability: Polish and German writers differed in their packaging and lexicalization of manner and path components of metaphorical—butnotphysical—motion events. Our results provide evidence for robust inter-typological differences evident in the expression of both physical and metaphorical motion, along with less robust intra-typological differences, largely evident in the expression of metaphorical motion. Our study thus highlights event type as an important factor in determining crosslinguistic variation in motion expression. (shrink)

A fully quantum-mechanical description of the spontaneous emission from an excited two-level atom placed in front of a two-slit interferometer is given. Global modes of the electromagnetic field in a two slit system are derived within the Kirchhoff-Huygens diffraction approximation, serving as a base for the field quantization. The standard Fermi's golden rule, supplemented by a factor coming from the nontrivial mode structure caused by the presence of the two-slit interferometer, is used to show that interference results from the position-dependent (...) coupling between the atom and different field modes of the system. (shrink)

Problems connected with the questions of: being-nonbeing, existence, modes of existence and alike, belong to the basic and most important in metaphysics. The article discusses some answers to the aforementioned issues, as proposed by the ancient philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas, R. Ingarden and A.N. Whitehead. In the Appendix some remarks are made on Aristotle’s and S. Thomas’ theory of act and potency.

Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting (...) GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions. (shrink)

Recenzowana monografia naukowa dotyczy wybranych, niezwykle ważnych kwestii społecznych i etycznych, związanych z poszczególnymi etapami życia ludzkiego: jego początkiem, trwaniem i śmiercią. Składa się z dziewięciu artykułów, które łącznie tworzą szeroką panoramę współczesnych problemów bioetycznych. […] Jest przykładem ich dobrego diagnozowania, aktualizowania refleksji nad nimi i proponowania konkretnych rozwiązań, które odwołują się – co bardzo cenne – do rodzimych przykładów. […] Adresatami publikacji mogą być zarówno osoby profesjonalnie związane z szeroko rozumianą służbą zdrowia, studenci kierunków medycznych, jak i pacjenci oraz (...) ich rodziny, a także osoby zawodowo organizujące wsparcie w trudnych sytuacjach. Publikacja zainteresuje także osoby, które poszukują refleksji nad społecznie ważnymi kwestiami bioetycznymi, ukazanymi w perspektywie personalistycznej. Z recenzji ks. dr. hab. Zbigniewa Wanata, prof. UMK Monografia zawiera szereg interesujących tekstów analizujących dylematy moralne związane z początkiem i końcem ludzkiego życia. Poruszane zagadnienia są ważne i aktualne. W części pierwszej znajdują się opracowania dotyczące kwestii prenatalnych i okołoporodowych, w części drugiej – kwestii terminalnych, a na końcu tekst zwieńczający, dotyczący pojęcia sumienia […] Szczególnie cenne wydają się teksty prezentujące obszerne wyniki badań własnych (np. opieki nad dziećmi z zespołem Downa) i funkcjonowanie niedawno powstałych instytucji (jak hospicja perinatalne) albo opisujące proponowane procedury postępowania w praktyce (np. w stosunku do osób umierających). Inne teksty, nawet jeśli dotyczą zagadnień znanych (np. diagnostyki prenatalnej lub opieki nad ciężarnymi niepełnosprawnymi), omawiają je w sposób porządkujący dotychczasową wiedzę. Powyższe sprawia, że monografię można uznać za dzieło oryginalne. […] Wśród Autorów poszczególnych rozdziałów znajdują się osoby rozpoznawalne w środowisku medycznym i bioetycznym, co sprawia, że publikacja powinna cieszyć się zainteresowaniem w tych kręgach, a sformułowane w niej postulaty mogą mieć wartość aplikacyjną. Z recenzji dr. hab. med. Jakuba Pawlikowskiego, prof. UKSW. (shrink)

There has been much concern with the abundance of misinformation in public discourse. Although misinformation has always played a role in political debate, its character has shifted from support fo...

Sixty years that have passed since the Warsaw Uprising are meaningful on the life scale of human generations. The Uprising, planned for 2 or 3 days, lasted in fact for 63 days. That fact astounded the military experts and was even noticed by the German high command, which has to be mainly ascribed to the exceptional tension of patriotism of the soldiers and the population.The Germans suffered especially great losses on the average around 1,900 weekly, almost twice as many as (...) during the highest intensity of fighting in 1944/45. On our side the losses were estimated at 18,000 dead and about 6,500–7,000 wounded insurgents. However, the Warsaw Uprising and the whole nation counted around 150,000 dead among the civilians.During the two months of the uprising 25% of the pre-war buildings in Warsaw were destroyed, mainly due to the barbarian practice of burning the whole streets. Against the conditions of the capitulation agreement just signed, the majority of historical monuments were burned down.In Warsaw, the tradition of sacrifices and solidarity in action, bravery and the deep attachment to liberty, manifested in September 1939, was alive and brought results all the time of war through the acts of the patriotic resistance organizations. The leaders of the Warsaw Uprising belonged to the resistance fighters before World War I and during it. The battle for independence was their curriculum vitae, and the majority of the uprising participants, the youth, was educated in the independent Polish Republic, in respect for patriotic traditions of independence fights and insurrections.Jerzy Kirchmajer believes that the Warsaw Uprising was an error, as it did not suit the Soviets; Jan Ciechanowski from London—that it was against the plans of the British ally. It is said sometimes that the Uprising started without calculating the possibility of a helping hand.Faith played a major role during the Uprising. The clergy helped the community every way they could. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universite catholique de Louvain, 1990.

Determining the knowledge that guides human judgments is fundamental to understanding how people reason, make decisions, and form predictions. We use an experimental procedure called ‘‘iterated learning,’’ in which the responses that people give on one trial are used to generate the data they see on the next, to pinpoint the knowledge that informs people's predictions about everyday events (e.g., predicting the total box office gross of a movie from its current take). In particular, we use this method to discriminate (...) between two models of human judgments: a simple Bayesian model (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006) and a recently proposed alternative model that assumes people store only a few instances of each type of event in memory (MinK; Mozer, Pashler, & Homaei, 2008). Although testing these models using standard experimental procedures is difficult due to differences in the number of free parameters and the need to make assumptions about the knowledge of individual learners, we show that the two models make very different predictions about the outcome of iterated learning. The results of an experiment using this methodology provide a rich picture of how much people know about the distributions of everyday quantities, and they are inconsistent with the predictions of the MinK model. The results suggest that accurate predictions about everyday events reflect relatively sophisticated knowledge on the part of individuals. (shrink)

Computational modeling is now ubiquitous in psychology, and researchers who are not modelers may find it increasingly difficult to follow the theoretical developments in their field. This book presents an integrated framework for the development and application of models in psychology and related disciplines. Researchers and students are given the knowledge and tools to interpret models published in their area, as well as to develop, fit, and test their own models. Both the development of models and key features of any (...) model are covered, as are the applications of models in a variety of domains across the behavioural sciences. A number of chapters are devoted to fitting models using maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimation, including fitting hierarchical and mixture models. Model comparison is described as a core philosophy of scientific inference, and the use of models to understand theories and advance scientific discourse is explained. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to develop a philosophical framework for what I argue are the Nietzschean and Kantian aspects of professional boxing matches: narrative dissimulation and moral obligation. The overarching objective of the analysis is to shed a critical light on brief intervals of boxing competitions (the minute between rounds) that are crucial but often overlooked in the philosophical literature devoted to boxing and, indeed, combat sport more generally. Additionally, in characterizing more fully the philosophical complexities of cornerman and boxer (...) interactions in the flow of such a violent and dangerous sport, the analysis aims to make explicit some of what is unique—and uniquely problematic—to competing in and coaching professional pugilism and, by extension, other combat sports, such as mixed martial arts (MMA) and Muay Thai. (shrink)

Belief polarization is said to occur when two people respond to the same evidence by updating their beliefs in opposite directions. This response is considered to be “irrational” because it involves contrary updating, a form of belief updating that appears to violate normatively optimal responding, as for example dictated by Bayes' theorem. In light of much evidence that people are capable of normatively optimal behavior, belief polarization presents a puzzling exception. We show that Bayesian networks, or Bayes nets, can simulate (...) rational belief updating. When fit to experimental data, Bayes nets can help identify the factors that contribute to polarization. We present a study into belief updating concerning the reality of climate change in response to information about the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The study used representative samples of Australian and U.S. participants. Among Australians, consensus information partially neutralized the influence of worldview, with free-market supporters showing a greater increase in acceptance of human-caused global warming relative to free-market opponents. In contrast, while consensus information overall had a positive effect on perceived consensus among U.S. participants, there was a reduction in perceived consensus and acceptance of human-caused global warming for strong supporters of unregulated free markets. Fitting a Bayes net model to the data indicated that under a Bayesian framework, free-market support is a significant driver of beliefs about climate change and trust in climate scientists. Further, active distrust of climate scientists among a small number of U.S. conservatives drives contrary updating in response to consensus information among this particular group. (shrink)