In this paper I want to point out the multifaceted impact of utilitarianism as well as pragmatism, applied as the unified philosophy of environmental protection. Special attention is paid to the utilitarian aspect of Marxism, and a continuous, comprehensive case study from Poland – in the context of European economic realities – serves as an example of social receptionof the utilitarian paradigm in contemporary environmental protection policy.

This paper analyses the logical structure of the balancing of conflicting normative arguments, and asks whether non-monotonic logic is adequate to represent this type of legal or practical reasoning. Norm conflicts are often regarded as a field of application for non-monotonic logics. This paper argues, however, that the balancing of normative arguments consists of an act of judgement, not a logical inference, and that models of deductive as well as of defeasible reasoning do not give an adequate account of its (...) structure. Moreover, it argues that as far as the argumentation consists in logical inferences, deductive logic suffices for reconstructing the argumentation from the internal point of view of someone making normative judgements. (shrink)

A major part of police work consists in providing services and information to the general public. A stated goal of such police work is to be service-minded and contribute to a positive encounter. This article analyses service requests in calls to the duty desk of a large police station and focuses on how officers deal with requests that have to be rejected. It reveals a general pattern in which officers produce the rejection in a dispreferred format and include displays of (...) empathy, accounts for the rejection and suggestions for alternative solutions. However, in certain types of requests the rejections are not infrequently produced in a direct and unmitigated fashion, without accounts or explanations.This is especially notable in requests that touch upon institutional constraints, such as professional secrecy. And in certain cases the rejections are even delivered in an aggravated form, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to the legitimacy of the request. These rejections cast the caller in an oppositional role, infringing the professional constraints of the police. However, the constraints in question may not be accessible to the callers. The officers will consequently be experienced as hostile and will subvert their own objectives of showing service-mindedness. (shrink)

An explanation of the Dunning–Kruger effect is provided which does not require any psychological explanation, because it is derived as a statistical artifact. This is achieved by specifying a simple statistical model which explicitly takes the boundary constraints into account. The model fits the data almost perfectly.JEL ClassificationA22; C24; C91; D84; D91; I21.

Gauss’ 1809 discussion of least squares, which can be viewed as the beginning of mathematical statistics, is reviewed. The general consensus seems to be that Gauss’ arguments are at fault, but we show that his reasoning is in fact correct, given his self-imposed restrictions, and persuasive without these restrictions.

This paper aims at reconstructing Radbruch’s relativistic conception of law within the framework of a model of principles. The idea of relativism remains a disputed issue in current legal and moral philosophy. In spite of the fact that Radbruch’s legal philosophy lacks coherence, it includes elements that resemble modern conceptions of law as a system including principles to be balanced against each other. Therefore, a reconstruction within a model of principles might as well prove the fruitfulness of the model of (...) principles as render a more appropriate theoretical framework for Radbruch’s legal philosophy. After an outline of Radbruch’s relativism, I will discuss some critical points of his approach and, subsequently, present a reconstruction according to the model of principles, which makes plausible at least some of Radbruch’s contentions. (shrink)

_Airy Nothings_ contains eleven contributions on the scholarly and literary representations of the Otherworld of Faerie from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment.

In two experiments and two different research paradigms, we tested the hypothesis that Zen meditation increases access to accessible but unconscious information. Zen practitioners who meditated in the lab performed better on the Remote Associate Test than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. In a new, second task, it was observed that Zen practitioners who meditated used subliminally primed words more than Zen practitioners who did not meditate. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

In searching for an appropriate utility function in the expected utility framework, we formulate four properties that we want the utility function to satisfy. We conduct a search for such a function, and we identify Pareto utility as a function satisfying all four desired properties. Pareto utility is a flexible yet simple and parsimonious two-parameter family. It exhibits decreasing absolute risk aversion and increasing but bounded relative risk aversion. It is applicable irrespective of the probability distribution relevant to the prospect (...) to be evaluated. Pareto utility is therefore particularly suited for catastrophic risk analysis. A new and related class of generalized exponential (gexpo) utility functions is also studied. This class is particularly relevant in situations where absolute risk tolerance is thought to be concave rather than linear. (shrink)

The main question addressed by this article is this: How should one understand the role of the sentences of the Tractatus, given Wittgenstein’s statement that they are nonsensical? I begin with a presentation of three general principles of interpretation in order to avoid answering the question in an inappropriate way. I then move on to a short presentation and commentary on a selection of readings – namely, the ineffabilist, resolute and elucidatory ones – and elaborate the answers given by advocates (...) of these to the question explored here. I agree on many points with resolute and elucidatory readings: the Tractatus presents an austere conception of nonsense, and is not a book that seeks to present ontological or semantic theories. I point out, however, that these readings cannot fully explain the nature of Tractarian elucidations. Then I discuss those parts of the Tractatus which refer to the sentences of the book itself. The main proposal of my own approach is this: Tractarian elucidations should be construed as rules of translation, in that they show how to substitute certain expressions for others. They enable us to construct a notation in which everything that is expressible in ordinary language can be said perspicuously. (shrink)

The contributions in this volume treat aspects and manifestations of this cultural symbiosis, and they throw new light on authors and texts both more and less ...

The main question of our article is: What is the logical form of statements containing expressions such as “… is true” and “it is true that …”? We claim that these expressions are generally not used in order to assign a certain property to sentences. We indicate that a predicative interpretation of these expressions was rejected by Frege and adherents to the prosentential conception of truth. We treat these expressions as operators. The main advantage of our operational reading is the (...) fact that it adequately represents how the words, “true” and “truth,” function in everyday speech. Our approach confirms the intuition that so-called T-equivalences are not contingent truths, and explains why they seem to be—in some sense—necessary sentences. Moreover, our operational readingof truth expressions dissolves problems arising from the belief that there is some specific property—truth. The fact that we reject that truth is a certain property does not mean that we deny that the concept of truth plays a very important role in our language, and hence in our life. We indicate that the concept of truth is inseparable from the concept of sentence and vice versa—it is impossible to explicate one of these concepts without appeal to the other. (shrink)

The main aim of this article is to pose and consider the following question: Does the reasoning that led to Kripkenstein’s sceptical paradox undermine all versions of materialism, including nonreductive materialism? First, I present other versions of materialism in the philosophy of mind. Then I point out that, according to nonreductive materialists, one can neither define mental properties in terms of physical properties nor derive psycho‑physical laws from the laws of physics. The presently‑understood thesis of materialism is confined by the (...) following claim: the same distribution of physical properties entails the same distribution of mental properties. In other words, the mental properties supervene upon physical properties. This account then leads to the following formulation of the main question: Assuming that Kripkenstein is right, do mental properties supervene upon physical properties? Taking into account that answering this question requires a discussion of the notions of supervenience and Kripkenstein’s paradox, I devote two parts of my paper to these topics. The conclusion which I reach is as follows: If the reasoning that led to Kripkenstein’s paradox is correct, mental properties can only globally supervene upon physical properties, and consequently no version of materialism can be empirically justified. (shrink)

The main aim of this text is to explicate what paragraphs 134-137 of Philosophical Investigations say about truth. Nevertheless, I start with a discussion of the remarks on truth contained in the Tractatus because the thoughts expressed in the latter should be read in the context of the thoughts expressed in the former. According to my interpretation of paragraphs 134-137 of the Investigations, Wittgenstein aims to show that the relationship between the concept of truth and the concept of a proposition (...) may consist in the fact that truth and falsity, in certain language games, are constitutive elements of what a proposition is, but it must be added that these concepts cannot be comprehended independently from each other. I also come to the conclusion that in his opinion the concept of truth is expressed in various ways in our language, it being conveyed by such expressions as “… is true” and “this is how things are: …”, and that this shows that while asserting that something is true one can emphasize, on the one hand, that it is a proposition that says that things are a certain way, and on the other, just the fact that things are thus and so. (shrink)

The aim of this text is to elucidate certain aspects of the use of expressions such as “is true” and “it is true that” (henceforth “truth-expressions”) and, through this, some features of the concept of truth. It focuses on addressing the question of whether truth-expressions play the role of a predicate or an operator. The investigations pursued are intended to be grammatical—in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term. I begin with a short presentation of a widely held view about the role (...) played by truth-expressions. I then contrast the Wittgensteinian conception of grammar with that of linguistics. I sketch Frege’s, Wittgenstein’s, Prior’s and Brandom’s central ideas regarding the issue under consideration. As a further step, I investigate the role of truth-expressions by examining several sentences in which they occur, and discuss objections to the proposed analysis. On my approach, truth expressions play the role of a predicate only when applied to sentences, and in all other cases function as operators. One advantage of such a position is that it enables a dissolution of the problem of truth-bearers: where truth-expressions are operators, the issue simply does not arise, and where they are predicates, it is sentences that are the truth-bearers. (shrink)

The topic of the article is the distinction between descriptions of facts and their evaluation. This distinction is of interest to both in philosophy and in the theory of journalism. The article considers one of the assumptions supporting the view that journalists should clearly separate descriptions of facts from their assessment - the assumption that descriptions of facts can be separated from their evaluation. I present various interpretations of this assumption. I point out the existence of a relationship between the (...) thesis of the possibility of separating descriptions from assessments and the belief that descriptions of facts are by their very nature objective, while assessments or valuations are subjective, and then I proceed to criticize the latter conviction. These arguments are not intended to undermine the distinction between descriptions of facts and their evaluation. What I am trying to undermine are the metaphysical justifications and interpretations of this distinction. (shrink)

Józef Bremer's book, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Religion, is the first extensive Polish commentary on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion and is worth reading even if for no other reason. As author suggests in the subtitle, the book is not intended for specialists. However, it is difficult to understand the arguments without a general knowledge of Wittgenstein's philosophy. It has a loose structure and can be regarded as a collection of essays preceded by a chapter introducing the problems of Wittgenstein's philosophy. The (...) task which the author has undertaken is very ambitious, because even a sketchy presentation and interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on religion is difficult - precisely because it is sketchy. There are several reasons for this. First, understanding Wittgenstein's views concerning religion requires a perfect understanding of all aspects of his philosophy, since it is impossible to separate his considerations on religion from the rest of his investigations. Secondly, Wittgenstein's writings are full of ambiguous aphorisms and not always conclusive mini-dialogues, which is why there exist many alternative interpretations of his texts. Thirdly, only a few of his notes about religion have been published. (shrink)

Józef Bremer's book, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Religion, is the first extensive Polish commentary on Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion and is worth reading even if for no other reason. As author suggests in the subtitle, the book is not intended for specialists. However, it is difficult to understand the arguments without a general knowledge of Wittgenstein's philosophy. It has a loose structure and can be regarded as a collection of essays preceded by a chapter introducing the problems of Wittgenstein's philosophy. The (...) task which the author has undertaken is very ambitious, because even a sketchy presentation and interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on religion is difficult - precisely because it is sketchy. There are several reasons for this. First, understanding Wittgenstein's views concerning religion requires a perfect understanding of all aspects of his philosophy, since it is impossible to separate his considerations on religion from the rest of his investigations. Secondly, Wittgenstein's writings are full of ambiguous aphorisms and not always conclusive mini-dialogues, which is why there exist many alternative interpretations of his texts. Thirdly, only a few of his notes about religion have been published. (shrink)