Just War Theory debates discussing the principle of the Moral Equality of Combatants involve the notion of Invincible Ignorance; the claim that warfi ghters are morally excused for participating in an unjust war because of their epistemic limitations. Conditions of military deployment may indeed lead to genuinely insurmountable epistemic limitations. In other cases, these may be overcome. This paper provides a preliminary sketch of heuristics designed to allow a combatant to judge whether or not his war is just. It delineates (...) the sets of relevant facts uncontroversially accessible and inaccessible to contemporary professional soldiers. Relevant facts outside these two sets should by default be treated as inaccessible until proven otherwise. Even such a rudimentary heuristic created in this way demonstrates that practical recommendations of MEC-renouncing Just War Theory are not too challenging to follow and still signifi cantly impact a compliant combatant’s behavior. (shrink)

Efforts to ban Autonomous Weapon Systems were both unsuccessful and controversial. Simultaneously the need to address the detrimental aspects of AWS development and proliferation continues to grow in scope and urgency. The article presents several regulatory solutions capable of addressing the issue while simultaneously respecting the requirements of military necessity and so attracting a broad consensus. Two much stricter solutions – regional AWS bans and adoption of a no first use policy – are also presented as fallback strategies in case (...) achieving AWS’ compliance with the Laws of Armed Conflict proved elusive. Together, the solutions presented form an outline of a flexible regulatory strategy able to adjust to different technological outcomes and providing a sensible compromise to solve the current deadlock on the AWS issue. (shrink)

The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between attitudes toward physical activity and participation in water sports events and to recognize the main motives for involvement in these kinds of events. A written paper–pencil diagnostic survey was conducted among 394 participants in two traditional and two modern sports events on water held in Poland to ascertain whether innovative events are needed in society, and whether they cause an increase in interest in physical activity. The research results showed (...) that modern sports events on water did not have any more power to attract physically inactive people than traditional water events, did not produce a greater desire to lead an active lifestyle, and did not encourage people to more regularly practice water sports. Moreover, modern events, compared to traditional events, were only a one-time experience and the people who completed survey often wanted to return to traditional sports events which provided participants with greater positive emotions than a modern event. In the case of socio-demographical variables, there was no statistically significant relationship between gender and choice of modern or traditional event, but older people were more likely to choose a traditional event than younger people; modern water events were an attractive option primarily for young people under 30 years of age, furthermore, modern events more often attracted people who had completed higher education. However, it turned out that a modern event on water often attracted more people who had had no experience in this sport discipline rather than people who chose traditional water events. In a sense, modern events are therefore effective in promoting water sports in Polish society. We also distinguished five main groups of participants: healthy lifestyle managers, lovers of sports emotions, water sports malcontents, water sports enthusiasts, and neutrals to water sports. Additionally, we looked into gender-related motives for participation in modern and traditional water events: social and health-related motives proved to be more important for women and men who participated in modern water events. The research results presented in the article expand on the current state of knowledge about mass participation in sport, the impact of sporting events on the promotion of physical activity, and show the motivation behind participation in modern and traditional water sporting events. (shrink)

Arguments from human dignity feature prominently in the Lethal Autonomous Weapons moral feasibility debate, even though their exists considerable controversy over their role and soundness and the notion of dignity remains under-defined. Drawing on the work of Dieter Birnbacher, I fix the sub-discourse as referring to the essential value of human persons in general, and to postulated moral rights of combatants not covered within the existing paradigm of the International Humanitarian Law in particular. I then review and critique dignity-based arguments (...) against LAWS: argument from faulty targeting process, argument from objectification, argument from underappreciation of the value of human life and the argument from the absence of mercy. I conclude that the argument from the absence of mercy is the only dignity-based argument that is both valid and irreducible to another class of arguments within the debate, and that it offers insufficient justification for a global ban on LAWS. (shrink)

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection finds application far outside biology, for which it was originally invented. Its consequences for science proved far-going, influencing practically every field from thermodynamics to the humanities. While acting on biological systems, the Darwinian mechanism is a source of progress and the local-scale abandonment of the universe’s general tendency towards chaos. However, observations of changes taking place in selection-exposed organisms show that evolutionary success requires some essential limitations. The application of this (...) reasoning to social evolution may appear thought-provoking: stable evolution requires not only intense selection but also a conservative approach to ideas. (shrink)

In his life and work, Leszek Kołakowski traversed many paths, some more and some less well-known. The main focus here is on Kołakowski’s involvement in what one may call an anthropological variant of philosophy of culture. Anthropological philosophy of culture bases on the following assumptions:1. Human conduct is determined by culture. There is neither humanity without culture nor culture without humans.2. Human conduct is by nature referential, in other words, the factual alone is not enough for humans who tend to (...) reach beyond it in their search for the most elemental and ultimate truths.3. Culture is a dynamic phenomenon and a challenge on the path to self-awareness.4. Axiological sensitivity.5. The culture philosopher is immersed in the culture he studies and, by revealing that which it conceals, is a source of reflection on this culture. All these assumptions lie at the core of the philosophy of Leszek Kołakowski. (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)

Reputation is often seen as central to the coordination of transactions in sharing economy platforms. Participants perform a double role regarding reputation management: while engaging in exchanges with other peers, they build their individual ‘reputation capital’ and simultaneously execute community oversight. In Couchsurfing (CS), a network often cited as paradigmatic of the sharing economy, there is, however, a clear bias for positive references. In the digital economy literature, participants’ friendly behaviour is understood as motivated by self-interest and an incentive to (...) maintain a positive reputation. Social research on reputation in CS attributes the bias to fear of retaliation, but also hints at norms of reciprocity leading travellers to require positive feedback for hospitality. This article analyses the lived experience of reputation management in CS and argues that participants seek to reconcile direct and general reciprocity. It proposes breaking these practices down into boundary-work and creative avoidance and argues these result in insufficient protection of inexperienced participants against problematic members. (shrink)

If a firm provides incentives by promoting those who have performed well in a job, it may transfer them to a job to which they are not well suited and agents are promoted to their levels of incompetence. Tournaments are an alternative to reputation as a means of ensuring that firms reward good performance when performance is unverifiable.

This paper discusses three different contemporary uses of philosophy and literature in non-philosophical and non-literary texts. Most often, both discourses are used as tools, and they are invoked instrumentally in popularizing literature or in teaching. Philosophy and literature can also be treated as a source or starting point for reflection outside its mother field, or even as a cause of various social and political processes. The most interesting usage of both discourses is to refer to them as the symptoms or (...) signs of the times allowing us to make diagnoses about the present. These uses of the two discourses show the similarities between literature and philosophy on a purely pragmatic level that is relevant to their contemporary functioning in a non-specialist sphere. The convergence in this regard is a testimony to the transformation of the position of both discourses in the contemporary humanities involving the loss of their privileged position. At the same time, literature and philosophy in this crisis situation are gaining new areas of influence in public discourse, realizing their cognitive and reflexive potential through their utilitarian use. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate (...) results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

Recent research observed a sensitive window, at about 14 years of age, in the acculturation rates of Chinese immigrants to Canada. Tapping an online sample ofusimmigrants, we tested these relationships in a broader population and explored connections with new potentially causally related variables: formal education, language ability and contact with heritage-culture and mainstream United States individuals, both now and at immigration. While we found that acculturation decreased with age at immigration and increased with years in theus, we did not observe (...) a similar sensitive window. We also present an exploratory path analysis, exposing the relationships in our sample between acculturation and the variables above. The novel relationships documented here can improve theorising about this rich and complex empirical phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper explores the wandering during the Night of Culture, which I consider an essential practice for the people's experience of this event. Looking at this particular form of movement of those participating in this initiative between various event locations also allows us to see the implications of the Night of Culture for urban public spaces. The empirical base of the paper is the visual documentation of the events carried out during the Night of Culture during the 2023 edition. While (...) interpreting the material, I refer to the situationist theory of drift and then reconstruct the structure of the festival's wandering, its rhythm, the type of attention bestowed on the city by the participants, and the form of this ephemeral community. In conclusion, I propose that the atmosphere of places can be used to analyse the city-forming effects of the Night of Culture, to grasp better the specificity of the event and its risks and potentials. (shrink)

Descriptions of bodies within the literature of the enactive approach to cognitive science exhibit an interesting dialectical tension. On the one hand, a body is considered to be a unity which instantiates an identity, forming an intrinsic basis for value. On the other, a living body is in a reciprocally defining relationship with the environment, and is therefore immersed and entangled with, rather than distinct from, its environment. In this paper I examine this tension, and its implications for the enactive (...) approach, particularly the enactive conceptions of life and bodies. Following the lead of others, I argue that enactive cognitive science can benefit from a deeper reading and integration with extant work on the complexity and multiplicity of the living body within feminist philosophy and feminist science studies. (shrink)

We study a class of finite models for the Lambek Calculus with additive conjunction and with and without empty antecedents. The class of models enables us to prove the finite model property for each of the above systems, and for some axiomatic extensions of them. This work strengthens the results of [3] where only product-free fragments of these systems are considered. A characteristic feature of this approach is that we do not rely on cut elimination in opposition to e.g. [5], (...) [9]. (shrink)

The ethical Principle of Proportionality requires combatants not to cause collateral harm excessive in comparison to the anticipated military advantage of an attack. This principle is considered a major (and perhaps insurmountable) obstacle to ethical use of autonomous weapon systems (AWS). This article reviews three possible solutions to the problem of achieving Proportionality compliance in AWS. In doing so, I describe and discuss the three components Proportionality judgments, namely collateral damage estimation, assessment of anticipated military advantage, and judgment of “excessiveness”. (...) Some possible approaches to Proportionality compliance are then presented, such as restricting AWS operations to environments lacking civilian presence, using AWS in targeted strikes in which proportionality judgments are pre-made by human commanders, and a ‘price tag’ approach of pre-assigning acceptable collateral damage values to military hardware in conventional attritional warfare. The article argues that application of these three compliance methods would result in AWS’ achieving acceptable Proportionality compliance levels in many combat environments and scenarios, allowing AWS to perform most key tasks in conventional warfare. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical analysis of the skeptic’s conviction that his doubts about the truth of thought on existence of the world outside the mind are not equivalent to real the doubts about existence of the world alone, but they are only a theoretical and speculative problem of knowledge. The main case of this criticism is based on the Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s philosophy, precisely, on his theory of truth.

This paper is a reflection on the legitimacy of commonly accepted opposition of the notions of “capitalism” and “socialism”. The leading thesis is that although they can be considered as antinomies, their real referents should not be treated analogously. Capitalism, as understood by its very name, emerged in the second half of the 19th century and evolved constantly from this moment, often changing its main features. Socialism, in contrast, was created as a notion opposing the capitalistic reality of the 19th (...) century. Yet it never really existed in this form. The actual economic system, referred to as “socialism”, was in fact a hybrid of capitalism and neo-feudal bureaucracy. (shrink)

This paper differentiates between two readings of Aristotle’s argument that unity and being are not “genē” (UBANG for short). On the first reading – proposed by commentators such as Ackrill, Shields, Loux, and McDaniel – UBANG entails the proposition that there are no features that characterise all beings insofar as they are, referred to by its contemporary proponents, including McDaniel, as ‘ontological pluralism’. On the second reading – proposed here – UBANG does not entail this proposition. The paper argues that (...) only on the second reading does Aristotle’s argument secure its conclusion, that the second reading is, in fact, the correct reading of UBANG, and that anyone who thinks that UBANG succeeds and entails ontological pluralism probably equivocates between two different senses of ‘genos’. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the semantics of the first person pronoun “I” from the perspective of the user/producer distinction. In the first part of the paper, I describe the Simple View and propose three interpretations of its thesis. In the second part, I analyze the notions of use and production of a linguistic token. In the next part, I show that all of the interpretations of SV are sensitive to counterexamples. In the end, I discuss possible answers of the (...) proponents of SV and argue against them. The first aim of this paper is to show that SV is wrong, and the second is to convince the reader that the user/producer distinction is of high importance in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Artykuł oferuje nowe rozwiązanie problemu usytuowania umysłu (situated cognition), polegające na wykazaniu, jak i dlaczego ludzki umysł wydobywa z otoczenia nie informację, lecz wiedzę. Wiedza jest definiowana jako informacja posiadająca dla organizmu określoną wartość. Zaprezentowany został mechanizm, za pomocą którego owa wartość zostaje do bodźca informacyjnego wprowadzona. Usytuowanie – według tej interpretacji – polega na tym, że część poznania procesów człowieka wykonują za niego inni ludzie, mianowicie ci, którzy wytworzyli jego otoczenie poznawcze. Otoczenie poznawcze jest definiowane jako suma wartościowych bodźców (...) informacyjnych. Wiedza wydobyta z otoczenia definiuje różne style poznawcze człowieka, które – z uwagi na zewnętrzne źródło klasyfikacji – nazywane są ekotypami poznawczymi. Wyróżnione zostają cztery ekotypy poznawcze człowieka, na podstawie kształtu ich otoczenia poznawczego (rodzaje ofert ucieleśniających wartościową informację) oraz kompetencji poznawczych niezbędnych do wydobycia wiedzy z otoczenia. (shrink)

The idea of sustainable consumption is discussed as a plausible alternative to consumerism on condition that it has an anthropological and moral underpinning. Contrary to what many people believe, the real dilemma regarding the consumer society is neither ecological, nor technological, but moral. Deplorable side-effects of consumerism, including environmental damage, are due to its extremely reductive vision of the human nature. Selected moral consequences of this false anthropology are presented. Integral human formation is indicated as a major solution to the (...) degenerate anthropology and bogus happiness of the consumer society. (shrink)

Taking the idea of the quality of life as the point of departure, the article shows that the bioethical reflection is of great resonance for the present time. Then, it is marked that bioethics finds itself in a situation of a profound conflict between two dominant models of thought and conduct: the sanctity-of-life-ethics and the quality-of-life-ethics. To choose one of them is an important issue, for it basically means to select a framework of moral values and ethical guidelines according to (...) which we want to build our civilisation in the third century. Finally, the author’s personal point of view is expressed that the sanctity-of-life-ethics is the only one that may allow us to avoid a complete moral disaster and to find a right way towards real happiness. Key words: quality of life, sanctity-of-life-ethics, quality-of-life-ethics, bioethics. (shrink)

Can we see the expressiveness of other people's gestures, hear the intentions in their voice, see the emotions in their posture? Traditional theories of social cognition still say we cannot because intentions and emotions for them are hidden away inside and we do not have direct access to them. Enactive theories still have no idea because they have so far mainly focused on perception of our physical world. We surmise, however, that the latter hold promise since, in trying to understand (...) cognition, enactive theory focuses on the embodied engagements of a cognizer with his world. In this paper, we attempt an answer for the question What is social perception in an enactive account? In enaction, perception is conceived as a skill, crucially involving action, an ability to work successfully within the set of regularities, or contingencies that characterize a given domain. If this is the case, then social perception should be a social skill. Having thus transformed the question of what social perception is into that of what social skill is, we examine the concept of social contingencies and the manner in which social skills structure—both constrain and empower— social interaction. Some of the implications of our account for how social and physical perception differ, the role of embodiment in social interaction and the distinction between our approach and other social contingency theories are also addressed. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe that d’ and ‘d, but I believe that ~d’, where d is a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore (...) the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism. (shrink)