This study examined the effect of history of harsh parenting on readiness for aggression in young adults testing the mediating effect of emotional reaction to frustration and provocation that is assumed to arise in the context of a history of physical punishment and psychological aggression. Data were collected from 402 participants including 187 Poles and 215 Americans. Participants reported retrospectively on corporal punishment and psychological aggression experienced during childhood. Based on self-report instruments, sensitivity to provocation and frustration and three patterns (...) of readiness for aggression in adulthood were assessed. Contrary to the US sample, sensitivity to provocation and frustration were mediators in the Polish sample alone. The important role of contextual factors that define harsh parenting circumstances, such as cultural context and sex of the parent, are discussed. (shrink)

The current study investigated age differences in the use of attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression while regulating responses to sadness-eliciting content. We also tested to what extent these emotion regulation strategies were useful for each age group in managing response to age-relevant sad information. Forty-two young participants (Mage = 18.5, SE =.15) and 48 older participants (Mage = 71.42, SE = 1.15) watched four sadness-eliciting videos (about death/illness, four to five minutes long) under four conditions—no-regulation (no regulation instructions), attentional (...) deployment (divert attention away), positive reappraisal (focus on positive outcomes) and suppression (conceal emotional expressions). We assessed negative emotional experience, expression, skin conductance level (SCL) and visual fixation duration while participants watched the emotional clips and followed the instructions for each condition. Results suggest that older adults were more successful than younger adults at implementing both attentional deployment and positive reappraisal. Ability to suppress emotions appears to remain stable with age. Within age-group comparisons suggested that for the older adults, positive reappraisal was a more useful emotion regulation strategy than the others, while the pattern among younger adults was less conclusive. Age-relevant differences in motivation and successful emotion regulatory efforts based on theoretical and empirical literatures are discussed. (shrink)

In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, little attention is paid to the father-child relationship. The aim of this theoretical study is to introduce methods for assessing the father-child relationship in early childhood. There are two methodologies for assessing sensitive and challenging play by fathers – the Sensitive and Challenging Interaction Play Scale – SCIP (Grossmann et al., 2002) and the quality of the father-child activation relationship – Risky Situation – RS (Paquette & Bigras, 2010). The study describes the SCIP and (...) offers a theoretical definition of the basic constructs tackled in the SCIP methodology. The paper then describes the new RS procedure. Special attention is paid to activation theory, which forms the basis of the RS procedure. Finally, the paper contains suggestions for future in-depth investigations of the father’s role using adequate tools that take into consideration the uniqueness of the father-child relationship. The need to validate existing methods – also within Slovak culture – is emphasized. (shrink)

Urschemata des nördlichen Weltbildes -- Der Norden in der Patristik -- Das Bild des Nordens im Mittelalter.

Jan Smuts was one of the key figures in the creation of the League of Nations, the first international organisation with truly global pretensions. However, Holism and Evolution, the most philosophical of his works, and one that illuminates his views on international organisation, has remained in a state of relative academic neglect. This paper turns to that work for a richer understanding of the background assumptions of those who contributed to the creation of the League. To do so, this paper (...) lays bare the main ideas of Holism and Evolution, emphasising those elements most relevant to Smuts's proposals for international organisation, and situates his thought within broader currents of liberal imperialism. Such an examination of Holism and Evolution aids greatly in our understanding of some of the most contested issues in the debate over the nascent League of Nations: sovereignty, imperialism, self-determination, and the conception of politics in organic terms. (shrink)

Comprehensive study of the Vākyapadīya of Bhartr̥hari, work on semantics and philosophy of Sanskrit grammar.

Fenomén zakoušené psychedelie (doslova „vyjevení mysli“) stojí na pomezí filosofického zkoumání a antropologického bádání. V našem příspěvku se pokusíme nahlédnout jedno ze základních filosofických východisek amerického etnobotanika a antropologa Terence McKenny, které našel u Hérakleita a jeho pojetí logu. Dle Terence McKenny se při psychedelické zkušenosti děje "emanace" Logu a je to také Logos, který dle Terence McKenny promlouvá k modernímu člověku skrze technologii. V tomto článku není zkoumána úplnost oprávnění ztotožnění McKennova pojetí logu s tím Herakleitovským, ale úvodní vyložení (...) McKennových inspirativních úvah. (shrink)

The present paper investigates the question of whether right-libertarians must accept easements by necessity. Since easements by necessity limit the property rights of the owner of the servient tenement, they apparently conflict with the libertarian homestead principle, according to which the person who first mixes his labor with the unowned land acquires absolute ownership thereof. As we demonstrate in the paper, however, the homestead principle understood in such an absolutist way generates contradictions within the set of rights distributed on its (...) basis. In order to avoid such contradictions, easements by necessity must be incorporated into the libertarian theory of property rights and the homestead principle must be truncated accordingly. (shrink)

Autorzy artykułu argumentują, że libertarianie (tacy jak Murray Rothbard, Stephan Kinsella), którzy jednocześnie podpisują się pod zasadą proporcjonalności w obronie własności prywatnej oraz pod poglądem, iż posiadanie prawa własności prywatnej oznacza posiadanie prawa do jej obrony, popadają tym samym w dylemat polegający na tym, iż jeżeli jedynym sposobem obrony prawa własności prywatnej jest jego nieproporcjonalna obrona, to to własności tej - wbrew temu, co ów pogląd głosi - nie towarzyszy prawo do jej obrony. Najlepiej uzasadnionym sposobem wyjścia z tego dylematu (...) jest osłabienie peremptoryjności praw własności prywatnej, czyli skonceptualizowanie tychże praw jako absolutnych jedynie w słabym sensie tego słowa (korzystając z dystynkcji zaproponowanej przez Matthew H. Kramera). Z kolei libertarianie, którzy tak jak Walter Block chcieliby wybrnąć z rzeczonego dylematu poprzez zastąpienie zasady proporcjonalności zasadą delikatności, popadają w innego rodzaju problemy (nieintuicyjność moralną czy ogólną niekoherencję), co jest tylko kolejnym argumentem na rzecz tezy, iż osłabienie wymogów praw własności prywatnej jest najlepiej uzasadnionym sposobem przezwyciężenia rozważanego tu dylematu. (shrink)

In “Evictionism and Libertarianism,” published in this journal, Walter Block defends the view that, although the fetus is a human being with all the rights to its body, it may nonetheless be evicted from the woman’s body as a trespasser, provided the pregnancy is unwanted. We argue that this view is untenable: the statement that the unwanted fetus is a trespasser does not follow from the premises that the fetus uninvitedly resides in the woman’s body and that the woman is (...) a full self-owner. For this statement to follow, one more statement would have to be true; namely, the woman would have to hold her self-ownership rights specifically against the fetus, and for this to be the case, the fetus would have to have a correlative duty to the woman to abstain from interfering with her body. This statement, however, is false. (shrink)

The notion of empathy has been explicated in different ways in the current debate on how to understand others. Whereas defenders of simulation-based approaches claim that empathy involves some kind of isomorphism between the empathizer’s and the target’s mental state, defenders of the phenomenological account vehemently deny this and claim that empathy allows us to directly perceive someone else’s mental states. Although these views are typically presented as being opposed, I argue that at least one version of a simulation-based approach—the (...) account given by de Vignemont and Jacob—is compatible with the direct-perception view. My argument has two parts: My first step is to show that the conflict between these accounts is not—as it seems at first glance—a disagreement on the mechanism by which empathy comes about. Rather, it is due to the fact that their proponents attribute two very different roles to empathy in understanding others. My second step is to introduce Stein’s account of empathy. By not restricting empathy to either one of these two roles, her process model of empathy helps to see how the divergent intuitions that have been brought forward in the current debate could be integrated. (shrink)

Our daily lives unfold continuously, yet our memories are organised into distinct events, situated in a specific context of space and time, and chunked when this context changes (at event boundaries). Previous research showed that this process, termed event segmentation, enhances object-context binding but impairs temporal order memory. Physiologically, peaks in pupil dilation index event segmentation, similar to emotion-induced bursts of autonomic arousal. Emotional arousal also modulates object-context binding and temporal order memory. Yet, these two critical factors have not been (...) systematically studied together. To address this gap, we ran a behavioural experiment using a paradigm validated to study event segmentation and extended it with emotion manipulation. During encoding, we sequentially presented greyscale objects embedded in coloured frames (colour changes defining events), with a neutral or aversive sound. During retrieval, we tested participants’ memory of temporal order memory and object-colour binding. We found opposite effects of emotion and event segmentation on episodic memory. While event segmentation enhanced object-context binding, emotion impaired it. On the contrary, event segmentation impaired temporal order memory, but emotion enhanced it. These findings increase our understanding of episodic memory organisation in laboratory settings, and potentially in real life with perceptual changes and emotion fluctuations constantly interacting. (shrink)

Murray Rothbard claims that it is “evident that our theory of proportional punishment—that people may be punished by losing their rights to the extent that they have invaded the rights of others—is frankly a retributive theory of punishment, a ‘tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth’ theory.” The present paper argues that it is not. The role that Rothbard assigns for victims in determining punishment justifies classifying his theory of punishment as corrective rather than retributive, for vesting victims with rights (...) over punishment defeats the retributive justice requirement that criminals are punished solely because they deserve it and in accordance with their respective deserts. Instead of giving offenders what they objectively deserve, the Rothbardian theory of punishment allows victims to seek compensation in various forms, including revenge. (shrink)

Scholarly opinions vary on what language is, how it evolved, and from where or what it evolved. Long considered uniquely human, today scholars argue for evolutionary continuity between human language and animal communication systems. But while it is generally recognized that language is an evolving communication system, scholars continue to debate from which species language evolved, and what behavioral and cognitive features are the precursors to human language. To understand the nature of protolanguage, some look for homologs in gene functionality, (...) brain areas, or anatomical structures such as the supralaryngeal vocal tract; others point toward primates, their gestural, vocal, multimodal, and in later evolving hominins also their pantomimic communication systems; and still others draw parallels between the musicality that characterizes language and the pitch found in the numerous sounds produced by animals. Accordingly, protolanguage theories today are multiple and diverse, and protolanguages might have also been diverse. This special issue on Evolving (Proto)Language/s for Lingua bundles several of the protolanguage theories that were put forward at the sixth edition of the Ways to Protolanguage conference series, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, in 2019. Not aimed at surveying all the different ways there are to conceptualize, study, and model protolanguage/s, this issue provides interested readers with good overviews on the role played in current theorizing on protolanguage/s by (paleo)anthropology, genetics, physiology, developmental, evolutionary, ecological, and pragmatic research lines. (shrink)

This paper argues that critical realism is one of the main theoretical orientations of the social sciences in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Critical realism aims to study the transcende...

Human–nonhuman chimeras have been the focus of ethical controversies for more than a decade, yet some related issues remain unaddressed. For example, little has been said about the relationship between the origin of transferred cells and the morally relevant capacities to which they may give rise. Consider, for example, a developing mouse fetus that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a human and another that receives a brain stem cell transplant from a dolphin. If both chimeras acquire morally relevant (...) capacities as a result of transplantation, and if those capacities are indistinguishable, should the difference in cell origin matter to how we classify these creatures? I argue that if morally relevant capacities are easy to detect, cell origin is irrelevant to how the chimera ought to be treated. However, if such capacities are hard to detect, cell origin should play a role in considerations about how to treat the chimera. (shrink)

This book provides a detailed commentary on the classic monograph by Alfred Tarski, and offers a reinterpretation and retranslation of the work using the original Polish text and the English and German translations. In the original work, Tarski presents a method for constructing definitions of truth for classical, quantificational formal languages. Furthermore, using the defined notion of truth, he demonstrates that it is possible to provide intuitively adequate definitions of the semantic notions of definability and denotation and that the notion (...) in a structure can be defined in a way that is analogous to that used to define truth. Tarski’s piece is considered to be one of the major contributions to logic, semantics, and epistemology in the 20th century. However, the author points out that some mistakes were introduced into the text when it was translated into German in 1935. As the 1956 English version of the work was translated from the German text, those discrepancies were carried over in addition to new mistakes. The author has painstakingly compared the three texts, sentence-by-sentence, highlighting the inaccurate translations, offering explanations as to how they came about, and commenting on how they have influenced the content and suggesting a correct interpretation of certain passages. Furthermore, the author thoroughly examines Tarski’s article, offering interpretations and comments on the work. (shrink)

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws (...) in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to talk about the second person in the theory of mind debate. While theory theory and simulation theory are described as third person and first person accounts respectively, a second person account suggests itself as a viable, though wrongfully neglected third option. In this paper I argue that this way of framing the debate is misleading. Although defenders of second person accounts make use of the vocabulary of the theory of mind debate, they understand some (...) of the core expressions in a different way. I will illustrate this claim by focusing on Reddy’s and Gallagher’s accounts and argue that these authors use the notions of knowing and of understanding other minds differently than traditionally assumed. As a consequence, second person accounts thus conceived do not directly address the questions that gave rise to the theory of mind debate. They invite us, however, to critically reflect upon the way the debate has been set up. (shrink)

This paper defends the Blockian Proviso against its critics, Kinsella in particular, and interprets it as a law of non-contradiction in the theory of just property rights. I demonstrate that one may not lawfully appropriate in such a way as to forestall others from appropriating an unowned land because such appropriation would result in conflict-generating norms, and conflict-generating norms are not rationally justifiable and just norms. The Blockian Proviso, which precludes forestalling, operates therefore at the level of original appropriation and (...) determines, according to the homestead principle of justice in first acquisition, what may and what may not be lawfully appropriated. Hence, the Blockian Proviso is not an add-on to the homestead principle but part and parcel thereof. (shrink)

What’s the basis for considering an egg donor a genetic parent but not a mitochondrial donor? I will argue that a closer look at the biological facts will not give us an answer to this question because the process by which one becomes a genetic parent, i.e., the process of reproduction, is not a concept that can be settled by looking. It is, rather, a concept in need of philosophical attention. The details of my argument will rest on recent developments (...) in biological technology, but the persuasiveness of my argument will turn on the history of another biological concept, death. Given some important similarities between the two concepts, the way in which ‘death’ evolved in the recent past can provide guidance on how we should think about ‘reproduction.’. (shrink)

Extrapolation from a well-understood base population to a less-understood target population can fail if the base and target populations are not sufficiently similar. Differences between laboratory mice and humans, for example, can hinder extrapolation in medical research. Mice that carry a partial or complete human physiological system, known as humanized mice, are supposed to make extrapolation more reliable by simulating a variety of human diseases. But what justifies our belief that these mice are similar enough to their human counterparts to (...) simulate human disease? I argue that, unless three requirements are met in the process of humanizing mice, very little does. My requirements are not meant to provide necessary and sufficient conditions that guarantee a particular outcome. Instead, they serve as a heuristic for guiding scientific judgments involving extrapolation. In developing each requirement, I engage with philosophical issues concerning the nature of model-based science and the mechanistic approach (and its limits) to making generalizations in the life sciences. (shrink)

Vocal fry is a phonation, or voicing, in which an individual drops their voice below its natural register and consequently emits a low, growly, creaky tone of voice. Media outlets have widely acknowledged it as a generational vocal style characteristic of millennial women. Critics of vocal fry often claim that it is an exclusively female vocal pattern, and some say that the voicing is so distracting that they cannot understand what is being said under the phonation. Claiming that a phonation (...) is so distracting as to prevent uptake of the semantic content of an utterance associated with it is an extreme reaction, especially when accompanied by demands for women to change their phonation. We argue that this reaction limits women's communicative autonomy. We analyze the extreme reaction to female vocal fry, which we characterize as a non-content-based response, from the perspectives of philosophy of language, feminist epistemology, and linguistics. We argue that when fry is heard as annoying and distracting, it is because the hearer interprets the speaker as echoing an utterance from a position of authority to which she is not entitled. We show that this reaction encodes conscious or unconscious sexist attitudes toward women's voices. (shrink)

Siphonous seaweeds, which constitute a vital component of coral reefs, are structurally simple, single‐celled coenocytic macroscopic green algae. Kim et al.1 have recently shown the extraordinary wound‐repair and propagation mechanism of one such siphonous green alga—Bryopsis plumosa. Nucleocytoplasmic aggregates, which are released after injury to this plant, are membraneless structures that can survive in seawater for 10–20 minutes, before they are surrounded by a gelatinous envelope. Subsequently, a cell membrane and cell wall are synthesized around each of these aggregates and (...) the resulting individual cells, so formed, develop into new plants. This report represents a significant advance in our understanding of wound response and, more significantly, is probably the first example of transient survival of life without a cell membrane! BioEssays 24:588–590, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In the present paper we argue that besides four traditional methods of property acquisition – that is, homesteading, production, voluntary transfer and rectification of injustice – libertarianism also recognizes a fifth method, namely the method of accession. We contend that not only have some libertarian scholars implicitly embraced the accession principle, but also that if libertarianism wants to distribute exclusive ownership to indivisible things produced from inputs supplied by two or more parties without running into conflict with its own principles (...) of justice, it has to recognize accession as the fifth mode of appropriation. As the main thesis of the paper goes against the received view concerning the very core of libertarianism, that is, its methods of property acquisition, the text indicates some new developments within the libertarian theory of justice. (shrink)

The concept of the dialogical soul proposed by Joseph Ratzinger is a contemporary attempt to describe the anthropology of humanity in terms of basic, fundamental theological concepts. Epistemological approach of the dialogic soul is not about the division, but co-existence in the concept of humanity significantly different anthropological concepts. Modern neuroscience, although following completely different paths of knowing is currently concerning an important issue "of the embodied mind". Such a holistic effort to discover the truth about the man, though carried (...) out on completely different epistemological platforms, however, have some points in common. The difficulty in finding a common language for the dialogue in this field can be overcome and lead to dialogue, which is extremely difficult but doable. We must, however, at the beginning formulate certain fundamental axioms that define class concepts used in different areas of scientific activity. The concept of dialogical soul of Ratzinger’s now exceeds the barrier of scientific paradigms axioms. It does not stop on the vision of human oneself, but recognition of one in the area of relationships and makes room for a substantial dialogue with the world of modern science. (shrink)