Digital Voice Assistants have become a ubiquitous technology in today’s home and childhood environments. Inspired by original study on how children’s ontological conceptualizations of life and technology were systematically associated with their real-world exposure to robotic entities, the current study explored this association for children in their middle childhood and with different levels of DVA-exposure. We analyzed correlational survey data from 143 parent–child dyads who were recruited on ‘Amazon Mechanical Turk’. Children’s ontological conceptualization patterns of life and technology were measured (...) by asking them to conceptualize nine prototypical organically living and technological entities with respect to their biology, intelligence, and psychology. Their ontological conceptualization patterns were then associated with their DVA-exposure and additional control variables. Compared to biology and psychology, intelligence was a less differentiating factor for children to differentiate between organically living and technological entities. This differentiation pattern became more pronounced with technological affinity. There was some evidence that children with higher DVA-exposure differentiated more rigorously between organically living and technological entities on the basis of psychology. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study exploring children’s real-world exposure to DVAs and how it is associated with their conceptual understandings of life and technology. Findings suggest although psychological conceptualizations of technology may become more pronounced with DVA-exposure, it is far from clear such tendencies blur ontological boundaries between life and technology from children’s perspective. (shrink)

Fin de siecle Vienna was once memorably described by Karl Kraus as a "proving ground for the destruction of the world." In the decades leading to the World War that brought down the Austro-Hungarian empire, the city was at once an operetta dream world masking social and political problems and tension, as well as a center for the far-reaching explorations and innovations in music, art, science, and philosophy that would help to define modernity. One of the most powerful critiques of (...) the retreat into fantasy was that of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose early career in Vienna has helped frame debates about ethical and aesthetic values in culture. In Wittgenstein's Vienna Revisited Allan Janik expands upon his work Wittgenstein's Vienna (co-authored with Stephen Toulmin) to amplify a number of significant points concerning the genesis of Wittgenstein's thought, the nature of Viennese culture, and criticism of contemporary culture. Although Wittgenstein is the central figure in this volume, Janik places considerable emphasis on other influential figures, both Viennese and non-Viennese, in order to break down some of the persistent stereotypes about the philosopher and his surrounding culture, especially the myths of "carefree" Vienna and Wittgenstein the positivist. The persistence of these myths, in Janik's view, stems in part from the inability of many historians to differentiate past from present in the evaluation of intellectual currents. Janik reviews a number of figures overlooked in assessing Wittgenstein: Otto Weininger, Kraus, Schoenberg, Nietzsche, Wagner, Ibsen, Offenbach, and Georg Trakl. All of these, Janik demonstrates, are absolutely necessary to understand what was at stake in the debates on aestheticism and the critique of a modern culture. Wittgenstein's efforts to recognize the limits of thought and language and thus to be fair to science, religion, and art account for his place of honor among critical modernists. These essays elucidate Wittgenstein's perspective on our culture. (shrink)

This is a remarkable book about a man (perhaps the most important and original philosopher of our age), a society (the corrupt Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of dissolution), and a city (Vienna, with its fin-de siecle gaiety and corrosive melancholy). The central figure in this study of a crumbling society that gave birth to the modern world is Wittgenstein, the brilliant and gifted young thinker. With others, including Freud, Viktor Adler, and Arnold Schoenberg, he forged his ideas in a (...) classical revolt against the stuffy, doomed, and moralistic lives of the old regime. As a portrait of Wittgenstein, the book is superbly realized; it is even better as a portrait of the age, with dazzling and unusual parallels to our own confused society. Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have acted on a striking premise: an understanding of prewar Vienna, Wittgenstein s native city, will make it easier to comprehend both his work and our own problems .This is an independent work containing much that is challenging, new, and useful. New York Times Book Review.". (shrink)

In this paper, we present a new questionnaire for the assessment of self-control as an individual trait. We describe the process of construction of this assessment tool. We also report the results of relevant validation studies. The questionnaire has two independent versions, one based on self-reports and another one based on other-reports. The first version consists of five subscales, called Initiative and Persistence, Proactive Control, Switching and Flexibility, Inhibition and Adjournment, and Goal Maintenance. Seven samples of participants took part in (...) the validation study. The second version has not been split into subscales. Both versions obtained satisfactory indices of internal consistency, assessed with Cronbach’s alpha. The NAS-50 and NAS-40 scores were highly correlated with other measures of self-control, including Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone’s self-control scale. They also proved to be entirely independent of general intelligence. In conclusion, both versions can be regarded reliable and valid enough, and therefore suitable for the assessment of trait self-control for research purposes. (shrink)

In this interview, Tomasz Zarębski speaks with Allan Janik, co-author of _Wittgenstein’s Vienna_ (1973, with Stephen Toulmin), on the occasion of the 50 th anniversary of the publication of this pathbreaking book. The conversation concerns the circumstances, motivations and reasons for his undertaking the work on the book, as well as its reception and place in Wittgenstein scholarship. A large part of the discussion refers to his perspective of Wittgenstein, Toulmin’s philosophical writings, and Janik’s own vision of philosophy. (...) The interview took place in Innsbruck on 23 rd and 25 th August 2023. (shrink)

Recent literature in experimental philosophy has postulated the existence of the abstract/concrete paradox : the tendency to activate inconsistent intuitions depending on whether a problem to be analyzed is framed in abstract terms or is described as a concrete case. One recent study supports the thesis that this effect influences judicial decision-making, including decision-making by professional judges, in areas such as interpretation of constitutional principles and application of clear-cut rules. Here, following the existing literature in legal theory, we argue that (...) the susceptibility to such an effect might depend on whether decision-makers operate in a legal system characterized by the formalist or particularist approach to legal interpretation, with formalist systems being less susceptible to the effect. To test this hypothesis, we compare the results of experimental studies on ACP run on samples from two countries differing in legal culture: Poland and Brazil. The lack of significant differences between those results suggests that ACP is a robust effect in the legal context. (shrink)

Every student of the twentieth century has heard both of the great Viennese economist Friedrich von Hayek and of the equally great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. But what isn't well known is that the two were distant cousins and that, shortly after Wittgenstein's death in 1951, Hayek set out to write a biography of his cousin. The project was derailed by Wittgenstein family members, who felt it was to soon to publish such a work - especially one like Hayek's, so candid (...) about his cousin's difficulties and depressions. But Hayek's draft acquired an underground readership, and Wittgensteins biographers have used it extensively. Here finally, is the text of that work itself - a true goldmine in being one great thinker's view of another, whom he knew personally, even if not well. Hayek's account has the great merit of being close to its subject; the draft, moreover sheds light, not only on Wittgenstein but on Hayek as well. (shrink)

Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatments used in cancer therapy despite its serious side effects, which remain a huge concern. To the most common side effects include memory and concentration problems as well as changes in taste. This paper presents a very preliminary study focusing on cognitive dysfunction after chemotherapy in breast cancer. This phenomenon, called Cancer-Related Cognitive Dysfunction, is a frequent occurrence. The obtained results prove the impact of chemotherapy on the participant’s ability to concentrate. The QEEG (...) method and digital data analysis were used as the measurement methods. (shrink)

Publikacja składa się z dwu zasadniczych części, z których pierwsza zawiera rozprawy poświęcone twórczości Izydory Dąmbskiej, zaś druga - jej pracy własne, publikowane poprzednio w „Kwartalniku Filozoficznym". Tom otwiera wiersz Zbigniewa Herberta „Potęga smaku" dedykowany przez poetę tej wybitnej uczonej, który to utwór dobrze oddaje, w warstwie ideowej, wartości bliskie Dąmbskiej.

With an increasing number of international schools, traditional EFL teaching methods may not satisfy students’ needs. This study aims to investigate perceptions of social media technologies and willingness to adopt such technologies to collaborate and communicate in multicultural classrooms among novice EFL schoolteachers in the Czech Republic. The participants were 100 novice EFL schoolteachers in Prague and the South Moravian regions of the Czech Republic. The study used a mixed research method consisting of a survey and a semi-structured interview. The (...) survey examined the participants’ appraisal and concerns of using social media technologies to collaborate and to communicate as well as the level of willingness to use social media technologies. A hierarchical cluster analysis using participants’ responses regarding their attitudes and behavioural tendency towards using Web 2.0 social media technologies in language classrooms identified three clusters of teachers. The teachers who were most likely to adopt social Web 2.0 technologies were those who had the highest ratings on both appraisals and concerns regarding the use of social media in language classrooms. The results from the semi-structured interviews were consistent with those from the survey. Together, the results from the two stages demonstrated that most pre-service teachers favoured using Web 2.0 technology for collaboration and communication among colleagues and stakeholders in a broader community, but they displayed contrasting levels of appraisal of and concerns towards using social media technologies. Participants believed that this might be due to their different levels of ICT proficiency, workload, and working environment. The political and practical implications in K-12 education in the Czech context are also discussed. (shrink)

This essay focuses on A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun by Niccolò Longobardo (1559–1654), a text that played a crucial role in the formation of European understanding of Chinese philosophy. Taken historically, the text is an important vehicle for the transmission of Chinese concepts into early modern European philosophy as well as a key intervention in the debate shaping the ideological premises of the Jesuit mission in China. It contains one of the first systematic accounts (...) of Chinese philosophy written by a European author. More importantly, it presents a narrative that links Mediterranean and Chinese intellectual history into a single historical current. In this way Longobardo plays a role analogous to the mapmaker who distorts three-dimensional spaces in order to project them together onto a two-dimensional plane. We present some of the peculiar shifts and emphases made by Longobardo in his reading of what seems to him a transhistorical current linking the Chinese and ancient Mediterranean philosophical milieus. In particular, we examine (1) the relationship between Longobardo’s attempt to situate Chinese thought in a global context and the choice to place special emphasis on the philosophy of Shao Yong 邵雍, treating him as a figure of primary importance among Song 宋 Neo-Confucian authors, and (2) the focus on the monist and cosmogonic aspects of Chinese thought, summarized by the “ten thousand things forming one body” (wanwuyiti 萬物一體) “axiom.”. (shrink)

The uniqueness of Edith Stein’s approach to lived experience emerges only in light of intentionality as reasonableness. The “personal touch” or authentic affectivity means in this context one’s own “living body” in regard to a threefold dimension of the human experiencing: the personal, the humanistic, and the spiritual, and seems to echo those of Immanuel Kant’s, i.e., the soul, the world and God. Consequently, not whatever kind of own’s commitment is at stake. Moreover, no less important is the role of (...) community and its various types. For sure, Stein’s genuine account is found in dialogue with the phenomenologists of her time. It paves the way toward a community of life and life itself. Therefore, it seems to be possible to some extend to accord Stein’s account with contemporary discussions of the meaning of life and “a fundamental transformation of human existence.”. (shrink)

The expression “moral experience”, along with the concomitant notion of experience itself, seems to have been understood in divergent ways. Taking as a background three views currently operative in our culture - emotivism, the ethics of duty, and the notion of an ethics “beyond good and evil” - a conception of ethical experience will be presented based on the findings of Edith Stein as elaborated in her work "Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities".

It was Paul Engelmann who stimulated Wittgenstein to consider art as the avenue of access to what is higher, the "mystical" in the Tractatus. Unlike the course of their personal friendship, it is not easy to reconstruct the nature of their philosophical confrontation with one another. In the light of their correspondence, Wittgenstein's notebooks and the bit we know from biographers, Wittgenstein's development in the period immediately before he met Engelmann is sketched, discussing the influence of Hertz and Weininger, and (...) determining what his meeting with Engelmann meant for his philosophy. (shrink)

Lorenzo Valla's historical methodology was linked to his stress on rhetoric; he believed in oratorical persuasion, not logical argument. Refusing to screen historical events according to their moral value, he included accounts of all events. Truth was not for him an external standard, but a standard for judging propositions. Truth lay in the correct usage of words: correct language could create a correct picture of the world. Valla's concept of verisimilitude hinged on historical plausibility, not moral worth. History should be (...) a true account, correctly worded. Because of his talent to persuade the reader, plausible events illustrating his point were also included. (shrink)

In this text, the word “anima” is the synonym of the notion of “conscious observer”. The paper discusses subjects from the field of physics and metaphysics in which there is a need to introduce such an observer, according to some authors.

In this text, the word “anima” is the synonym of the notion of “conscious observer”. The paper discusses subjects from the field of physics and metaphysics in which there is a need to introduce such an observer, according to some authors.

Synesthetic experiences of color have been traditionally conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a role of higher order cognition in the formation of synesthetic experiences. Here, we discuss how synesthetic experiences of color differ from and influence veridical color processing, and how non-perceptual processes such as imagery and color memory might play a role in eliciting synesthetic color experience.

Synesthetic experiences of color have been traditionally conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a role of higher order cognition in the formation of synesthetic experiences. Here, we discuss how synesthetic experiences of color differ from and influence veridical color processing, and how non-perceptual processes such as imagery and color memory might play a role in eliciting synesthetic color experience.

The study focuses on the implementation of curriculum reform in grammar schools in the Czech Republic. The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes of grammar school teachers towards the reform and its implementation. The perceived benefits of and problems with the curriculum reform were measured using closed-ended items (on a Likert scale). The research sample of this questionnaire survey consisted of 1,098 teachers from 58 schools. The results indicate that the reform has been more readily accepted in (...) pilot schools than in non-pilot schools. In general, it can be concluded that although there was support for the main ideas behind the reform, the majority of teachers have not accepted the reform as a whole. The multiple regression analysis revealed that gender, position, length of teaching experience, and knowledge of specific characteristics of curriculum reform did not significantly contribute to teachers’ acceptance of the curriculum reform. (shrink)

In this text, the word “anima” is the synonym of the notion of “conscious observer”. The paper discusses subjects from the field of physics and metaphysics in which there is a need to introduce such an observer, according to some authors.

It was Paul Engelmann who stimulated Wittgenstein to consider art as the avenue of access to what is higher, the "mystical" in the Tractatus. Unlike the course of their personal friendship, it is not easy to reconstruct the nature of their philosophical confrontation with one another. In the light of their correspondence, Wittgenstein's notebooks and the bit we know from biographers, Wittgenstein's development in the period immediately before he met Engelmann is sketched, discussing the influence of Hertz and Weininger, and (...) determining what his meeting with Engelmann meant for his philosophy. (shrink)

Studies on captive dolphins have shown that they are capable of social learning. However, ethnographic data are less conclusive and many examples given for social learning can be explained in other ways. Before we can claim that cetacean culture is unique we need more rigorous studies which are fortunately not as difficult as Rendell and Whitehead seem to think.

Advancements in neuroscience cast new light on the functioning of the human mind. This is especially important within the context of criminal law, wherein consciousness plays a crucial role in determining criminal responsibility. Yet, there are some caveats in the direct application of these new findings, most of which are related to the specific conceptual framework of law based upon commonsense knowledge and (sometimes) outdated psychology. This framework has also produced different doctrines of interpretation in the systems of common and (...) civil law. Moreover, the goals of the law are to some extent different from scientific research on the brain. The aim of this study is to assess to what extent and under what interpretation scientific knowledge concerning consciousness might be useful for legal purposes, especially for the criminal law. Our assessment is that most of the current concepts of criminal law are directly related to outdated psychological and neuroscientific theories, and that the content of those concepts should be updated according to the newest scientific findings while remaining in accordance with the primary functions of criminal law. (shrink)

Stephen Edelston Toulmin, philosopher and historian of science, pioneer in the logical analysis of substantive argumentation, was educated in physics and philosophy at Cambridge, where he studied with Paul Dirac, John Wisdom and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Cambridge, Issac Newton’s university, remained his philosophical home: he always was very critical of the way that philosophy was done at The Other Place, as Oxford is known there. The only philosopher whom he really revered there was John Austin – although it is necessary hastily (...) to add that he deeply respected Gilbert Ryle and Isaiah Berlin. Like the latter, he considered himself a “public intellectual”. As such he was delighted to be invited to become a contributor to Encounter and later, from the mid-1960s a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. He was fascinated by Wittgenstein, attending as many of his classes as he could, but had no interest in becoming close to him. Both the idea of discipleship and Wittgenstein’s dominating personally were uncongenial to him. Like Wittgenstein and Berlin he was never at home among professional philosophers . On occasion his relationships with philosophers could be stormy indeed as was the case with Sir Karl Popper and Nelson Goodman. He prided himself on being an amateur and was only mildly disturbed when “experts” chided him as a bungler. His deepest belief was that professional philosophers do not determine what the real problems of philosophy are; rather those problems arise out of conundrums in human life. That meant for him engaging in intense dialogues, with physicists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, medical doctors, lawyers, musician artists and, of course, historians of science. (shrink)

When I first read Snow, I was deeply conscious, page by page, of its enormously dense character. It was clear from the outset that this novel was much more than the account of a Westernized Turkish journalist's failed attempt to cover a suicide wave among young girls in the provincial Turkish city of Kars. Almost from the start, the multidimensional narrative about Turkish youth weaved together all sorts of strains of political, religious, and social conflicts in a drama about coming (...) of age in a land whose culture is never far from that of Europe and vice versa. Here was an incredibly sensitive effort to probe the social dynamics of a culture that was scarcely understood in Europe (and scarcely understood at home).Having finished the novel's four hundred and some pages, I was deeply impressed with what I had read but depressed by how little of what I had read I was in a position to comprehend; it was simply too richly detailed and nuanced for me to digest. Too much was going on. For days, if not weeks, after having put Snow down, my mind would drift back to the novel, alighting on a theme or a character from the novel that had left me wondering and moved me further to ponder its meaning. The subtlety that went into writing the book, the confusions implicit in the strivings of its characters, and the consequent hopelessness of their situations hit me like a ton of bricks. In a way that was difficult to articulate, I could experience something of the hopes, fears, and confusions that ran through the minds of those characters. The vicarious experience of a culture that was at once familiar and deeply alien, the comprehension of which was imperative to European society, was powerfully and skillfully expressed without being trumpeted. Thus it was impossible to forget things that did not enter directly into the story but were nevertheless clearly insinuated in the narrative: for example, the continual reference to things Armenian in a place from which Armenians had long since disappeared—but above all the snow, falling silently and gently, scarcely observed by the protagonists, on nearly every page, without ever having the slightest impact on the narrative. The continual dusting of snow on all sorts of scenes, violent, touching, amusing, intriguing, lent the story an almost eerie poetic quality that only a master storyteller could weave into sadness and tragedy (Is this an allusion to Joyce's “The Dead”?). It was clear that one reading would not suffice for me to absorb the content of this novel.About a year later, I decided to tackle the book once again in the hope of obtaining a more ordered sense of the personalities and situations it presents. This time, it was clear that reading the book was of necessity a systematic project. So I decided to read it chapter by chapter, daily, in order to “live” with it. That procedure considerably enhanced the enjoyment involved in the act of reading, but in the end I scarcely grasped much more than I had done originally. When I was finished, I was satisfied with myself for having fulfilled a demanding task, but my lack of further enlightenment on turning the last page left me almost as unsatisfied as I had been the first time. It was not that I had failed to deepen my understanding of difficult and confusing themes that were crucial to comprehending European problems. Still, I was not less aware than after my first reading of the work that much of the Turkish experience described in it was eluding me—so much so that it would be worth my while to pick up Snow a third time. Need I say more? (shrink)

Koncepcja Edyty Stein rozumienia drugiego człowieka jest znana z jej dysertacji O zagadnieniu wczucia. Niemniej, gruntowne przebadanie struktury osobowości ludzkiej, jakie podjęła w Filozofii psychologii i humanistyki, rzuca nowe światło na tę kwestię. Stein dokonuje swoistej syntezy Husserlowskiego prymatu prawdy i Schelerowskiej koncepcji miłości, unikając przy tym idealizmu i woluntaryzmu, którym obarczone są te stanowiska. Steinowska koncepcja znajduje kontynuację w fenomenologii Merleau-Ponty’ego i R. Barbarasa.

My problem is how should we approach the concrete moral problems that arise in medicine, law, management or engineering in a pluralistic society — in what follows I shall concentrate upon medicine, but my concern is basically with the whole spectrum presented by the term “professional ethics”. My thesis is that we shall not be in a position to discuss the moral problems of professionals until we get clear about “where ethics comes from” as one concerned scholar put it1 — (...) something that modern philosophy is generally confused about — and something that the very notion of ‘applied’ ethics confuses. My suggestion is that we have much to learn from the example of the Hastings Center , with respect to handling problems of professional ethics. My assumptions are, first, that philosophers — as Alasdair Maclntyre has long insisted — for the most part confuse the ethical issues they would illuminate by endeavoring to supply theoretical solutions to practical problems, and, second, that this confusion is rooted in an erroneous notion of how concepts function, namely, in the idea that concepts have meaning prior to their application. (shrink)

It was Paul Engelmann who stimulated Wittgenstein to consider art as the avenue of access to what is higher, the "mystical" in the Tractatus. Unlike the course of their personal friendship, it is not easy to reconstruct the nature of their philosophical confrontation with one another. In the light of their correspondence, Wittgenstein's notebooks and the bit we know from biographers, Wittgenstein's development in the period immediately before he met Engelmann is sketched, discussing the influence of Hertz and Weininger, and (...) determining what his meeting with Engelmann meant for his philosophy. (shrink)