The text is a commentary to the phenomena in Polish modern art in the final years of the 20th century. It constitutes a “first-hand” account by a participant of the events and the host of the location. The location was the author’s private workshop in the attic of a Łódź tenement house in the very centre of the city, in the circles of artists creating situations, meetings, events and objects, which established Kultura Zrzuty [the Whip-round Culture], a phenomenon which described (...) the activities of artists independent of state institutions and officials patrons in the 1980s. The analysis of the events within the area of independent Okolice Sztuki inspired the author to discuss the form of other artists and his own, who created art in Strych [literally: attic] in an unchanging conflict between physical and social existence and freedom in art. (shrink)

Due to the Internet, the traditional media monopoly has been irretrievably broken. Available technologies have created unavailable earlier conditions for personalization and manipulation of information that is generating to the Internet users. It is sharply noticeable with reference to the computer games, media and the potential of Web 2.0, social networking. The freedom of information concerning the social networking seem to be a temporary phenomenon—effectively dominated by the commercialization.

Refining big data is a new multipurpose way to find, collect, and analyze information obtained from the web and off-line information sources about any research subject. It gives the opportunity to investigate (with an assumed level of statistical significance) the past and current status of information on a subject, and it can even predict the future. The refining of big data makes it possible to quantitatively investigate a wide spectrum of raw information on significant human issues—social, scientific, political, business, and (...) others. Refining creates a space for new, rich sources of information and opens innovative ways for research. The article describes a procedure for refining big data and gives examples of its use. (shrink)

Definicja geniusza jest definicją warunkową – jest to osoba o nieprzeciętnych zdolnościach. Zdolności takie związane są ze strukturą i fizjologią mózgu, które są zdeterminowane genetycznie, a środowisko i edukacja mogą co najwyżej przeszkodzić w rozwoju geniusza. Na przykładzie prostego modelu przestrzeni fazowej mózgu formułujemy dwie hipotezy dotyczące dynamiki procesów myślowych w mózgu geniusza i różnicy między myśleniem geniusza a chorobą psychiczną lub szaleństwem.

"Traum des Seins, Todt des Seiendes" sketches centuries-old history, transformations, and consequences of the baroque identification of dream and reality. The first part of the essay demonstrates that, despite commonly accepted opinion this identification originates with Descartes. In the second part of the essay, the main theme – the claim that ontological positions are dependent on the grammar of ethic languages – is introduced within the context of Schopenhauer's remarks on life and dreams. The third part of the essay further (...) develops the main theme in the course of an analysis of Descartes' "Meditation II". From a linguistic point of view, there are two following consequences for ego and cogito: either the subject (ego) does not exist, or its existence is temporarily non-continuous; either it does not exist as consciousness; or it is an unconscious being. Obviously, Descartes would accept neither. In the last analysis, ego exists merely grammatically, while (conscious) being differs from being in that it happens but is not. Since conscious being, only occurs in speech directed to somebody, death touches merely being, while being either dreams or remains silent. (shrink)

Roman Ingardens frühe Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie, die hier als Band 6 der von Rolf Fieguth und Guido Küng geleiteten »Gesammelten Werke« vorliegen, umfassen seine Dissertation über »Intuition und Intellekt bei Henri Bergson« und drei andere, zum Teil hier erstmals veröffentlichte Arbeiten aus der Frühperiode des hervorragenden polnischen Phänomenologen. Insgesamt bieten sie ein gutes Bild von dem auch für Ingardens Gesamtwerk sehr wichtigen und bisher nicht gebührend beachteten erkenntnistheoretischen Projekt, mit dem Ingarden in Anknüpfung an Edmund Husserl und andere Phänomenologen, aber (...) auch unter Verwendung eigener origineller Ideen die Möglichkeit einer autonomen Epistemologie nachzuweisen versucht. (shrink)

BL With a new preface by the authors This is an important work of original scholarship by two of the most distinguished East European economists now working in the West. The authors, both of whom were involved in the Planning Office of the Polish economy in the 1950s and 1960s, present here the results of their efforts to develop theoretically a system of economic management which could in practice avoid the worst excesses of both market capitalism and central planning. The (...) conclusions derived from this analysis are shown to open up a new dimension to the `socialism versus capitalism' controversy which has dominated much of the world throughout the twentieth century and which is especially significant as the countries of East and Central Europe re-structure their economies. (shrink)

An option available to an agent is stable if it maximizes expected utility on the hypothetical assumption that the agent is going to choose it. As is well known, some decision problems lack a stable solution. Paul Weirich (1986 and 1988) has recently proposed a decision principle which prescribes that the option chosen should be at least weakly stable--or "weakly ratifiable", to use his terminology. According to him, full stability is an excessively strong demand. I shall argue that Weirich's proposal (...) conflicts with the familiar condition of dominance. But I shall also prove that this difficulty can be avoided if we replace weak stability by "moderate" stability--where the latter property is somewhat stronger than the former. It will be seen, however, that this modification does not help against other ailments connected with stability. In particular, to heed the demand of stability (of any kind) is to engage in a form of "wishful acting". Also, the different stability demands all conflict with a close relative of the dominance condition: the condition of "indifference". According to this condition, two actions are equally choiceworthy if they would always lead to the same outcomes--whatever state the world is in. On the other hand, the conditions of dominance and indifference would both be satisfied if we replaced a demand for stability (of some kind) by a related but distinct principle of "retrievability". Retrievability and (full) stability are mutually independent properties of options, but each of them entails moderate stability. The paper ends with a discussion of the relevance of retrievability to theories of choiceworthiness and practical reason. (shrink)

Epistemic conditionals have often been thought to satisfy the Ramsey test : If A, then B is acceptable in a belief state G if and only if B should be accepted upon revising G with A. But as Peter Gärdenfors has shown, RT conflicts with the intuitively plausible condition of Preservation on belief revision. We investigate what happens if RT is retained while Preservation is weakened, or vice versa. We also generalize Gärdenfors' approach by treating belief revision as a relation (...) rather than as a function.In our semantic approach, the same relation is used to model belief revision and to give truth-conditions for conditionals. The approach validates a weak version of the Ramsey Test — essentially, a restriction of RT to maximally consistent belief states. (shrink)

The question of the relation between the economic reforms introduced in or contemplated by the East European communist countries (including now a days the Soviet Union as well) and China, and the pattern of income distribution is obviously of great interest: how will the increased use of market mechanisms affect the degree of inequality? Strong views on the matter are frequently voiced both by proponents and opponents of market-oriented reforms, but there is surprisingly litde empirical evidence based on systematic research. (...) To my knowledge the work under review is the first book with such an explicit objective. (shrink)

Author presents reflection on the evolution of political terms and notions throughout Russian history. In this study, as its main focus is the reconstruction of the development process of concepts and notions pertaining to the political whole. Nevertheless, these issues do surface in the context of conceptualizing the political community, as an important aspect of both political organization and political action. In Russia, certain concepts pertaining to some aspects of freedom did develop, but what never emerged was the general idea (...) of freedom as the central political issue. On the other hand, the issue of authority emerged as an independent field of thought, as a result of the despotic and anti-despotic interpretations of terms used to describe the political system. (shrink)