All the authors who have contributed to Looking Back to See the Future have taken up the challenge to inter-disciplinarily investigate the ambiguous concepts of sins, vices and virtues. Their illuminating chapters test the definitions and applications of these religio-cultural categories in the contexts of the distant past as well as our contemporary, globalised, consumerist present; but they all do it for the sake of catching a glimpse of their and our future. By looking into religious and philosophical treatises, paraliterary (...) and literary texts as well as everyday practices, the authors prove that the interpretations of what constitutes sin, vice and virtue are becoming more and more difficult in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, due to the development of mechanical reproduction and press, photomontage became a popular means of communication – popular and diverse in its nature and methods of exploitation. It is one of the cultural phenomena related to the change of rhythm of life and a sense of its increased pace, and an impression of fragmentation of reality. This article questions the role of photomontage in such an experience. The said role is complex: sometimes photomontage allows for expression (...) of that experience, and sometimes it is meant to evoke it, in the spirit of modernity; it is both a tool of agitation and critique. In order to answer this question I shall assume the approach of Walter Benjamin, who diagnoses the crisis of experience and the loss of storytelling skills – and describes the potential of photography. This potential is differently approached by artists and scholars who point out contradictory purposes and results of using photomontage. Referring to various works of art shall make it possible to define the tensions characteristic of photomontage. Due to its plasticity and the ambiguity of a photograph, and the potential for contextualization and construction, photomontage can function in a hard to understand, rapidly changing world and address the fragmentation of experience. (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)

The main aim of the paper was to draw attention to Wacław Sierpiński as not only a great mathematician but also a philosopher. We undertook the attempt of reconstruction of Sierpiński’s philosophy. To aim this goal we mainly based ourselves on Sierpiński’s habilitation lecture entitled _The concept of correspondence in mathematics_. The complementation of Sierpiński’s philosophical views were conclusions from his mathematical achievements, his scheme of research on The Axiom of Choice, and his attitude to this axiom.

Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen Versuch dar, Entstehung und Funktionsweise des sozialistischen Realismus in jeweils spezifischen politischen und kulturellen Kontexten zu analysieren und zu beschreiben. Eine auf den Vergleich von Prozessen und Mechanismen ästhetischer Kanonbildung in der DDR und in Polen gerichtete Perspektive erlaubt nicht nur, die Dynamik von Handlungen und Vorgängen, die sich auf die offizielle Literatur- und Kunstdoktrin bezogen, in ihrer Gleichzeitigkeit und Interferenz zu erfassen. Indem sie den "sozialistischen Realismus" als ein Normierungssystem betrachtet, dessen Beschreibungen den Anspruch (...) der politischen Eliten auf die Regulierung aller gesellschaftlichen Bereiche sichtbar macht, versucht sie zugleich, den Vermittlungszusammenhang von gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung, Kulturpolitik und literarischem resp. literaturbezogenen Handeln aufzuzeigen. (shrink)

In the first third of the Theatetus, Socrates develops a Protagorean-Heraclitean account of Theatetus' thesis that knowledge is perception. It is natural to think that Plato's presentation of the views reveals that the theories of Theaetetus, Protagoras and Heraclitus are linked by implication . I show that this position does not take sufficient account of the explicatory relations between the concepts of the theories. According proper space to explication not only allows one to be clearer about the structure of the (...) transitions but clarifies many of the puzzles surrounding that part of the dialogue. (shrink)

This book is about beliefs, language, communication and cognition. It deals with the fundamental issue of the interpretation of the speaker's utterance expressing a belief and reporting on beliefs of other people in the form of oratio obliqua. The main aim of the book is to present a new account of the problem of interpreting utterances expressing beliefs and belief reports in terms of an approach called Default Semantics.

The paper has two goals. First, I reconstruct Nowak's model of provincialism. Second, I argue that there is no room in this model for an intellectual superpower. An intellectual superpower is not simply a paradigm that is buttressed by economic, political, and social resources. Rather it is a network of paradigms that recognize one another as such. In so doing, they create a new quality on the scientific arena that surpasses all single paradigms.

This book is about meaning - not the meaning of certain concepts such as the meaning of life or the meaning of freedom but about what it means for linguistic expressions to mean something. It is also a book about meaning for humans. The qualification 'human meaning' is not yet common in linguistics book titles but it is increasingly important to add it. We are already experiencing fundamental differences in how, and what kind of, meaning is approached in computational linguistics (...) and computer science in general on the one hand, and in philosophy of language or sociopragmatics on the other. (shrink)