Subject and purpose: Using annual data for the periods 2009–2019, this paper examines trade flows between China and the Visegrad Group countries. The aim of this article is to assess real changes taking place in international trade in the Visegrad Group countries over the last eleven years. The starting point for the analysis was 2009 – the time after the 2008 economic crisis, and it was compared especially to 2018 – a year marked by a significant improvement in the economy. (...) The purpose is to discuss concerns related to the differences in bilateral trade between China and Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovak Republic. The main aim of this research is to distinguish the characteristics of bilateral trade by products between V4 and China in years 2009–2019. The purpose of this article is also to systematize and discuss points of view, rationalizing further empirical research. Two research hypotheses, resulting from the research purpose, were formulated: H1: in the V4 countries import exceeds export, and this trend seems to be growing, H2: Chinese goods imported to the V4 are much more sophisticated than those exported. Design/methodology/approach: To assess the initial and current situation on international trade between the V4 and China, the author uses variables obtained from WTO and OEC resources, diagnosing the situation in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovak Republic. The collected empirical data were processed using theoretical methods such as analysis, synthesis, and comparison to formulate conclusions using deductive and inductive inference methods. Practical Implications: The results can be used in scientific and expert work on diagnostic and forecast trends in bilateral trade by products between the V4 and China. Originality/value: It concerns the indication of the importance of the V4 trade with China compared to the share of the V4 countries in world trade. It was also possible to identify the top export and import products of the V4. The findings also confirm the significant change in China’s trading structure. (shrink)

A review of Stephen Davies's book, Musical Works and Performances.

In 1951–1952 a selected committee appointed by the US Congress investigated the circumstances of the so-called Katyn Crime. The reasons why the highest US legislative body undertook the issue hale to be sought in the international situation of the day, which was determined by the Korean War.The “Katyn Committee” was called up on September 18, 1951 by the House of Representatives of the 82nd Congress on the strength of Resolution 390. Sitting on it were Daniel L. Flood, Thaddeus M. Machrowicz, (...) George A. Dondero, Foster Furcolo, Alvin K. O’Konski, Timothy P. Sheenan and Ray J. Madden, who was also appointed its chairman. The committee began interrogating witnesses on October 11, 1951 and closed the interrogations on November 14, 1952. Simultaneously, the committee inspected 183 material exhibits pertaining to the Katyn event. In all the committee took down the testimonies of 81 main and about 200 secondary witnesses as well as about a hundred written testimonies and accounts.The committee’s final report to the House of Representatives clearly stated the responsibility of the Soviet NKVD for the 1940 massacre of around 15,000 Polish officers from POW camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostaszków.In response to the committee’s proceedings the east bloc staged a propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting its work and upholding the so-called Katyn Lie—a 1943—originated false version of the events whereby the executions of the Polish officers had been carried out by the Germans in the latter half of 1941.The Soviet government took an official stand on the committee on February 29, 1952. It rejected all possibility of cooperation and underscored the Germans’ responsibility for the massacre. On March 1, 1952 the Polish government issued a statement condemning the committee and reiterating the false version of the Katyn incident. This statement appeared in the March 1 edition of the national daily Trybuna Ludu under the heading, The Polish nation indignantly condemns the cynical provocations of American imperialists, who are feeding on the tragic deaths of thousands of Polish citizens in Katyn.The main wave of attacks on the Madden Committee rolled through the Eastern European press in March, 1952. It was most intense in the Soviet Union and Poland, but also penetrated to other countries like Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In the USSR most of the related coverage was published in the communist party daily Pravda. In Poland articles attacking the Madden Committee and propagating the false version of the Katyn events appeared in all dailies and periodicals, including the party, military, youth, branch and satirical press. Especially avid in this respect were papers brought out by the Czytelnik publishers, notably Życie Warszawy. Also published was a deceitful book The Truth About Katyn by Boleslaw Wójcicki.Simultaneously to the press campaign against the Madden Committee the eastern countries launched broad scale repressions involving the prosecution, courts and intelligence services. (shrink)

A review of David Davies, _Art as Performance_ (Blackwell, 2004).

An overview of attempts to define music in the Western philosophical tradition.

I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it (...) is usually accorded. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this critical study of Julian Dodd’s Being True to Works of Music, I argue that the three-tier normative profile of the work-performance tradition in classical music that Dodd defends should be rejected in favour of a two-tier version. I also argue that the theory of work-performance defended in the book fits much more naturally with a contextualist ontology of musical works than with the Platonist ontology Dodd defends in Works of Music, despite his arguments to the contrary in the (...) afterword of the new book. Finally, I argue that the reasons he gives for preferring a ‘tradition-based’ over a ‘historicized’ theory of the understanding of classical scores are not convincing. (shrink)

This is an overview of analytic philosophy of music. It is in five sections, as follows: 1. What Is Music? 2. Musical Ontology 3. Music and the Emotions 4. Understanding Music 5. Music and Value.

I discuss a recent notable attempt to sharply distinguish pornography from erotic art, and argue that the attempt fails. I then turn to methodological questions about how we ought to go about defining ‘pornography’, questions which lead quickly to others about why we want such a definition. I believe that philosophers of art can make important contributions to this definitional project, but only if their contributions are informed by recent work in feminism, philosophical analysis, and art history.

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the epistemic dimension. This is (...) the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

I argue that even if video games are interactive artworks, typical video games are not works for performance and players of video games do not perform these games in the sense in which a musician performs a musical composition (or actors a play, dancers a ballet, and so on). Even expert playings of video games for an audience fail to qualify as performances of those works. Some exemplary playings may qualify as independent “performance-works,” but this tells us nothing about the (...) ontology of video games or playings of them. The argument proceeds by clarifying the concepts of interactivity and work-performance, drawing particularly on recent work by Dominic Lopes, Berys Gaut, and David Davies. (shrink)

We argue that Yarkoni's proposed solutions to the generalizability crisis are half-measures because he does not recognize that the crisis arises from investigators' underappreciation of the roles of theory in experimental research. Rather than embracing qualitative analysis, the research community should make an effort to develop better theories and work toward consistently incorporating theoretical results into experimental practice.

I argue that if we want to condemn sexual relationships between professors and students we must also condemn friendships between them. On the other hand, if we want to allow such friendships, we must condone (some) professor-student sexual relationships. My main reasons for this conclusion are, first, that the differences between close friendships and sexual relationships are more subtle than most people think — there is no clear boundary between the two — and, second, anything that would concern us about (...) the latter should concern us about the former. I will argue, further, that though there may be reasons to avoid such relationships, there is nothing about the student-professor relationship in particular that should lead us to condemn all such relationships. (shrink)

An overview of analytic philosophy of music.

Philosophical reflections on the trope of the femme fatale in the films of Christopher Nolan.

The paper is devoted to the question of the principle of individuation in Bl. John Duns Scotus. This question is found in his commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, namely the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis VII, qu. 13. The first part of the paper discusses problems connected with the chronology and structure of the text, whereas the second one is presented as Scotus’s teaching on individuation. S. Dumont and T. Noone argue today on the traditional thesis about the origin of this (...) question and the remaining philosophical writings from the juvenile stage of Scotus’s philosophical work. They claim that some questions from the In Metaph., including also qu. 13 from the book, were written later or in the same time as the commentaries to Peter Lombard’s Sentences. The authors support their views by indicating the following: 1) the text the In Metaph. is better organised, 2) the vocabulary used with reference to the principle of individuation, especially the term haecceitas, is employed twice in the text In Metaph., 3) the quotations from the later works of Scotus and the works of authors who wrote somewhat later than that date of the In Metaph. hitherto presumed, 4) some stylistic terms indicate that the author of the text was a mature person. The traditional thesis is defended by I. Modrić on behalf of the Scotistic Commission. Having made a detailed analysis, Modrić rejected all the arguments from the introduction to the critical edition of the In Metaph. The author of this paper agrees with Modrić’s view. Therefore as long as we do not have a thesis to the contrary we shall hold the traditional opinion about the earlier origin of the In Metaph. in comparison to Peter Lombard’s commentaries on the Sentences. Scotus opens his lecture on individuation with a discussion of various standpoints on this issue. He divides them into positive and negative theories of individuation. This ordering ensures a clear exposition of various views without unnecessary repetitions and vagueness. Eventually, Doctor Subtilis rejects all hitherto views and provides his own solution. The principle of individuation is for him an individuating entity, the ultimate reality of the individual being. In combination with common nature it determines the most individual of possible characterisation of the individuum. This positive individuating entity is called an individual form (forma individualis) in the In Metaph., a degree of entity (gradus entis) and haecceitas. The latter became a technical term to define the Scotist principle of individuation. (shrink)

Inequality of incomes is one of the significant factors forming the social capital. Two views dominate among economists dealing with the influence of inequality of income on economic growth. On the one hand, a too low inequality of income does not motivate people to increase the labour productivity. A low inequality of income might result from an extended social care system and overloading GDP with social transfers. A good example of it may be a situation when the unemployed refuses to (...) accept a job offer and prefers the unemployment benefit rather to a slightly higher salary. Moreover, a lack of incentives for the employee who fails to acknowledge the economic sense of increasing the productivity of his work might lead to the slower growth of economy. On the other hand, a contrary view suggests that an increase of the inequality of income has a negative impact on the economy. The accumulation of wealth by a small number of citizens raises doubts about good use of that wealth for investments necessary for the growth of the economy. An excessive inequality of income is confronted with disapproval of the significant part of society and regarded as unfair and unjustified. It may also increase the crime level and decrease the trust and, more generally, lead to the weakening of social capital. The arguments above lead to a hypothesis that the influence of the inequality of income on the growth of the economy has a non-linear character. We confirmed this hypothesis in growth models of the US and Swedish economies. We assess the historically optimal inequality of income measured by the Gini coefficient at 46% and 24% for the US and Sweden respectively. The optimal inequality of income in Poland was assessed previously at 29%. The dissimilarities may result from the cultural differences, educational level differences, ethnic differences and differences in diligence. (shrink)

Gregory Currie, arguing against recent psychoanalytic and semiotic film theory, has defended various realist theses about film. The strongest of these is that ‘weak illusionism’—the view that the motion of film images is an illusion—is false. That is, Currie believes film images really do move. In this paper I defend the common-sense position of weak illusionism, firstly by showing that Currie underestimates the power of some arguments for it, especially one based on the mechanics of projection, and secondly by showing (...) that film images exhibit neither garden-variety motion, nor a special response-dependent kind. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly (...) defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the relations between musical works, performances, and recordings, are significantly different in the three traditions of Western classical, rock, and jazz music. In classical music the work of art – the enduring primary focus of critical attention – is a piece that receives various different performances. Classical recordings are best conceived of as giving the listener access to performances of works, or perhaps as performances in their own right. In rock, however, recordings are at (...) the centre of the tradition. The work of art in rock is not a piece for performance, but the track itself, as in classical electronic music. Tracks do manifest songs which may be performed live, but these are not the primary focus of critical attention in rock. In jazz, there are no works of art. This is because the primary focus of critical attention in jazz is the performance, and the relation between standard on which the performance is based and the performance itself is too dissimilar from the model of classical work-performance. Jazz recordings, however, like classical recordings, are best thought of as providing access to performances. These ontological issues are important in part because of their implications for evaluation and musical practice. If rock works are ontologically like classical electronic works, then criticism of them should focus not just on their formal harmonic structures, but on their use of timbral and spatial effects. Since classical recordings endure, but live performances do not, performers should ideally take a different attitude to work-interpretation in those two spheres. (shrink)

The paper presents two objections against Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, which was intended to secure semantic externalism. I first claim that Putnam’s reasoning rests on two assumptions and then try to show why these assumptions are contentious. The first objection is that, given what we know about science, it is unlikely that there are any natural-kind terms whose extension is codetermined by a small set of microstructures required by Putnam’s indexical account of extension determination. The second objection is that there (...) may not be a plausible concept of a speech community whose adoption would classify Oscar and Twin Oscar as members of different speech communities and, at the same time, render Oscar and Twin Oscar as being in the same psychological state. I contend that Putnam’s argument fails because both objections are justified. (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.

I argue for an ontology of jazz according to which it is a tradition of musical performances but no works of art. I proceed by rejecting three alternative proposals: (i) that jazz is a work performance tradition, (ii) that jazz performances are works of art in themselves, and (iii) that jazz recordings are works of art. I also note that the concept of a work of art involved (1) is nonevaluative, so to deny jazz works of art is not to (...) judge it inferior to artistic traditions with works, and (2) is univocal across other musical traditions, so to claim there are works of art in jazz would be to use a different sense of the term than we use when, say, discussing classical music. (shrink)

I argue that the work of art in rock music is a track constructed in the studio, that tracks usually manifest songs, which can be performed live, and that a cover version is a track (successfully) intended to manifest the same song as some other track. This ontology reflects the way informed audiences talk about rock. It recognizes not only the centrality of recorded tracks to the tradition, as discussed by Theodore Gracyk, but also the value accorded to live performance (...) skills, emphasized by Stephen Davies. (shrink)

This article analyzes the Arabisms and other lexical devices that are used to characterize the Native American in the Relación de la jornada de Cíbola by Pedro de Castañeda, a text that deals with the expedition that Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led to the present-day Southwestern United States from 1540 to 1542. After a general presentation of the text, the work focuses on the analysis of seven Arabisms along with other words, including nicknames, to disentangle the meanings and sociolinguistic implications (...) of the use of these words to refer to the American reality. In order to do so, great use is made of information garnered from documentary and lexical sources. We depart from the premise that in the conquest and colonization of New Spain, the models from the previous conquests of Granada and North Africa are followed. And through this perspective of continuity, we identify parallel political measures, identical discursive traditions, as well as a shared attitude and linguistic awareness. From a lexical point of view, this attempt to explain the New World is transmitted by various processes, including the use of lexical Arabisms to plastically illustrate an unknown and pagan culture through codes that are familiar, and equally pagan, to the reader. This contribution helps to expand our understanding about the presence of Arabisms in the history of the Spanish language. (shrink)