The study tested how the use of positive- (e.g. beautiful) and negative-valenced (e.g. horrible) words in natural language and its change in time affects the severity of depression and anxiety symptoms among depressed and non-depressed individuals. This longitudinal mixed methods study (N = 40 participants, n = 1440 narratives) with three measurements within a year showed that at the between-person level the use of negative-valenced words was strongly associated with the increase in anxiety and depression symptoms over time while the (...) use of positive-valenced words was slightly associated with the decrease in anxiety and depression symptom. These effects were not supported for within-person level (i.e. changes in word usage). No significant differences were observed in the effects between depressed and non-depressed groups. Summing up, the overall use of positive- and negative-valenced words (particularly negative-valenced words) had a stronger effect on the severity of psychopathological symptoms than their change over time. The results were discussed in the context of natural language processing and its application in diagnosing depression and anxiety symptoms. (shrink)

Epistemicism associates vagueness with ignorance produced by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions in our language resulting from small changes in usage. The recent literature (Caie 2012; Magidor 2018; Yli-Vakkuri 2016) points to a missing piece in the epistemicist theory of vagueness, namely a clear account of the semantics of the definiteness operator Δ. The fundamentals of the epistemicist theory are well understood. However, the technical work of defining the definiteness operator has proven difficult. There are several desiderata that we (...) would like Δ to satisfy. For instance, we would like the epistemicist notion of ‘definiteness’ to interact well with modal operators and validate intuitive principles like ‘necessarily, if φ is definitely true, then φ is true’. Providing an account that would meet all such desiderata has eluded the epistemicists so far. In this paper, I present a novel version of a multidimensional model inspired by the work of Robert Stalnaker and David Kaplan. Using this model, I provide an account of epistemicist definiteness that meets our desiderata. (shrink)

The epistemicist theory aims to explain ignorance due to vagueness by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions across close possible worlds resulting from shiftiness in usage. This explanation is challenged by the Omniscient Speaker Puzzle (Sennet in Philos Stud 161(2):273–285, 2012). Suppose that an omniscient speaker, Barney, who knows all the facts about usage and how these facts determine the intensions of expressions, cooks up a scheme to stabilise the intension of a normally semantically plastic term like ‘rich’. It seems (...) that ‘rich’ would display all the phenomena associated with vagueness without being semantically plastic, thus making the epistemicist explanation of ignorance due to vagueness insufficient. In this paper, I present a few choice points for epistemicism that arise as a result of the puzzle. (shrink)

We investigate the semantics of historical counterfactuals in indeterministic contexts. We claim that "plain" and "necessitated" counterfactuals differ in meaning. To substantiate this claim, we propose a new semantic treatment of historical counterfactuals in the Branching Time framework. We supplement our semantics with supervaluationist postsemantics, thanks to which we can explain away the intuitions which seem to talk in favor of the identification of "would" with "would necessarily".

The purpose of the paper is to rethink the role of actuality in the branching model of possibilities. We investigate the idea that the model should be enriched with an additional factor—the so-called Thin Red Line—which is supposed to represent the single possible course of events that gets actualized in time. We believe that this idea was often misconceived which prompted some unfortunate reactions. On the one hand, it suggested problematic semantic models of future tense and and on the other, (...) it provoked questionable lines of criticism. We reassess the debate and point to potential pitfalls, focusing on the semantic dimension of the Thin Red Line theory. Our agenda transcends the semantics, however. We conclude that semantic considerations do not threaten the Thin Red Line theory and that the proper debate should be carried in the domain of metaphysics. (shrink)

There is a long-standing disagreement among Branching-Time theorists. Even though they all believe that the branching representation accurately grasps the idea that the future, contrary to the past, is open, they argue whether this representation is compatible with the claim that one among many possible futures is distinguished—the single future that will come to be. This disagreement is paralleled in an argument about the bivalence of future contingents. The single, privileged future is often called the Thin Red Line. I reconstruct (...) the history of the arguments for and against this idea. Then, I propose my own version of the Thin Red Line theory which is immune to the major objections found in the literature. I argue that the semantic disagreement is grounded in distinct metaphysical presuppositions. My solution is expressed in a conceptual framework proposed by John MacFarlane, who distinguishes semantics from postsemantics. I extend his distinction and introduce a new notion of presemantics to elucidate my idea. (shrink)

a This is an outline of a coherence theory of law. Its basic ideas are: reasonable support and weighing of reasons. All the rest is commentary.a (TM) These words at the beginning of the preface of this book perfectly indicate what On Law and Reason is about. It is a theory about the nature of the law which emphasises the role of reason in the law and which refuses to limit the role of reason to the application of deductive logic. (...) In 1989, when the first edition of On Law and Reason appeared, this book was ground breaking for several reasons. It provided a rationalistic theory of the law in the language of analytic philosophy and based on a thorough understanding of the results, including technical ones, of analytic philosophy. That was not an obvious combination at the time of the booka (TM)s first appearance and still is not. The result is an analytical rigor that is usually associated with positivist theories of the law, combined with a philosophical position that is not natural law in a strict sense, but which shares with it the emphasis on the role of reason in determining what the law is. If only for this rare combination, On Law and Reason still deserves careful study. On Law and Reason also foreshadowed and influenced a development in the field of Legal Logic that would take place in the nineties of the 20th century, namely the development of non-monotonic (a defeasiblea (TM)) logics for the analysis of legal reasoning. In the new Introduction to this second edition, this aspect is explored in some more detail. (shrink)

The thin red line ( TRL ) is a theory about the semantics of future-contingents. The central idea is that there is such a thing as the ‘actual future’, even in the presence of indeterminism. It is inspired by a famous solution to the problem of divine foreknowledge associated with William of Ockham, in which the freedom of agents is argued to be compatible with God’s omniscience. In the modern branching time setting, the theory of the TRL is widely regarded (...) to suffer from several fundamental problems. In this paper we propose several new TRL semantics, each with differing degrees of success. This leads up to our final semantics, which is a cross between the TRL and supervaluationism. We discuss the notions of truth, validity and semantic consequence which result from our final semantics, and demonstrate some of its pleasing results. This account, we believe, answers the main objection in the literature, and thus places the TRL on the same level as any other competing semantics for future contingents. (shrink)

Procrastination as putting off until tomorrow what one had intended to do today is well-known tendency in everyday life. In an attempt to understand the character of procrastination in different life-domains, a large body of research has been accumulated over the last decades. This article was aimed to evaluate a specific decisional procrastination of school-to-work transition that is treated as maturity postponement. Two studies are reported examining SWT procrastination defined as career indecision among Polish students graduating universities. In Study 1, (...) attitudinal and identity statuses were analyzed as correlates of career procrastination. A path analysis conducted for the model, which was aimed to explain the influence of career self-efficacy and occupational commitment on career indecision, revealed its very good fitness. Those two independent variables explain 10% of career indecision variance. Stepwise multiple regression analyses conducted to ascertain relationship of five identity statuses to procrastination measure showed that Commitment Making and Ruminative Exploration are strongest predictor variables. In study 2, the stepwise multiple regression analyses conducted to ascertain the independent relationship of each of Big Five personality factor revealed that Neuroticism and Extraversion accounts of the most of explained variance of school-to-work transition procrastination. (shrink)

In the presented article, I have analyzed the famous Saul Kripke statement that some a priori truths are contingent. I show, that despite Kripke’s thesis, in the historical understanding of contingency, the notions of contingency and apriority are in deep conflict with each other. In this understanding of contingency, the past, which can be known a priori, is not contingent, and the future, which is contingent, has difficulty acquiring a priori knowledge. Having stated Kripke’s thesis more precisely, I propose three (...) means in order to defend it in the historical understanding of possibility: by introducing the notion of “factual” future, by replacing the notion of apriority with the notion of apriority-in-the-future; by replacing the notion of apriority with the notion of historical apriority, and the notion of contingency with the notion of once-apriority. In the annex of the article, I present the formal analysis of the problem that I have introduced and three solutions which I have proposed in the language of temporal-modal logic of predicates for models of indeterministic time. (shrink)

W artykule poddaję analizie słynne twierdzenie Saula Kripkego, że niektóre prawdy a priori są przygodne. Pokazuję, że wbrew tezie Kripkego, przy historycznym rozumieniu przygodności, pojęcia przygodności i aprioryczności stoją ze sobą w głębokim konflikcie. Przy tym rozumieniu przygodności przeszłość, którą można poznać a priori, nie jest przygodna, a o przyszłości, która jest przygodna, trudno zdobyć wiedzę a priori. Doprecyzowawszy tezę Kripkego, proponuję trzy sposoby jej obrony w kontekście historycznego rozumienia możliwości: przez wprowadzenie pojęcia “faktycznej” przyszłości, przez zastąpienie pojęcia aprioryczności pojęciem (...) aprioryczności-wprzyszłości; przez zastąpienie pojęcia aprioryczności pojęciem historycznej aprioryczności, a pojęcia przygodności pojęciem niegdyś-przygodności. W aneksie do artykułu przedstawiam formalną analizę postawionego przeze mnie problemu oraz trzech zaproponowanych przeze mnie rozwiązań w języku temporalno-modalnej logiki predykatów dla modeli indeterministycznego czasu. (shrink)

It is argued that the assignment of truth values to future contingents is threatened not by a tensed metaphysics but by a temporally “local” notion of truth, i.e., by the assumption that whatever is true at a given time needs to be grounded in what exists at that time. If this assumption is accepted, tensed and tenseless metaphysics are equally vulnerable; if it is rejected, both can accommodate true future contingents. This means that semantic decisions are largely independent of metaphysical (...) considerations. The work of Correia and Rosenkranz (2018) is a clear example of how the tensed metaphysics of the growing block can incorporate true future contingents. Two potential worries are discussed in the context of their work: (a) that their grounding strategy overgeneralizes and admits true counterfactual contingents; and (b) that the growing block theory lacks sufficient resources to distinguish the unique possible future course of events that is relevant for the grounding of future contingents. (shrink)

In a recently published paper, Patrick Todd (2016, 'Future contingents are all false! On behalf of a Russellian open future') advocates a novel treatment of future contingents. On his view, all statements concerning the contingent future are false. He motivates his semantic postulates by considerations in philosophy of time and modality, in particular by the claim that there is no actual future. I present a number of highly controversial consequences of Todd’s theory. Inadequacy of his semantics might indirectly serve as (...) an argument against the philosophical view underpinning his proposal. (shrink)

A novel fatalistic argument that combines elements of modal, temporal, and epistemic logic to prove that the fixed past is not compatible with the open future has recently been presented by Lampert (Analysis 82(3):426–434, 2022). By the construction of a countermodel, it is shown that his line of reasoning is defective. However, it is also explained how Lampert’s argument could be corrected if it were supported with an extra premise regarding the temporal status of a priori knowledge. This additional assumption—which (...) was tacit in the original presentation—is shown to be the weakest link, and it is argued that, despite Lampert’s assurance, it can be plausibly rejected in a roughly Ockhamist framework. Thus, it is concluded that the fixed past poses no threat to the open future; however, a few different lessons about knowledge, necessity, and time are drawn from careful reflection on this novel argument. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the main thesis concerning the theory of cognition of the eminent neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert, as presented in his work “Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis”. On the one hand, Rickert finds out that thinking is fated to “clash with nothingness”, thus creating a temptation to reject all rigours and to yield to complete discretion. On the other hand, he attributes axiological status to nothingness which subjects thinking to a particular kind of “ought”. In his (...) view, the cognizing subject is faced with an axiological choice: either discretion or truth and argues that it is worth opting for truth. His argumentation could be an interesting point of reference for contemporary culture gradually moving away from the type of thinking rooted in objectively existing principles. (shrink)

Źródeł koncepcji genocentrycznej należy dopatrywać się w dynamicznym rozwoju XIX- i XX-wiecznej genetyki – zwłaszcza współczesnej syntezy ewolucyjnej oraz genetyki molekularnej. Za ideą tą stoi teza, iż w naukach biologicznych wyjaśnienia odwołujące się do czynników genetycznych są uprzywilejowane; przy tym istotnym założeniem idei genocentrycznej w ramach genetyki molekularnej jest to, że geny oraz kod genetyczny pełnią szczególną rolę w determinowaniu rozwoju organizmu. Chociaż stanowisko genocentryczne jest jednym z fundamentów współczesnej teorii ewolucji, to przez długi czas nie podejmowano na tym gruncie (...) problematyki biologii rozwoju. W związku z tym w ostatnich latach można dostrzec zwrot w stronę nurtu alternatywnego, wykazującego istotność uwzględnienia czynników poza-genetycznych w wyjaśnianiu zjawisk i procesów biologiczno-rozwojowych. Najistotniejsze w tym kontekście są argumenty i idee stojące za odrzuceniem specjalnej roli genów, zwłaszcza na gruncie ewolucyjnej biologii rozwoju; kontekst evo-devo wydaje się interesujący ze względu na ambicję integracji biologii rozwojowej i biologii ewolucyjnej. (shrink)

Wiaczesław Iwanow należy do głównych animatorów tzw. renesansu rosyjskiego. Razem z D. Mereżkowskim, W. Rozanowem i N. Bierdiajewem, a także w pewnej mierze z L. Szestowem, stworzyli oni specyficzny kult Fiodora Dostojewskiego. Ten kult nie ograniczał się do podziwu dla twórczości literackiej rosyjskiego pisarza, ale wyrażał się również w traktowaniu Dostojewskiego jako filozofa, teologa, a może nawet proroka, który dotknął wszystkich najważniejszych kwestii nie tylko rosyjskiej historii, ale także historii świata i to nawet w kontekście eschatologicznym. Jak to określił M. (...) Bierdiajew, Dostojewski „był prawdziwym filozofem, największym filozofem rosyjskim. My już od długiego czasu filozofujemy o rzeczach ostatecznych pod znakiem Dostojewskiego". W. Rozanow stwierdza natomiast, ze F. Dostojewski to „wszechświatowy publicysta o znaczeniu historycznym, którego zainteresowania wychodziły daleko poza codzienność, a w apelach swych zwracał się do wieków i narodów, będąc prorokiem zapatrzonym w wieczność". (shrink)

Wiaczesław Iwanow należy do głównych animatorów tzw. renesansu rosyjskiego. Razem z D. Mereżkowskim, W. Rozanowem i N. Bierdiajewem, a także w pewnej mierze z L. Szestowem, stworzyli oni specyficzny kult Fiodora Dostojewskiego. Ten kult nie ograniczał się do podziwu dla twórczości literackiej rosyjskiego pisarza, ale wyrażał się również w traktowaniu Dostojewskiego jako filozofa, teologa, a może nawet proroka, który dotknął wszystkich najważniejszych kwestii nie tylko rosyjskiej historii, ale także historii świata i to nawet w kontekście eschatologicznym. Jak to określił M. (...) Bierdiajew, Dostojewski „był prawdziwym filozofem, największym filozofem rosyjskim. My już od długiego czasu filozofujemy o rzeczach ostatecznych pod znakiem Dostojewskiego". W. Rozanow stwierdza natomiast, ze F. Dostojewski to „wszechświatowy publicysta o znaczeniu historycznym, którego zainteresowania wychodziły daleko poza codzienność, a w apelach swych zwracał się do wieków i narodów, będąc prorokiem zapatrzonym w wieczność". (shrink)

Artykuł analizuje Polesie F. A. Ossendowskiego w kontekście międzywojennego przekonania o egzotyczności tego regionu, które kumulowało się w metaforze „polskiej dżungli”. Pokazuje, w jaki sposób narracja reportażowa wchłaniała elementy ówczesnych dyskursów przyrodoznawczych, etnograficznych, militarnych oraz państwowych oraz na ile wpłynęły one na strategie reprezentacji literackiej. W jej ramach modernizacja Polesia była przedstawiona jako misja cywilizacyjna, ściśle sprzęgnięta z polonizacją mieszkańców tego obszaru.

We assume—in contrast to many “legal realists”—that law is a part of reality. Law exists because people believe in law, but law is not identical with beliefs. Law supervenes on human beliefs, preferences, actions, dispositions and artefacts. Moreover, the morally binding personal interpretation of the law supervenes on two things together: on the individual's knowledge of legal institutions and on moral obligation. The first supervenes in its turn on mutual beliefs; the second supervenes on motivations and dispositions of the individual, (...) provided that she is morally sensitive and rational. Personal interpretation of law converts into social law, if other persons on the basis of overriding reasons do not contest it. Morally binding social law supervenes on moral motivation that is triggered by institutions that supervene on mutual beliefs. (shrink)

The main stream of legal theory tends to incorporate unwritten principles into the law. Weighing of principles plays a great role in legal argumentation, inter alia in statutory interpretation. A weighing and balancing of principles and other prima facie reasons is a jump. The inference is not conclusive.To deal with defeasibility and weighing, a jurist needs both the belief-revision logic and the nonmonotonic logic. The systems of nonmonotonic logic included in the present volume provide logical tools enabling one to speak (...) precisely about various kinds of rules about rules, dealing with such things as applicability of rules, what is assumed by rules, priority between rules and the burden of proof. Nonmonotonic logic is an example of an extension of the domain of logic. But the more far-reaching the extension is, the greater problems it meets. It seems impossible to make logical reconstruction of the totality of legal argumentation. (shrink)