This volume provides a thought-provoking critique the main, existing school of environmental ethics and seeks to build a more coherent and rigorous philosophical basis for future environmental policy.

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. This special issue of Philosophy and Technology investigates whether and to what extent machines, of various designs and configurations, can or should be considered moral subjects, defined here as either a moral agent, a moral patient, or both. The articles that comprise the issue were competitively selected from papers initially prepared for and presented at a symposium on this subject matter convened during (...) the AISB/IACAP 2012 World Congress, held in at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, UK. (shrink)

BackgroundNational guidelines require programmes use subjective assessments of social support when determining transplant suitability, despite limited evidence linking it to outcomes. We examined how transplant providers weigh the importance of social support for kidney transplantation compared with other factors, and variation by clinical role and personal beliefs.MethodsThe National survey of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the Society of Transplant Social Work in 2016. Using a discrete choice approach, respondents compared two hypothetical patient profiles and selected one for transplantation. (...) Conditional logistic regression estimated the relative importance of each factor; results were stratified by clinical role and beliefs.ResultsFive hundred and eighy-four transplant providers completed the survey. Social support was the second most influential factor among transplant providers. Providers were most likely to choose a candidate who had social support, always adhered to a medical regimen, and had a 15 years life expectancy with transplant. Psychosocial providers were more influenced by adherence and quality of life compared with medical/surgical providers, who were more influenced by candidates' life expectancy with transplant. For providers concerned with avoiding organ waste, social support was the most influential factor, while it was the least influential for clinicians concerned with fairness.ConclusionsSocial support is highly influential in listing decisions and may exacerbate transplant disparities. Providers’ beliefs and reliance on social support in determining suitability vary considerably, raising concerns about transparency and justice. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Consultations are an important tool for physicians in solving difficult cases. They are extremely common in North America and to a lesser extent also present in Europe. However, there is little data on this practice in Poland. We present results of a survey of 521 physicians practising in Poland concerning their opinion on CECs and related practices. We analysed the data looking at such issues as CECs’ perceived availability, use of CECs, and perceived usefulness of such support. Physicians (...) in our study generally encounter hard ethics cases, even—surprisingly—those who do not work in hospitals. Most physicians have no CEC access, and those that do still do not employ CECs. However, physicians perceive this form of support as useful—even more so among actual users of CECs. We compared these findings with similar studies from other European countries and the North America. We point out peculiarities of our results as compared to those in other countries, with some possible explanations. We hope the results may encourage regulatory debate on the need to formally introduce CECs into the Polish healthcare system. (shrink)

In the paper we discuss criticisms against David Armstrong’s general theory of truthmaking by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Peter Schulte and Benjamin Schnieder, and conclude that Armstrong’s theory survives these criticisms. Special attention is given to the problems concerning Entailment Principle, Conjunction Thesis, Disjunction Thesis and to the notion of explanation.

The traditional conception of lying, according to which to lie is to make an assertion with an intention to deceive the hearer, has recently been put under pressure by the phenomenon of bald-faced lies i.e. utterances that _prima facie_ look like lies but because of their blatancy allegedly lack the accompanying intention to deceive. In this paper we propose an intuitive way of reconciling the phenomenon of bald-faced lies with the traditional conception by suggesting that the existing analyses of the (...) phenomenon overlook a non-obvious category of hearers whom the speakers of bald-faced lies intend to deceive. Those hearers are institutions represented by the people involved, such as courts or secret police. We also criticize two recent rival accounts (Jessica Keiser’s and Daniel Harris’s) that attempt to save the traditional conception by saying that some bald-faced lies are not assertions, because they are conventional—rather than illocutionary—speech acts. (shrink)

The importance of forests is reflected in the national forest legislation which has been developed and implemented in European countries over recent years. Due to regional and national specificities, forest regulations include culturally immersed terms specific to the described area. The aim of this paper is to analyses the culturally driven legal terms existing in specific legal regulations concerning forestry in Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Poland, and identify possible ways of translating them. In order (...) to take the interdisciplinary nature of the issue into account, the degree of hybridity of the selected texts will be examined by means of corpus analysis. The methodology applied in the paper uses a comparative approach. Additionally, the authors also resort to the aforementioned corpus analysis, as well as the analysis of comparable texts and the analysis of terminology according to the three categories of equivalence as determined by Šarčević, and the techniques of providing equivalents for non-equivalent or partially equivalent terms as research methods. The material used for analysis comes from selected German, English and Polish legal acts regulating forest management and maintenance that are considered as corpora for the selection of culturally immersed terminology, namely: the Polish Act on Forests of 28th September 1991 [Ustawa z dnia 28 września 1991 r. o lasach], Title 16 U.S. Code Chapter 2—National Forests, Forestry Act 1967, Chapter 10, German Forestry Act 1975 [Gesetz zur Erhaltung des Waldes und zur Förderung der Forstwirtschaft von 1975]. The paper concerns potential problems that could occur in the translation of culturally immersed legal terminology due to the terms’ rigidity and high degree of specificity. The studies presented will allow conclusions to be drawn regarding the possibilities and strategies for translating culturally immersed terms. In addition, the availability of terminological dictionaries for these language pairs will be discussed. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Notes on Contributors -- Preface; R.Dallos -- Carving Nature at its Joints? DSM and the Medicalization of Everyday Life; M.Rapley, J.Moncrieff&J.Dillon -- Dualisms and the Myth of Mental Illness; P.Thomas&P.Bracken -- Making the World Go Away, and How Psychology and Psychiatry Benefit; M.Boyle -- Cultural Diversity and Racism: An Historical Perspective; S.Fernando -- The Social Context of Paranoia; D.J.Harper -- From 'Bad Character' to BPD: The Medicalization of 'Personality Disorder'; J.Bourne -- Medicalizing Masculinity; S.Timimi -- (...) Can Traumatic Events Traumatise People? Trauma, Madness and 'Psychosis'; L.Johnstone -- Children Who Witness Violence at Home; A.Vetere -- Discourses of Acceptance and Resistance: Speaking Out About Psychiatry; E.Speed -- The Personal Is the Political; J.Dillon -- 'I'm Just, You Know, Joe Bloggs': The Management of Parental Responsibility for First-Episode Psychosis; C.Coulter&M.Rapley -- The Myth of the Antidepressant: An Historical Analysis; J.Moncrieff -- Antidepressants and the Placebo Response; I.Kirsch -- Why Were Doctors so Slow to Recognise Antidepressant Discontinuation Problems?; D.Double -- Toxic Psychology; C.Newnes -- Psychotherapy: Illusion With No Future?; D.Smail -- The Psychologization of Torture; N.Patel -- What Is To Be Done?; J.Moncrieff, J.Dillon&M.Rapley -- Figure: Papers Using Term 'Antidepressant' On Medline 1957-1965 -- Index. (shrink)

Drawing on findings from the study of prejudice and prejudice reduction, we identify a number of mechanisms through which religious communities may influence the intergroup attitudes of their members. We hypothesize that religious participation could in principle either reduce or promote prejudice with respect to any given target group. A religious community’s influence on intergroup attitudes will depend upon the specific beliefs, attitudes, and practices found within the community, as well as on interactions between the religious community and the larger (...) social environment in which it is embedded. Basing our proposals on findings from the literature on prejudice formation and prejudice reduction allows us to outline useful directions for future studies of religion and prejudice. (shrink)

This article seeks to consider the policing of anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, from November 2013 to April 2014. We argue that women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries that establish the dominant cultural and social order, and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects. The article draws upon recent work on pacification, which views police power as having both destructive and productive dimensions, to consider the impact of police (...) violence on women involved in protest. We seek to explore the ways in which this violence impacts not only on those involved in protest but also those on the peripheries. The article suggests that the threat and use of sexual violence by police towards women aims to enforce compliance within the protest movement and to send a message, specifically to those on the fringes of the movement, that protest is illegitimate and inherently dangerous. As such, sexual violence forms part of the social production and construction of gender and is instrumental in the making and remaking of subjectivities. The case study suggests that police brutality towards women at Barton Moss, therefore, operated as a disciplinary function to regulate acceptable forms of protest and acceptable forms of femininity. (shrink)

Atypical emotion interpretation has been widely reported in individuals with borderline personality disorder ; however, empirical studies reported mixed results so far. We suggest that discrepancies in observations of emotion interpretation by iBPD can be explained by biases related to their fear of rejection and abandonment, i.e., the three moral emotions of anger, disgust, and contempt. In this study, we hypothesized that iBPD would show a higher tendency to correctly interpret these three displays of social rejection and attribute more negative (...) valence. A total of 28 inpatient iBPDs and 28 healthy controls were asked to judge static and dynamic facial expressions in terms of emotions, valence, and self-reported arousal evoked by the observed faces. Our results partially confirmed our expectations. The iBPD correctly interpreted the three unambiguous moral emotions. Contempt, a complex emotion with a difficulty in recognizing facial expressions, was recognized better by iBPD than by healthy controls. All negative emotions were judged more negatively by iBPD than by controls, but no difference was observed in the neutral or positive emotion. Alexithymia and anxiety trait and state levels were controlled in all analyses. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediational role of relational psychological contract in social beliefs and work input attitude dependency. We analyzed data taken from employees in four different organizations operating in the Pomeranian market. A mediation analysis showed a strongly mediating role of psychological contract in the negative relationship between perception of life as a zero-sum game and work input. The motivational effect of the relational psychological contract, that is the role of job security, interesting work, (...) a career in the company, opportunities for promotion and other HRM practices prevail over the significance of personal beliefs, especially when these are negative. If the company lacks the appropriate HRM systems then day-to-day social exchanges can be crucial in modifying the social beliefs of the employee. (shrink)

This paper proposes that global peace should be a professional concern because the issues are complex and require critical and creative thinking, and because professionals have status enabling them to convey information to empower others. Professionals must examine priorities in society's needs for application of their particular knowledge areas, and must each make their own unique contribution towards a more peaceful, less threatened planet.

Shortcomings in the target article preclude adequate tests of developmental/attachment and strategic pluralism theories. Methodological problems include comparing college student attitudes with societal level indicators that may not reflect life conditions of college students. We show, through two principal components analyses, that multiple tests of the theories reduce to only two findings that cannot be interpreted as solid support for evolutionary hypotheses.

Willingness to take risk is one of the most important aspects of personal financial decisions, especially those regarding investments. Recent studies show that one’s perception of time, specifically the individual level of Present Hedonistic and Future Time Perspectives (TPs), influence risky financial choices. This was demonstrated for both, Time Perspective treated as an individual trait and for experimentally induced Time Perspectives. However, on occasion, people might find themselves under the joint influence of both, chronic and situational Time Perspectives and little (...) is known about interactions between them. The paper focuses on the interplay between chronic and induced levels of Future and Present Hedonistic TPs in explaining people’s propensity to take investment risks. An experimental study using a Polish national random-quota sample was conducted. The results showed that situationally induced Future TP lowered the preferred level of portfolio riskiness while situationally induced Present Hedonistic TPs resulted in exactly the opposite effect, and that the higher level of chronic Present Hedonistic TP was linked to higher investment risk preferences. The role of the chronic Present Hedonistic TP was moderated by the situationally induced Future (approaching significance) and Present Hedonistic TPs. The induction of these TPs resulted in reduction of the propensity to take investment risks. The study adds to the literature on psychological factors influencing the propensity to take financial risk. The results are also important for researchers who experimentally manipulate variables that might be also considered as chronic traits. They indicate that whether the manipulation is congruent with one’s natural tendencies may have a differential impact on subsequent measures. (shrink)

We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random.Uncertainty is an everyday experience in medical research and practice, but theory and methods for reasoning clearly about uncertainty were developed only recently. Confirmation bias, selective memory, and many misleading heuristics are known enemies of the insightful clinician, researcher, or citizen, but other snares worth exposing may lurk in how we reason about uncertainty in our everyday lives. Here we draw attention to (...) a cognitive bias that is little known—or possibly unknown—to those outside the field of probability pedagogy. Described by Konold as the... (shrink)

The paper scrutinizes the literary output of George Moore with reference to the expectations of the new generation of Irish writers emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although George Moore is considered to belong to the Anglo-Irish ascendancy writers, he began his writing career from dissociating himself from the literary achievements of his own social class. His infatuation with the ideals of the Gaelic League not only brought him back to Dublin, but also encouraged him to write short (...) stories analogous to famous Ivan Turgenev’s The Sportsman’s Sketches. The idea of using a Russian writer as a role model went along with the Gaelic League advocating the reading of non-English European literature in search for inspiration. However the poet’s involvement in the public cause did not last long. His critical view on Ireland together with his uncompromising approach towards literature resulted in a final disillusionment with the movement. The paper focuses on this particular period of Moore’s life in order to show how this seemingly unfruitful cooperation became essential for the development of Irish literature in the twentieth century. The Untilled Field, though not translated into Irish, still marks the beginning of a new genre into Irish literature—a short story. More importantly, the collection served as a source of inspiration for Joyce’s Dubliners. These and other aspects of Moore’s literary life are supposed to draw attention to the complexity of the writer’s literary output and his underplayed role in the construction of the literary Irish identity. (shrink)

Qualitative description of the movement of objects can be very important when there are large quantity of data or incomplete information, such as in positioning technologies and movement of robots. We present a first step in the combination of fuzzy qualitative reasoning and quantitative data obtained by human interaction and external devices as GPS, in order to update and correct the qualitative information. We consider a Propositional Dynamic Logic which deals with qualitative velocity and enables us to represent some reasoning (...) tasks about qualitative properties. The use of logic provides a general framework which improves the capacity of reasoning. In this way, we can infer additional information by using axioms and the logic apparatus. In this paper we present sound and complete relational dual tableau that can be used for verification of validity of formulas of the logic in question. (shrink)

We introduce an Automatic Theorem Prover (ATP) of a dual tableau system for a relational logic for order of magnitude qualitative reasoning, which allows us to deal with relations such as negligibility, non-closeness and distance. Dual tableau systems are validity checkers that can serve as a tool for verification of a variety of tasks in order of magnitude reasoning, such as the use of qualitative sum of some classes of numbers. In the design of our ATP, we have introduced some (...) heuristics, such as the so called phantom variables, which improve the efficiency of the selection of variables used un the proof. (shrink)

We present a relational proof system in the style of dual tableaux for the relational logic associated with a multimodal propositional logic for order of magnitude qualitative reasoning with a bidirectional relation of negligibility. We study soundness and completeness of the proof system and we show how it can be used for verification of validity of formulas of the logic.

Qualitative data typically contain multiple identifiable characteristics about people, places and events, in the unique voice of each participant. This short report considers sensitivity and security of audio-recordings, drawing attention to a lack of guidelines for researchers on the preservation or destruction of such data. The authors urge debate on this issue, with due consideration to both ethics and scientific rigour.

The book presents logical foundations of dual tableaux together with a number of their applications both to logics traditionally dealt with in mathematics and philosophy (such as modal, intuitionistic, relevant, and many-valued logics) and to various applied theories of computational logic (such as temporal reasoning, spatial reasoning, fuzzy-set-based reasoning, rough-set-based reasoning, order-of magnitude reasoning, reasoning about programs, threshold logics, logics of conditional decisions). The distinguishing feature of most of these applications is that the corresponding dual tableaux are built in a (...) relational language which provides useful means of presentation of the theories. In this way modularity of dual tableaux is ensured. We do not need to develop and implement each dual tableau from scratch, we should only extend the relational core common to many theories with the rules specific for a particular theory. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper I briefly present Jerzy Pelc’s functional approach to logical semiotics of natural language. This approach focuses on the use of natural language expressions and on its dependence on context and conversational situation. One of the important goals of this analysis is to appreciate the role of sentences in natural language and stress that it is by means of sentences that language fulfills its main roles. However, for Pelc almost any expression can be used (...) as a sentence, despite not being a grammatical sentence. In the second part I try to place Pelc’s standpoint within the framework of contemporary semantic minimalism – contextualism debate. I pay special attention to his treatment of subsentential expressions used to express propositions and argue that his view belongs to pragmatics-oriented approaches to subsentential speech acts. (shrink)

Even in psychological literature, which describes many determining variables related to the school domain, few studies have investigated the universal mechanism underlying parent–child relations, which is a prototype matrix for future student–teacher relations. The role of the imprinted schema of children’s obligations toward parents seems to be crucial for school functioning in classroom society. The Dual Filial Piety Model is comprised of two higher-order factors that correspond to the two focal filial piety attributes: reciprocal and authoritarian, which have been shown (...) to have distinct implications on social adaptation and individuals’ psychological functioning. In this study, we investigate the relationship between filial piety and student attitudes in a more individualistic and egalitarian culture and in a more collectivistic and hierarchical society. The measurement invariances of three scales, i.e., the Vietnamese adaptation of DFP Scale, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, and the Study Satisfaction Scale, were improved in the MLM analyses. Our results show that in more individualistic cultures, the RFP is a stronger predictor of study engagement and study satisfaction; however, the AFP is a better factor to predict study engagement in more collectivistic cultures. What is more, only RFP positively correlates with study satisfaction in individualistic culture. Our findings revealed that in different cultures, different aspects of filial piety should be emphasized by parents in the context of the future academic achievements of their children. The conclusion is that the prevention and intervention strategies or techniques intended for children with school problems should be culturally appropriate and addressed to the parents of kindergarten and later to very early-stage education teachers. The results of studies based on the DFPM may stimulate practical applications and policy development within the domain of success and failure in the academic environment. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric Jahrgang: 45 Heft: 1 Seiten: 277-287.

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przybliżenie postaci Mikołaja Zebrzydowskiego jako epistolografa. Analizie poddano listy Zebrzydowskiego zarówno niepublikowane, znajdujące się w krajowych bibliotekach i archiwach, jak również wydane drukiem. Przebadana korespondencja pochodzi z lat 1581–1615. Omówiono problematykę poruszaną w listach (zarówno informacje przekazywane bezpośrednio, jak i te ukryte w „warstwie głębokiej” tekstu), relacje z adresatami listów, język oraz styl epistoł. Tematyka korespondencji prowadzonej przez Mikołaja Zebrzydowskiego jest ściśle powiązana z jego publiczną działalnością. Jak dotąd nie udało odnaleźć się listów wojewody, które były (...) kierowane do członków najbliższej rodziny bądź miały wyłącznie prywatny charakter. Większość listów napisanych przez Zebrzydowskiego cechuje oględność, skupienie się na konkrecie i brak rozwlekłości, co zdaje się korespondować ze skrytą i pragmatyczną naturą nadawcy. Już w korespondencji przedrokoszowej odnaleźć można ślady kontestacji poczynań Zygmunta III, które - rzecz jasna - przybrały na sile w latach 1606–1609. Na szczególną uwagę zasługują listy kierowane do zbiorowego adresata. W odróżnieniu od epistoł przeznaczonych do pojedynczych odbiorców, w korespondencji zwróconej do szerszej publiki wojewoda wspomina o swoich uczuciach, często odwołuje się do autorytetów, stara się poruszyć emocje czytelników, stylizuje swoje zachowanie, manipuluje faktami. By wzmocnić siłę wypowiedzi, chętnie korzysta z amplifikacji, jednego z podstawowych narzędzi w retoryce. Uznać należy, że ten typ korespondencji był jednym z ważniejszych narzędzi propagandowych stosowanych przez wojewodę. (shrink)

Das Wort "Kulturrelativismus" wird in Bezug auf mehrere, methodologisch recht unterschieliech Überzeugungen angewandt, von denen ich drei hervorhebe: 1. den deskriptiven, 2. den methodolgischen, 3. den axiologischen Relativismus. Die Aufgabe des Referates beschränkt sich auf Erörterungen, 1. worin die Meinungsdifferenzen in Bezug auf den deskriptiven Relativismus beruhen, 2. ob der deskriptive und methodologische Relativismus den axiologischen zur Folge hat, 3. ob es gegenwärtig Ansätze von einem überkulturell anerkannten Maß des Guten gibt.

Identyfikacja z grupą etniczną lub narodową jest o tyle skomplikowanym zagadnieniem, że obejmuje szereg zjawisk decydujących o różnorodności kultur. Szczególnie istotny jest mechanizm oddzielający „swoich” od „obcych”, a więc konstytuujący wszelkie sfery aktywności, które z jednej strony są oczywistością kulturową, a z drugiej mogą być przyczyną wartościowania innych przez pryzmat tego, co jest możliwe do zaakceptowania. Stawiam tezę, że o tożsamości kulturowej decyduje ethnos, a dokładniej jego cztery elementy strukturalne : język, obyczaje, historia oraz religia. Stanowią one odrębne systemy, których (...) porządek wynika z korelacji zachodzących na poziomie interpretacyjnym. Szczególnie ważna w tej strukturze jest religia, która zabarwia emocjonalnie pozostałe elementy wierzeniami w istnienie rzeczywistości pozaempirycznej, a sądy i przekonania obowiązujące w grupie etnicznej lub narodowej czyni podstawowymi dla ukonkretnienia tożsamości kulturowej. (shrink)

A blueprint for social change showing how we can reverse the destructive attitudes that threaten our world.