Author: Godlewski Roman P. Title: SOURCES OF DUALISM OF CONTENT AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEME I.E. ON SOME FAULTS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (Źródła dualizmu schematu pojęciowego i treści, czyli o kilku błędach filozofii zachodniej. Uwagi z zakresu filozofii analitycznej) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2005, vol:.5, number: 2005/1, pages: 243-258 Keywords: DUALISM OF CONTENT AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEME, RORTY, KMITA, WHORF Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The aim in the article is to explain why (...) we fall in dualism of content and conceptual scheme. The dualism says that there is a relation between languages and the world (meant as an object). The first cause is mechanistic way of thinking which characterizes Indoeuropean mind. The way on thinking is to treat every object as if it had formal properties of physical objects. The term is taken from Whorf’s works. Concequences of mechanistic thinking for research in abstract sciences is considered. It is demonstrated how mechanistic thinking lets to pass from belief that there are some relations between expressions of a language and elements of the world to belief that there is a relation between the language as a whole and the whole world. The fallowing causes of the dualism are also considered: 1. literal understanding of metaphores used in philosophy of language, 2. wrong understanding of suppositions, 4. attempts to explain language in natural terms, e.g. causal theory of meaning. (shrink)

The article is concerned with D. Davidson\'s semantic views. The aim of the article is to explain some misunderstandings that have arisen in the course of reception of these views. The author tries to prove that according to Davidson semantic properties and relations do not come under classical definitions, but under contextual ones, like in L. Wittgenstein\'s semantics. Hence the interpretation presented by J. Kmita is incorrect, whereas that by R. Rorty is right. Causal explanation of semantics is out of (...) the question; hence Rorty\'s interpretation is false with respect to this point. Propositions talk about what they talk about, so Kmita is wrong. According to Davidson the concept of reference is permissible, so Putnam is wrong in his interpretation. Moreover, there is only one logic semantics and for all languages it is the same, hence Kmita is wrong when he says that Davidson\'s interpreter arbitrarily pushes foreign semantics into his own. He is also wrong when he puts in Davidson\'s mouth the conviction that non-determination of a translation does not consist in impossibility to cognize foreign semantics. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE PREDICATION The author claims that there are two kinds of predicates that are used to describe cognitive states of mind like beliefs or perception. Using some of them, one can describe the cognitive states of mind directly, whereas using some others, one can describe these states in comparison with one’s own. For example, one can say that a person has a belief or one can say that that person’s belief is according to his own beliefs. In the latter situation, (...) he uses the predicate “to know”. The conditions that Peter uses correctly the sentence “John knows that p” are as follows: (1) Peter believes that John believes that p; (2) Peter believes that p; (3) Peter believes that the reasons for which John believes that p have a good justification. In a similar way one can ascribe to somebody a visual impression of an object x or to compare that person’s impressions with his own cognitive states. In the latter situation one uses the predicate “to see” (to perceive). The conditions that Peter uses correctly the sentence “John can see x” are the following: (I) Peter believes that John has visual impression of object x; (II) Peter believes that object x exists; (III) Peter believes that this that John has visual impression of object x is according to the laws of vision. When one uses predicates that describe cognitive states of mind of a person (possession of beliefs or sensory impressions), one speaks subjectively, whereas when one speaks objectively, he uses predicates that allow him to compare cognitive states of mind of a person with his own. Keywords: PREDICATION, BELIEFS, PERCEPTION. (shrink)

Author: Godlewski Roman Title: CRITICAL REMARKS TO TATARKIEWICZ’S “ON ABSOLUTENESS OF GOOD” (Uwagi do rozprawy Tatarkiewicza O bezwzględności dobra) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 643-662 Keywords: GOOD, EVIL, VALUE, BEAUTIFUL, RIGHTNESS, EMOTIONS, RELATIVISM, SUBJECTIVISM, ABSOLUTENESS OF GOOD Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article consists of explanatory and critical remarks to Tatarkiewicz’s „O bezwzględności dobra” (“On Absoluteness of Good”). Firstly the author considers the Tatarkiewicz’s concept of (...) good. Acceptance with no proof for theses of undefinability and unconcludability from facts is criticized. Tatarkiewicz’s concepts like “relativism” and “subjectivism” are analyzed. It is pointed out that the thesis on absoluteness of good is doubtful because Tatarkiewicz’s examples are highly connected with human beings. Moreover good is not separable from emotions, so its emotionlessness and unutilitarianity is questioned. Finally the author analyzes Tatarkiewicz’s thesis that establishing rules of rightful action in concrete cases does not belong to science. He claims that Tatarkiewicz did not considered the idea of rightful actions engineering that would not be giving solution for every particular case but the rules of Obtaining solutions in given conditions. (shrink)

Author: Godlewski Roman Title: THE PROBLEM OF THE RANGE OF LANGUAGE (Zagadnienie zakresu języka) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2006, vol:.6, number: 2006/1, pages:119-134 Keywords: RANGE OF LANGUAGE, DUALISM OF CONTENT AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEME, DAVIDSON, QUINE Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article analyses questions concerning the measure of the relation between language and the world. The author distinguishes questions related to the domains of reality that can be described in a (...) given language (these are based on the dualism of content and conceptual scheme so they are dualistic ones) and questions related to the types of objects that you can talk about in a given language (particular ones). Besides, questions about the measure are divided into two categories: 1. ontological (concerning the objects or domains that you can talk about in a given language); 2. transcendental (concerning the experience data that can be considered in a given language). Some problems that arise in the context of presented questions are discussed. Dualistic and transcendental particular questions are recognized as incorrect. Ontological particular questions are limited only to comparisons between object languages, whereas our language (metalanguage) can never be compared to any other. All theses in the article are supported with the author’s own argumentation. (shrink)

Roman Godlewski Unjustified Opinions as the Foundation of ActionsThe article concerns the phenomenon of religion. Religious behavior is thought to be an action based on unjustified opinions. Such actions are wrong but there are some exceptions. The exceptional actions are called “superrational,” unjustified opinions they are based on are called “regulative” and facts described in them “superreal.” The author gives a typology of acting in this way. The types go as follows: (1) putting scientific hypotheses, (2) practical pressure, (3) (...) the will of no investigation, (4) the will to regard only some given sources of truth, (5) the will not to know, (6) symbolic or metaphorical behavior (religious included). The latter is described within a wider anthropological and evolutionary context. The author claims that irrationality of religious beliefs in respect to their content does not mean that actions based on them are irrational, but the question is whether a given religious practice fulfills the emotional needs of a particular person. From the evolutionary point of view, it is important to have emotionally stable biological units even if, in order to obtain this, one has to take fiction for reality with reference to facts of little importance for life. Keywords: religion, action, behavior, opinion, belief, justification, rationality, magic, symbol, evolution. (shrink)

The main idea of the article is that every belief is an answer to a question. Such question is called "calling the belief". It has a strictly assigned set of possible answers, such that they exclude one another. Understanding a belief means to know the question and all the alternative answers. Total ignorance of a question means that the curve that shows the level of affirmation of every possible answer is horizontal. Getting knowledge means folding the curve. Then some possibilities (...) become better affirmed then others. The possibility of folding the curve means that the question has empirical content. When one of the possibilities wins and becomes highly affirmed whereas others fall down to be rejected the subject obtains the truth. (shrink)

Let us ask: do the objects we think that exist, really exist? Davidson concludes, from rejection of dualism of content and conceptual scheme, that most of them really exist (coherentialism). Unfortunately, his reasoning is wrong, because though the rejection makes it impossible to doubt our knowledge as a whole, it is still possible to doubt all its elements one after another. The two main points of Davidson's theory are the following: (1) disquotationism (semantic terms are used only to speak about (...) speaking) and (2) ostensivism (words refer to what they refer to independently of what it could be; their meanings are established as the result of the process of learning). (1) and (2) are the real reasons for Davidson's coherentialism. Ostensivism apparently allows to avoid the problem of induction, though it only transforms the problem into the question of ostension. Moreover, consistent ostensivism makes analytic sentences impossible. Yet it is claimed, that ostensivism is wrong in general, because besides ostensives there are also categorials (expressions, meanings of which belong to certain ontological categories) and without the latter logic and mathematics would be impossible. Davison's coherentialism is wrong because it is not true that one cannot have any believes without having any language. Hence, no theory of language is crucial as far as existence is concerned. It is shown considering ascription of believes to mute persons and learning languages by children. Coherentialism lets Davidson bring down the idea of a demon that could make us see the world completely different than it is and not know if it is true. (shrink)

The objection raised by Davidson against Kuhn in article "On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme" that the argument presented in "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" was inconsistent is incorrect. Kuhn's conception belongs to psychology and sociology and his work could be titled "An Outline of Psychology and Sociology of Scientific Research". Consequently he is interested only and only in psychologi-cal reasons that affect scientists' theoretical decisions. E.g. his considerations concerning neutral observational language are polemous against thesis that language like (...) that could be somehow useful for interpretation of what scientists do and also against thesis that it could be useful for scientists themselves. The difficulty of un-derstanding above paradigmata does not consist on conceptual schemata meant logically as Davidson reads it but on different cognitive attitude and different manual sets of concepts. To explain the controversy logical and psychological concepts of meaning are distinguished. Davidson means the proper, Kuhn does the latter. Psy-chological meaning concists on what associations and feelings are evocated by utterances in the recever's mind. When Kuhn says that after a revolution scientists live in another world he means only that the language with witch they describe the reality has different psychological meaning. And this is that kind of meaning that cannot be translated and is lost when you discuss above paradigmata. From Kuhn's point of view it is possible to translate logical meaning of scientific utterances from before a revolution, and he does it. The psychological meaning can be only described but not translated. (shrink)

The relation of the conformal group to various earlier proposed relativistic quantum mechanical dynamical groups (and other related groups) is studied in the framework of projective geometry, by explicitly constructing the contractions of the six-dimensional coordinate transformations. Five-dimensional realizations are then derived. An attempt is made to improve our physical insight through geometry.

SummaryThe present analysis compares the distribution of surnames by means of spatial autocorrelation analysis in the Spain–Portugal border region. The Spanish National Institute of Statistics provides a database of surnames of residents in the western Spanish provinces of Zamora, Salamanca, Cáceres, Badajoz and Huelva. The Spanish and Portuguese patterns of surname distribution were established according to various geographic axes. The results obtained show a low diversity of surnames in this region – especially in the centre – which can be explained (...) by the absence of any major geographic barriers, with the exception of the mountain ranges between hydrographic basins, and by the presence of traditional roads that have existed since Roman times. The latter have resulted in a constant migratory flow over short–median distances, which, as can be deduced from the surnames, fits two north/south territorial axes running parallel to the border between Spain and Portugal. The distribution patterns of Portuguese and Spanish surnames differ with regard to their frequencies in the five provinces studied, which can be attributed to their respective historical, economic and social conditions. It is concluded that the border delimiting these two countries has affected the migratory flow, thereby conditioning the demographic and genetic structure of the western Spanish regions. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the role of several consumers’ cognitive and psychographic traits in their perceptions of retailers’ deceptive practices and the different effects on perceived deception associated with online vis-à-vis in-store shopping. Building on theoretical models of persuasion in consumer behavior, we hypothesize that the antecedents of perceived deception in traditional settings are the same as those on the Internet, while the intensity of the impact of these antecedents differs between the online and the offline environment. Results suggest (...) that the effects of individual’s cognitive traits and risk aversion on perceived deception are more relevant when consumers shop online than when they purchase from traditional stores. Conversely, psychographic traits play a more important role in explaining perceived deception in the traditional shopping context as compared to the online channel. Several theoretical and managerial implications are derived from these findings. (shrink)

Consumer distrust is only recently beginning to be perceived as an important e-commerce issue and, unlike online trust, the nature and role of distrust is much less established. This study examines the influence of two important consumer characteristics on consumer’s ethically-based distrust of online retailers. Also, the moderating role of consumer’s need for personal contact with sales staff is tested. Results from 409 online consumers confirm that both relativist-based ethical ideology and risk aversion are strongly and positively related to consumers’ (...) distrust. Interestingly, our findings show that positive effects of relativism and risk aversion on consumer’s distrust are moderated by consumers’ need for personal interaction, which is more pronounced for those consumers with a high need for personal interaction with retail salespeople. (shrink)

Recent findings indicate that complex cognitive functions are organized at a global level in the brain and rely on large-scale information processing requiring functional integration of multiple disparate neural assemblies. The critical question of the integration of distributed brain activities is whether the essential integrative role can be attributed to a specific structure in the brain or whether this ability is inherent to the cognitive network as a whole. The results of the present study show that mean values of the (...) running correlation function in frontal-temporal EEG pairs with one electrode in the anterior cingulate cortex are significantly higher than the same values in other frontal-temporal pairs. These findings indicate a particular role of the ACC in large-scale communication, which could reflect its unique integrative functions in cognitive processing. (shrink)

Plagiarism and other transgressions of the norms of academic integrity appear to be a persistent problem among upper secondary students. Numerous surveys have revealed high levels of infringement of what appear to be clearly stated rules. Less attention has been given to students’ understanding of academic integrity, and to the potential misconceptions and false beliefs that may make it difficult for them to comply with existing rules and handle complex real-life situations.In this paper we report findings from a survey of (...) European upper secondary students’ views on issues relating to academic integrity. We relate these findings to the students’ training about academic integrity, self-reported level of questionable behavior and country of study.A total of 1654 students at 51 institutions located in 6 European countries participated in the study. The participants generally believed they had a good understanding of the rules applying to them and knew how to behave in compliance with norms of academic integrity. The results indicate, however, that often, in practice, this belief was mistaken. Many students had an inadequate understanding of core elements of academic integrity. They were uncertain about how to act, and they struggled in the handling of complex situations that require context-sensitive judgement. While some differences between countries were identified, they were modest and exhibited no clear pattern. Our results also suggest that reducing students’ level of uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, improving their level of knowledge could lead them to engage less in certain types of questionable behaviours. Surprisingly, the effect of academic training is modest and ambiguous. The study also confirms that perception of peer behaviour has the strongest association with student engagement in questionable behaviours. Thus, academic integrity at the upper secondary level cannot be explained simply in terms of individual ethics or knowledge. (shrink)

Good academic practice is more than the avoidance of clear-cut cheating. It also involves navigation of the gray zones between cheating and good practice. The existing literature has left students’ understanding of gray zone practices largely unexplored. To begin filling in this gap, we present results from a questionnaire study involving N = 1639 undergraduate students from seven European countries representing all major disciplines. We show that large numbers of these students are unable to identify gray area issues and lack (...) sensitivity to the context dependence of these. We also show that a considerable proportion of students have a poor understanding of concepts like plagiarism and falsification, not only in gray zone scenarios, but also in cases of relatively clear-cut cheating. Our results are similar across the faculties and countries of study, and even for students who have attended academic integrity training. We discuss the implications of this for academic integrity training. (shrink)

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an (...) astonishing achievement. (shrink)

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are present in fat tissues throughout the body, yet little is known regarding their biological role within epidural fat. We hypothesize that debridement of epidural fat and/or subsequent loss of MSCs within this tissue, disrupts homeostasis in the vertebral environment resulting in increased inflammation, fibrosis, and decreased neovascularization leading to poorer functional outcomes post‐injury/operatively. Clinically, epidural fat is commonly considered a space‐filling tissue with limited functionality and therefore typically discarded during surgery. However, the presence of MSCs (...) within epidural fat suggests that itis more biologically active than historically believed and may contribute to the regulation of homeostasis and regeneration in the dural environment. While the current literature supports our hypothesis, it will require additional experimentation to determine if epidural fat is an endogenous driver of repair and regeneration and if so, this tissue should be minimally perturbed from its original location in the spinal canal. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/MIol_IWK1os. (shrink)

Understanding scientific modelling can be divided into two sub-projects: analysing what model-systems are, and understanding how they are used to represent something beyond themselves. The first is a prerequisite for the second: we can only start analysing how representation works once we understand the intrinsic character of the vehicle that does the representing. Coming to terms with this issue is the project of the first half of this chapter. My central contention is that models are akin to places and characters (...) of literary fictions, and that therefore theories of fiction play an essential role in explaining the nature of model-systems. This sets the agenda. Section 2 provides a statement of this view, which I label the fiction view of model-systems, and argues for its prima facie plausibility. Section 3 presents a defence of this view against its main rival, the structuralist conception of models. In Section 4 I develop an account of model-systems as imagined objects on the basis of the so-called pretence theory of fiction. This theory needs to be discussed in great detail for two reasons. First, developing an acceptable account of imagined objects is mandatory to make the fiction view acceptable, and I will show that the pretence theory has the resources to achieve this goal. Second, the term ‘representation’ is ambiguous; in fact, there are two very different relations that are commonly called ‘representation’ and a conflation between the two is the root of some of the problems that beset scientific representation. Pretence theory provides us with the conceptual resources to articulate these two different forms of representation, which I call p-representation and t-representation respectively. Putting these elements together provides us with a coherent overall picture of scientific modelling, which I develop in Section 5. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has (...) devoted to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

An important contemporary version of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics explains the approach to equilibrium in terms of typicality. The problem with this approach is that it comes in different versions, which are, however, not recognized as such and not clearly distinguished. This article identifies three different versions of typicality‐based explanations of thermodynamic‐like behavior and evaluates their respective successes. The conclusion is that the first two are unsuccessful because they fail to take the system's dynamics into account. The third, however, is promising. (...) I give a precise formulation of the proposal and present an argument in support of its central contention. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

We study a strengthening of the notion of a perfectly meager set. We say that a subset A of a perfect Polish space X is countably perfectly meager in X, if for every sequence of perfect subsets $\{P_n: n \in \mathbb N\}$ of X, there exists an $F_\sigma $ -set F in X such that $A \subseteq F$ and $F\cap P_n$ is meager in $P_n$ for each n. We give various characterizations and examples of countably perfectly meager sets. We prove (...) that not every universally meager set is countably perfectly meager correcting an earlier result of Bartoszyński. (shrink)

Cicero's philosophical works are now exciting renewed interest, in part because he provides vital evidence of the views of the Greek philosophers of the Hellenistic age, and partly because of the light he casts on the intellectual life of first century Rome. This edition uses the 1997 Clarendon text by the acclaimed translator P.G. Walsh.

A new construction of a certain conceptual space is presented. Elements of this conceptual space correspond to concept elements of reality, which potentially comprise an infinite number of qualities. This construction of a conceptual space solves a problem stated by Dietz and his co-authors in 2013 in the context of Voronoi diagrams. The fractal construction of the conceptual space is that this problem simply does not pose itself. The concept of convexity is discussed in this new conceptual space. Moreover, the (...) meaning of convexity is discussed in full generality, for example when space is deprived of it, its substitutes for concept domains are considered. (shrink)

You and I reach for a dollar bill on the floor, each saying “I saw it first.” The content of what we say is identically the same. How then is your claim referred to you and mine to me? We argue that the reference of self-ascriptions is effected by the occasion of the occurrence of the first-person indexical rather than by the content of the thought or assertion which then occurs. That this is true has further implications for exotic, self-fulfilling (...) self-ascriptions, like the Cartesian Cogito ; for views like those of Geach and Anscombe, who hold that ‘I’ is not a singular referring expression at all; and for views which hold that the first-person indexical is a singular referring expression with a very special, “systematically ambiguous” content. (shrink)

Transformácia politického systému -- Aktuálne problémy a riešenia -- Alternatívy súčasného kapitalizmu -- Cynizmus ako princíp -- Appendix o školstve.