In the article we are trying to answer the question why people make mistakes in their reasoning. According to the theory proposed by P. N. Johnson-Laird, reasoning is a semantic process based on mental models. Reasoners build models of the situations described in premises and then check which conclusion holds in all the models. Unfortunately, our working memory has a limited processing capacity, and so we often fail to represent all possibilities necessary to draw a valid conclusion. The more models (...) we have to build, the higher the chance of making a mistake. Due to limitations of our working memory, we tend to represent in the models only what is true, but not what is false. One of the consequences of this fact is the occurrence of certain illusions: inferences that are compelling but invalid. The existence of such illusionary inferences have been corroborated by numerous experiments. (shrink)

The empirical slippery slope arguments are arguments of the following form: if we take a first step A, as a result of a sequence of events, step N will necessarily or very likely follow; N is clearly not acceptable; therefore we must not take step A. Such arguments are often used in the discussions concerning abortion, assisted suicide, human gene therapy, free speech, decriminalizing marijuana, gun control and other ethical or social issues. In this article, I am trying to argue (...) that although slippery slope arguments are not deductive, they need not to be considered as fallacies. There are some mechanisms that make the realization of the scenarios sketched in the slippery slope arguments much more probable than one could think. I analyze three different examples of such mechanisms. The first one originates in the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. The second is connected with the use of precedents. The third mechanism depends on so-called multi-peaked preferences which some people might have when they make their decisions. (shrink)

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work (...) together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation. (shrink)

Józef Tischner, a Polish philosopher and a seasoned commentator on the political transformations associated with the decline of communism and the building of a new democratic order in the final decades of the twentieth century, was, and still is, a controversial figure. Some see him as a profound philosopher, others as a moral authority, while others see him as a political opponent. I discuss the question concerning where Józef Tischner drew the line between political engagement sensu stricto and metapolitics, which (...) is philosophically and programmatically grounded and neutral to the differences in world views. I inquire whether it is legitimate to attribute to Tischner political views and sympathies sometimes referred to as left-wing Christian liberalism and whether these views influenced the structure and the main theses of Tischner’s metapolitical thought. I attempt a reconstruction of Tischner’s position and indicate its basis in the assumptions of Christian personalism, the philosophy of dialogue, and the ethics of solidarity. (shrink)

The paper defines dialogic rationality and shows a rational path and understanding from the individual point of view. A separate discipline or discourse should coordinate the urgent need of deeper emotional transformation (metanoia) and explore the appearance of inner spiritual connectedness. This will establish the importance of every unique creature in the universe. Consequently in postmodernism, epistemology can no longer be accomplished by a “clear” cognitive theory, separated from ontological and anthropological elements. Cognition can no longer progress to an unchangeable, (...) non-falsifiable knowledge, because of changes within the object’s inner ontological level. Thus an observer can only interpret the phenomena but can never say “the last word”. Human cognition is based on time-coordinates when an observer tries to make a projection before the future has come. Yet existing now, it also contains the step back to the past as a shore of memory, experience, and knowledge. In this view history is considered to be non-linear—it is a complicated forward process, still continuously going back to the origin of human correlations with nature. A dialogic approach does not reject the importance of self-organizing processes, but tries to compose a sphere of acknowledgeable co-existence with the other to save the whole specter of human physical and mental, existential and creational features. Facing rational or mystical, but still radical, transformation, we get a sense of self-existence and can actively work and challenge ourselves to realize this in every-day life and in communication with the other. (shrink)

It is shown that the nonlocal anomalous effective actions corresponding to the quantum breaking of the conformal symmetry can lead to observable modifications of Einstein’s equations. The fact that Einstein’s general relativity is in perfect agreement with all observations including cosmological or recently observed gravitational waves imposes strong restrictions on the field content of possible extensions of Einstein’s theory: all viable theories should have vanishing conformal anomalies. It is shown that a complete cancellation of conformal anomalies in \ for both (...) the \ invariant and the Euler invariant can only be achieved for N-extended supergravity multiplets with \. (shrink)

This paper introduces three model-theoretic constructions for generalized Epstein semantics: reducts, ultramodels and $\textsf {S}$ -sets. We apply these notions to obtain metatheoretical results. We prove connective inexpressibility by means of a reduct, compactness by an ultramodel and definability theorem which states that a set of generalized Epstein models is definable iff it is closed under ultramodels and $\textsf {S}$ -sets. Furthermore, a corollary concerning definability of a set of models by a single formula is given on the basis of (...) the main theorem and the compactness theorem. We also provide an example of a natural set of generalized Epstein models which is undefinable. Its undefinability is proven by means of an $\textsf {S}$ -set. (shrink)

We present an algebraic proof of the theorem stating that there are continuum many axiomatic extensions of global consequence associated with modal system E that do not admit the local deduction detachment theorem. We also prove that all these logics lack the finite frame property and have exactly three proper axiomatic extensions, each of which admits the local deduction detachment theorem.

This paper introduces the construct of an ultravaluation inspired by the well-known ultraproduct. Basic properties and exemplary applications of this notion are shown: for compactness and definability theorems. We also use ultravaluations to check failure of compactness and undefinability.

We use an algebraic argument to prove that there are exactly two premaximal extensions of \’s consequence. We also show that one of these extensions is the minimal structurally complete extension of the unique maximal paraconsistent extension of \. Precisely, we show that there are exactly two covers of the variety of Boolean algebras in the lattice of quasivarieties of Sugihara algebras and that there is a unique minimal paraconsistent quasivariety in that lattice. We also obtain a corollary stating that (...) the set of paraconsistent extensions of \ forms a complete sublattice of the lattice of all \’s extensions. (shrink)

Die 1993 verstorbene Lodzer Germanistin gehörte zu den besten Kennern der deutschsprachigen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Insbesondere ihre Studien zur österreichischen Literatur, u.a. das SchalTen von Lranz Theodor Csokor, haben ihr einen wissenschaftlichen Namen gesichert. Eine dem Aufsatz beigefügte Publikationsliste veranschaulicht die Fülle ihrer vertvollen Bücher und Aufsätze.

Der Beitrag besteht aus zwei Teilen: der erste ist eine kurze Einführung in das Leben und das Werk der bedeutenden österreichischen Mittlerin der polnischen Literatur. Der zweite ist ein Interview mit Prof. Dr. Gerda Leber-Hagenau, die - geboren in Lodz am 11. Dezember 1918 - sich an ihre Heimatstadt und deren Eigentüm1ichkeiten erinnert. Gerda Leber-Hagenau nimmt auch Stellung zur Aufnahme der polnischen Literatur in Österreich.

Der Aufsatz analysiert zwei Prosawerke von Gerhart Hauptmann, die in seinem gesamten Schaffen eine wichtige Position einnehmen und ein Schlüssel zugleich für seine Biographie sind. In der ausgewählten Bibliographie werden wichtigste polnische einschlägige Bücher und Studien angegeben.

Sixteen years ago, Prahalad and Hart introduced the possibility of both profitably serving the poor and alleviating poverty. This first iteration of the Bottom/Base of the Pyramid approach focused on selling to the poor. In 2008, after ethical criticisms leveled at it, the field moved to BoP 2.0, instead emphasizing business co-venturing. Since 2015, we have witnessed some calls for a new iteration, with the focus broadening to a more sustainable development approach to poverty alleviation. In this paper, we seek (...) to answer the question: How has the BoP approach evolved over the past 16 years, and has it delivered on its early promise? We conducted a systematic review of 276 papers published in journals in this period, utilizing a rigorous correspondence analysis method to map key trends, and then further examined the 22 empirical studies conducted on the BoP approach. Our results suggest that the field has evolved, passing through a number of trends and coming full circle—with our analysis pointing to more recent BoP literature emphasizing similar themes to those espoused in the initial BoP iteration, rather than reflecting the principles espoused in either BoP 2.0 or BoP 3.0. Our analysis also points to a lack of clear evidence that the BoP concept has delivered on its promise either to businesses or to BoP participants. (shrink)

This article examines the question: How do local organizations deal with competing temporal dynamics when building and implementing base/bottom of the pyramid initiatives? Time has been neglected in the BoP literature to date, yet, addressing poverty in a developing country requires a complex perspective of time. An analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews with locally based organizations implementing BoP initiatives in the Philippines revealed that the organizations had an ambitemporal perspective. In particular, we discover that they harmonize multiple temporal pacers by (...) making strategic decisions about the best mechanism of entrainment to utilize to move their community and any stakeholders to a long-term temporal horizon. We find that organizations manage this process by generating what we term a “third time” via a process of push-and-pull entrainment between the communities, the business, and the different temporal pacers. This article develops a conceptual framework for helping organizations to harmonize competing temporal dynamics to generate a bespoke “third time” for each community they work with. (shrink)

The article explores the concept of infodemics during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the propagation of false or inaccurate information proliferating worldwide throughout the SARS-CoV-2 health crisis. We provide an overview of disinformation, misinformation and malinformation and discuss the notion of “fake news”, and highlight the threats these phenomena bear for health policies and national and international security. We discuss the mis-/disinformation as a significant challenge to the public health, intelligence, and policymaking communities and highlight the necessity to design measures (...) enabling the prevention, interdiction, and mitigation of such threats. We then present an overview of selected opportunities for applying technology to study and combat disinformation, outlining several approaches currently being used to understand, describe, and model the phenomena of misinformation and disinformation. We focus specifically on complex networks, machine learning, data- and text-mining methods in misinformation detection, sentiment analysis, and agent-based models of misinformation spreading and the detection of misinformation sources in the network. We conclude with the set of recommendations supporting the World Health Organization’s initiative on infodemiology. We support the implementation of integrated preventive procedures and internationalization of infodemic management. We also endorse the application of the cross-disciplinary methodology of Crime Science discipline, supplemented by Big Data analysis and related information technologies to prevent, disrupt, and detect mis- and disinformation efficiently. (shrink)

IntroductionSimilarities in morphology, physiological function, and neurophysiological findings between median and ulnar nerves are not unequivocal. Our previous study confirmed differences in motor fiber parameters between these nerves in healthy persons. We made an attempt to assess and compare the physiological parameters of different sensation modalities in median and ulnar nerves.MethodsThe study was performed in 31 healthy, right-handed volunteers: 17 women, 14 men, mean age 44.8 ± 15.5 years. Standard sensory conduction tests in the median and ulnar nerves were performed (...) together with the estimation of vibratory, temperature, and warm- and cold-induced pain thresholds in the C7 and C8 dermatomes on the palm, using quantitative sensory testing.ResultsThere were no statistically significant differences in the standard sensory conduction test in the median and ulnar nerves across the whole group: between right and left hands, and between women and men. We revealed differences in the temperature and pain thresholds between these nerves, mainly in low temperature perception. There were no differences in estimated thresholds between sides or in female and male groups. The vibratory limits did not differ significantly between nerves, and subgroups.ConclusionThe study confirmed the differences in the physiological sensory perception between the median and ulnar nerves. The median nerve is more sensitive to temperature stimulation than the ulnar nerve, but simultaneously less sensitive to pain-inducing temperature stimuli. These findings should be considered during the examination of hand nerve pathology. (shrink)

Several authors have investigated the question of whether canonical logic-based accounts of belief revision, and especially the theory of AGM revision operators, are compatible with the dynamics of Bayesian conditioning. Here we show that Leitgeb's stability rule for acceptance, which has been offered as a possible solution to the Lottery paradox, allows to bridge AGM revision and Bayesian update: using the stability rule, we prove that AGM revision operators emerge from Bayesian conditioning by an application of the principle of maximum (...) entropy. In situations of information loss, or whenever the agent relies on a qualitative description of her information state - such as a plausibility ranking over hypotheses, or a belief set - the dynamics of AGM belief revision are compatible with Bayesian conditioning; indeed, through the maximum entropy principle, conditioning naturally generated AGM revision operators. This mitigates an impossibility theorem of Lin and Kelly for tracking Bayesian conditioning with AGM revision, and suggests an approach to the compatibility problem that highlights the information loss incurred by acceptance rules in passing from probabilistic to qualitative representations of beliefs. (shrink)

"And I Quote": Direct and Indirect Point-of-View Switches in Clusivity-Oriented Discourse The aim of this paper is to approach the notion of speech/thought representation from a pragma-cognitive perspective. The use of direct and indirect representation in political discourse allows the speaker to construe the speech situation from a perspective other than her/his own. The speaker normally occupies the focal position in relation to other discourse entities in a particular speech situation, and thus presents discourse events from her/his point of view, (...) however, on some occasions she/he allows other "voices." It is the distinction between the Speaker and the Sayer that provides means of capturing the phenomenon in question: the Speaker construes the actual/present speech situation presenting events from her/his own perspective, while in the represented speech situation the Speaker represents the words of the Sayer, i.e. the original speaker of the represented speech situation. Assuming the existence of the Sayer's consciousness separate from the Speaker's consciousness, it is clear that the Sayer's perspective is independent of the Speaker's perspective. The Speaker may employ a series of shifts occurring in spatio-temporal and axiological dimensions of the actual speech situation leading either to a full switch or to an apparent switch to the Sayer's perspective. In both cases, the distance between the Speaker and a particular discourse entity may be reduced or increased to indicate its inclusionary or exclusionary status, as well as to include the entity in or exclude it from the "us" group. The data analysed and samples used for illustrative purposes have been selected from a corpus of 35 speeches delivered by Barack Obama between 10th February 2007, i.e. the announcement of his candidacy for the presidency of the USA, and 4th November 2008, i.e. the day of the election. The transcripts of the speeches have been downloaded from the official Obama's website "Organizing for America". (shrink)

With over three billion people currently living below the poverty line, finding better ways to lift people out of poverty is a concern of scholars from a range of disciplines. Within Management Studies, the focus is on developing market-based solutions to poverty alleviation through Bottom/Base-of-the-Pyramid initiatives. To date, these have enjoyed limited success, sometimes even exacerbating the problems they attempt to solve. As a result, there is a growing academic and practitioner push for a third iteration—BoP 3.0—that moves closer to (...) a sustainable development model of poverty alleviation. Through a grounded theory study of 21 Philippines-based organizations implementing poverty alleviation initiatives at the community level, this paper seeks to add to the existing suite of tools and guidance in the BoP field. It does so by questioning how these organizations approach the development and implementation of market-based approaches to poverty alleviation. Our results suggest that these organizations adopt a more community-centric approach, focusing on the creation of a self-reliant community before all else. We find this to be the result of a deeper understanding of the drivers of poverty in the communities they work with. Through the extrapolation of key themes and issues in our data, we propose a new conceptual model for building BoP 3.0 initiatives. This model consists of three intertwined theoretical dimensions: understanding issues as matters of concern; identifying limitations; and navigating time. These elements are linked by three active phases that allowed the organizations to move from one dimension to the next: sensemaking; entrainment; and investment. (shrink)

With over three billion people currently living below the poverty line, finding better ways to lift people out of poverty is a concern of scholars from a range of disciplines. Within Management Studies, the focus is on developing market-based solutions to poverty alleviation through Bottom/Base-of-the-Pyramid initiatives. To date, these have enjoyed limited success, sometimes even exacerbating the problems they attempt to solve. As a result, there is a growing academic and practitioner push for a third iteration—BoP 3.0—that moves closer to (...) a sustainable development model of poverty alleviation. Through a grounded theory study of 21 Philippines-based organizations implementing poverty alleviation initiatives at the community level, this paper seeks to add to the existing suite of tools and guidance in the BoP field. It does so by questioning how these organizations approach the development and implementation of market-based approaches to poverty alleviation. Our results suggest that these organizations adopt a more community-centric approach, focusing on the creation of a self-reliant community before all else. We find this to be the result of a deeper understanding of the drivers of poverty in the communities they work with. Through the extrapolation of key themes and issues in our data, we propose a new conceptual model for building BoP 3.0 initiatives. This model consists of three intertwined theoretical dimensions: understanding issues as matters of concern; identifying limitations; and navigating time. These elements are linked by three active phases that allowed the organizations to move from one dimension to the next: sensemaking; entrainment; and investment. (shrink)

The introspective devices framework proposed by Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) offers an attractive conceptual tool for evaluating and developing accounts of introspection. However, the framework assumes that different views about the nature of introspection can be easily evaluated against a set of common criteria. In this paper, I set out to test this assumption by analysing two formal models of introspection using the introspective device framework. The question I aim to answer is not only whether models developed outside of (...) philosophy can be successfully evaluated against the set of conceptual criteria proposed by Kammerer and Frankish, but also whether this kind of evaluation can reveal some limitations inherent to the framework. (shrink)

THE CONGRESS The infrastructure of the colonial territories obeyed the logic of economic exploitation, territorial domain and commercial dynamics among others that left deep marks in the constructed landscape. The rationales applied to the decisions behind the construction of infrastructures varied according to the historical period, the political model of colonial administration and the international conjuncture. This congress seeks to bring to the knowledge of the scientific community the dynamics of occupation and transformation of colonial territory, especially related to and (...) resulting from the war effort, which involved not only the agency of architecture and urbanism but also of military apparatus, and its repercussions in the same territories as independent countries. Colonial infrastructures will be addressed to question, for instance, how housing production during armed conflict has conditioned future spatial models of the independent countries or what options taken by colonial administrations were abandoned or otherwise strengthened after independence. The congress is part of the ongoing research project entitled “ARCHWAR - Dominance and massviolence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars. The Portuguese case (GuineaBissau, Angola, Mozambique): colonial documentation and post independence critical assessment” funded by ‘Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia’ (FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology), ref. PTDC/ART-DAQ/0592/2020, in which Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) is a partner. The general goal of the congress is to debate on the repercussions of the decisions taken by the colonial states in the area of territorial infrastructures – in particular through the disciplines of architecture and urbanism – in post-independence spatial and urban models and the formation of independent countries with a colonial past. (shrink)

The collection presents a variety of promising new directions in Royce scholarship from an international group of scholars, including historical reinterpretations, explorations of Royce's ethics of loyalty and religious philosophy, and contemporary applications of his ideas in psychology, the problem of reference, neo-pragmatism, and literary aesthetics.

Introduction -- Philosophy in the Middle Ages -- Polish philosophy in the Renaissance and Baroque -- Polish philosophy in the Enlightenment -- Polish philosophy of the Romantic era -- The philosophy of Polish positivism -- Polish philosophy in the age of modernism --Polish philosophy in the interwar period -- Polish philosophy after World War II -- A selection of post-war general literature on the subject -- Conclusion.

Porter and Kramer :78–92, 2006; Harv Bus Rev 89, 62–77, 2011) introduced ‘shared value’ as a ‘new conception of capitalism,’ claiming it is a powerful driver of economic growth and reconciliation between business and society. The idea has generated strong interest in business and academia; however, its theoretical precepts have not been rigorously assessed. In this paper, we provide a systematic and thorough analysis of shared value, focusing on its ontological and epistemological properties. Our review highlights that ‘shared value’ has (...) spread into the language of multiple disciplines, but that its current conceptualization is vague, and it presents important discrepancies in the way it is defined and operationalized, such that it is more of a buzzword than a substantive concept. It also overlaps with many other concepts and lacks empirical grounding. We offer recommendations for defining and measuring the concept, take a step toward disentangling it from related concepts, and identify relevant theories and research methods that would facilitate extending the knowledge frontier on shared value. (shrink)

The proposal that probabilistic inference and unconscious hypothesis testing are central to information processing in the brain has been steadily gaining ground in cognitive neuroscience and associated fields. One popular version of this proposal is the new theoretical framework of predictive processing or prediction error minimization, which couples unconscious hypothesis testing with the idea of ‘active inference’ and claims to offer a unified account of perception and action. Here we will consider one outstanding issue that still looms large at the (...) core of the PEM framework: the lack of a clear criterion for distinguishing conscious states from unconscious ones. In order to fulfill the promise of becoming a unifying framework for describing and modeling cognition, PEM needs to be able to differentiate between conscious and unconscious mental states or processes. We will argue that one currently popular view, that the contents of conscious experience are determined by the ‘winning hypothesis’, falls short of fully accounting for conscious experience. It ignores the possibility that some states of a system can control that system’s behavior even though they are apparently not conscious. What follows from this is that the ‘winning hypothesis’ view does not provide a complete account of the difference between conscious and unconscious states in the probabilistic brain. We show how this problem for the received view can be resolved by augmenting PEM with Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness. This move is warranted by the similar roles that attention and internal competition play in both the PEM framework and the multiple drafts model. (shrink)

In this article, we address the case of self-tracking as a practice in which two meaningful backgrounds play an important role as the spatial dimension of human practices. Using a phenomenological approach, we show how quantification multiplies backgrounds, while at the same time generating data about the user. As a result, we can no longer speak of a unified background of human activity, but of multiple dimensions of this background, which, additionally, is perceived as having no pivotal role in the (...) process, often being hidden, situated beyond human consciousness, or taken for granted. Consequently, the phenomenological experience of the background turns into a hermeneutic practice focused on the interpretation of representations and descriptions. By adopting a phenomenological approach, we show the problems and limitations of quantification of human activities occurring in self-tracking and the theoretical problems associated with the scheme of human-technology relations. (shrink)

The idea of social justice belongs to a narrow group of philosophical concepts which have been frequently and eagerly discussed by moderns. Many different authors, not only philosophers, have recognized this idea as being crucial to any social approach - others have applied it with considerable enthusiasm to their own discourses on the social order. To mention Karl Marks and Frederic Engels is enough. Unfortunately, professional philosophical works dedicated to the idea of social justice have been scarce. It is so (...) not only because the main issue of humanistic production on social justice up to now belongs mostly to writers, columnists or even politicians rather than to systematic thinkers, but also because the question itself is wide, complicated and laden with problems of application. The idea of social justice seems even to be somehow ideologically biased. Prof. Stanisław Kowalczyk, a fertile scholar of the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland, presents in his recent book the past and the present of the idea of social justice, doing so with good methodology and without ideological prejudices. (shrink)

The idea of social justice belongs to a narrow group of philosophical concepts which have been frequently and eagerly discussed by moderns. Many different authors, not only philosophers, have recognized this idea as being crucial to any social approach - others have applied it with considerable enthusiasm to their own discourses on the social order. To mention Karl Marks and Frederic Engels is enough. Unfortunately, professional philosophical works dedicated to the idea of social justice have been scarce. It is so (...) not only because the main issue of humanistic production on social justice up to now belongs mostly to writers, columnists or even politicians rather than to systematic thinkers, but also because the question itself is wide, complicated and laden with problems of application. The idea of social justice seems even to be somehow ideologically biased. Prof. Stanisław Kowalczyk, a fertile scholar of the Catholic University in Lublin, Poland, presents in his recent book the past and the present of the idea of social justice, doing so with good methodology and without ideological prejudices. (shrink)