This paper considers the similarities between Adam Smith's device of the impartial spectator and the use of perspectival devices in common law reasoning. The paper adopts a reading of Smith's device as one involving the exercise of imaginative sympathy by an ordinarily virtuous, and culturally and historically situated, spectator who does not have a stake in the outcome of the scene being evaluated. The point here is to show that the impartial spectator is 1) a device of common, ordinary virtue (...) – both in the sense of being located in a culture at a specific point in time, and in the sense of possessing only moderate, achievable virtues ; and 2) a device that enables a focus on a situation, which requires imaginative work, emotional engagement and careful, particularised description. Having so modelled Smith's device, the paper shows the similarities between it and the use of perspectival devices in common law reasoning, specifically here via the ‘right-thinking member of society' test in defamation law. (shrink)

This paper considers whether, and if so how, the modelling of joint action in social philosophy – principally in the work of Margaret Gilbert and Michael Bratman – might assist in understanding and applying the concept of concerted practices in European competition law. More specifically, the paper focuses on a well-known difficulty in the application of that concept, namely, distinguishing between concerted practice and rational or intelligent adaptation in oligopolistic markets. The paper argues that although Bratman's model of joint action (...) is more psychologically plausible and phenomenologically resonant, its less demanding character also makes it less useful than Gilbert's in our understanding of the legal concept of concerted practice and in dealing with the above difficulty. The paper proceeds in two parts: first, a discussion of the concept of concerted practices in European competition law; and second, a discussion of Gilbert and' Bratman's models of joint action, including a comparative assessment of their ability to provide an evidentiary target and an evidentiary platform for conceited practices. (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)

This chapter outlines an embodied conception of noise. From an enactive and ecological perspective noise is an inevitable complement to the richness of bodily sensitivities and complex actions. The world around us, the universe, is replete, full of inexhaustible texture available to be explored at every scale at which we are capable, or can become capable, of making distinctions. Drawing on work in ecological psychology I suggest that noise is our experience of that encompassing fullness, and can be encountered in (...) a number of different ways depending on the organisation of our bodies and activities at different scales across a given period. While that fullness can be overwhelming, and create challenges for us to distinguish and coordinate effectively with the particular aspects of the world most relevant to our present concerns - noise can be intrusive and disruptive - I argue that there are significant positive aspects to the phenomenon. Noise is an inherent part of the rich messiness of the world as discussed in recent enactive work, which provides both robustness to developmental processes as well as opportunities for action that support adaptive agency. In a noisy, messy world there are always more options available to explore. (shrink)

Enactive and ecological approaches to cognitive science both claim a “mutuality” between agents and their environments – that they have a complementary nature and should be addressed as a single whole system. Despite this apparent agreement, each offers criticisms of the other on precisely this point – enactivists claiming that ecological psychologists over-emphasise the environment, while the complementary criticism, of agent-centred constructivism, is levelled by ecological psychologists at enactivists. In this paper I suggest that underlying the confusion between the two (...) approaches is the complexity of agency, which comes in different forms, at different scales or levels of analysis. Cognitive science has not theorised the relationship between these different forms in a sufficiently disciplined manner, and a task therefore remains of finding a way to map the complex territory of agency. (shrink)

In the article I discuss the conceptual problem of other minds and different approaches to mental concepts. Firstly, I introduce the conceptual problem and argue that solutions proposed by theory-theory and direct perception approach are inadequate. I claim that mental concepts are neither theoretical terms nor observational terms. Then, I consider third option which states that mental concepts are dispositional terms, i.e. they concern particular patterns (stereotypes) of behavior. Finally, I argue that dispositional approach is to some extent coherent with (...) phenomenological account and that phenomenological concept of embodiment can improve this position. (shrink)

In an era of fiscal austerity and dualization of social protection, has organized labor become increasingly split along skill and industry lines? Against recent political science accounts of trade union involvement in social policymaking, this paper argues that, in the specific area of pensions, unions representing high-skilled workers and the core industrial sectors of the economy have paradoxically been led to increase their cooperation with unions representing the less privileged segments of labor, in order to improve coverage of private pensions (...) across the board. These unions’ motivations for doing so and the strategies they have employed have nonetheless differed according to the preexisting institutional design of domestic pension systems. The argument is supported with case studies of British, French, German, and Belgian unions’ involvement in contemporary pension reform. (shrink)

Perceptual modalities have been traditionally considered the product of dedicated biological systems producing information for higher cognitive processing. Psychological and neuropsychological evidence is offered which undermines this point of view and an alternative account of modality from the enactive approach to understanding cognition is suggested. Under this view, a perceptual modality is a stable form of perception which is structured not just by the biological sensitivities of the agent, but by their goals and the set of skills or expertise which (...) they are deploying at a given time. Such a view suggests that there is no such thing as an experience that is purely visual, auditory, or otherwise modal and that our attempts to understand consciousness and the mind must be conducted within a framework that provides an account of embodied, goal-directed adaptive coping with the world. (shrink)

This essay argues that the practical reason approach to the study of social conventions (and social normativity more generally) fails to adequately account for the fluency of social action in environments that we experience as familiar. The practical reason approach, articulated most recently in Andrei Marmor’s Social Conventions: From Language to Law (2009) does help us, though not wholly adequately, to understand how we tend to react to, and experience, unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors, that is, those situations in which (...) a certain practice becomes problematic or is problematized, or where we are obliged to, or moved to, justify or deliberate. The reason why the practical reason approach is not wholly adequate when it comes to understanding unfamiliar situations or unfamiliar behaviors is that it tends to subsume the unfamiliar under the familiar, that is, it tends to negatively evaluate anything that is deemed to be not in accordance with the rules and reasons already familiar to the observer. This excludes the possibility of the observer having to transform himself or herself, and thus change what is familiar to him or her. (shrink)

Dotyczy: przestrzeń, czas, ciało, kognitywistyka, fenomenologia.

The present state of research reveals that basically Fr. J.M. Bochenski (1902-1995) left three versions of the formalizations of St. Thomas Aquinas’ fifth way. The first version comes from the article Die fünf Wege, published in 1989, and the third one, which is unauthorized, from the book Gottes Dasein und Wesen. Logische Studien zur Summa Theologiae I, qq. 2-11, published in Munich in 2003. These works are completed by the second version from two manuscripts of the book: one German (1989) (...) and one Polish (1993).The above mentioned texts have shown the contribution made by Fr. J.M. Bochenski into the realization of the intended application of the tools of contemporary logic in the field of philosophy of God as well as theology. One of the main followers of these ideas in Austria has been Paul Weingartner (born 1931). In 2010 he published God’s Existence? A Logical Commentary on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas, a book which makes direct references to J.M. Bochenski’s works, and like Bochenski’s work it is a logical commentary to certain fragments of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. (shrink)

In this study, we examine differences in cheating behaviors in higher education between two countries, namely the United States and the Czech Republic, which differ in many social, cultural and political aspects. We compare a recent (2011) Czech Republic survey of 291 students to that of 268 students in the US (Klein et al., 2007). For all items surveyed, CR students showed a higher propensity to engage in cheating. Additionally, we found more forms of serious cheating present in the Czech (...) sample. In all cases, the differences between the US and Czech samples were statistically significant. (shrink)

People should be at the centre of attention within knowledge-based economics. The leaders of each enterprise ought to focus on providing the best conditions for their employees’ professional and individual development and treat them with respect in terms of their dignity and needs. In contemporary literature two notions in perceiving people in organisations are noticeable. The first one treats employees as ‘resources’ which have to be properly used or as ‘capital’ that should bring a decent return on investment. The second (...) notion derives a lot from Christian philosophy and sees the human as a person who treats work as a way to realize his calling and thus is able to take responsibility for the decisions made and actions taken. Acting in a constantly changing environment, people have to be flexible and able to take advantage of emerging opportunities and avoid threats. Within this process it is not a matter of being a human ‘being’ but rather becoming, which means that they are incessantly developing their potential. Although it is hard to predict human behaviour, the main task for managers is to lead in a way that will help employees use their full potential for both their own and the company’s benefit. (shrink)

W związku z 30. rocznicą nadania przez Akademię Teologii Katolickiej w Warszawie doktoratu honoris causa J.M. Bocheńskiemu dokonano kwerendy dokumentów, związanych z tym wydarzeniem, obecnie znajdujących się w Archiwum Uniwersytetu Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie. W jej wyniku odnaleziono nagrania audio i zdjęcia z tej uroczystości oraz dokumentację starań Wydziału Filozofii Chrześcijańskiej ATK, mających na celu nadanie tego tytułu o. Bocheńskiemu. Jak się okazało, począwszy od 1981 roku WFCh trzykrotnie ubiegał się o nadanie tego doktoratu i podejmował stosowne uchwały w (...) tej sprawie. Celem artykułu jest prezentacja i omówienie tych archiwaliów w kontekście związków o. Bocheńskiego z ATK oraz ówczesnych realiów społeczno-politycznych i kościelnych. --------------- Zgłoszono: 24/01/2021. Zrecenzowano: 22/03/2021. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 10/05/2021. (shrink)

A number of nonmonotonic reasoning formalisms have been introduced to model the set of beliefs of an agent. These include the extensions of a default logic, the stable models of a general logic program, and the extensions of a truth maintenance system among others. In [13] and [16], the authors introduced nonmonotomic rule systems as a nonlogical generalization of all essential features of such formulisms so that theorems applying to all could be proven once and for all. In this paper, (...) we extend Rieter's normal default theories, which have a number of the nice properties which make them a desirable context for belief revision, to the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Reiter defined a default theory to be normal if all the rules of the default theory satisfied a simple syntatic condition. However, this simple syntatic condition has no obvious analogue in the setting of nonmonotonic rule systems. Nevertheless, an analysis of the proofs of the main results on normal default theories reveals that the proofs do not rely on the particular syntactic form of the rules but rather on the fact that all rules have a certain consistency property. This led us to extend the notion of normal default theories with respect to a general consistency property. This extended notion of normal default theories, which we call Forward Chaining normal , is easily lifted to nonmonotomic rule systems and hence applies to general logic programs and truth maintenance. (shrink)

Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, I believe can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of (...) a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance I believe it is raining shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as I believe it is raining, but it is not raining (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering It is not raining and what is shown by silently uttering I believe it is raining. The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively. (shrink)

Thought experiments are frequently vague and obscure hypothetical scenarios that are difficult to assess. The paper proposes a simple model of thought experiments. In the first part, I introduce two contemporary frameworks for thought experiment analysis: an experimentalist approach that relies on similarities between real and thought experiment, and a reasonist approach focusing on the answers provided by thought experimenting. Further, I articulate a minimalist approach in which thought experiment is considered strictly as doxastic mechanism based on imagination. I introduce (...) the basic analytical tool that allows us to differentiate an experimental core from an attached argumentation. The last section is reserved for discussion. I address several possible questions concerning adequacy of minimalistic definition and analysis. (shrink)

Review Essay of Stephen P. Turner, Explaining the Normative, 2010.

This paper argues that not only does history matter to legal epistemology, but also that understanding legal epistemology can yield a certain understanding of the past. The paper focuses on the common law practice of precedent and argues that there is no set of rules, principles, reasons or material facts that constitute the fixed or foundational content of past decisions, but rather that what is taken by a judge resolving a particular dispute to be the content of past decisions depends (...) on the active and creative construal of relevance engaged in by that judge. Precedents are better thought of as `thick resources with dynamic content'. Such content is constrained by a variety of stabilising practices, but never so constrained as to determine how it can be construed to be relevant. This image of law's past may offer a general view of the past as something with which we can actively and creatively relate in the course of coping with the present. (shrink)

What are the ethical concerns among the growing populations of business people in Central & Eastern Europe, and how might they be dealt with practically in the course of business life? David Murray has been a management consultant since 1979 working primarily with the Hay Group in the area of strategic organisational change. Since founding Maine Consulting Services in 1991 he spends most of his time in the field of business and professional ethics, also holding a Visiting Fellowship at the (...) University of Central Lancashire. He is chairman of the Professional & Technical Board at the (British) Institute of Quality Assurance and a coordinating editor of the quarterly Organisations & People. Marek Kucia is a social researcher operating his own research agency (which organised the Polish part of this exercise) and an academic teaching sociology, and conducting and co‐ordinating Central European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He studied political science, sociology and philosophy at Krakow and studied for his PhD at Oxford. He has also worked for Gallup, London, in opinion and market research. This survey report is based on presentations made in April 1994 to the EBEN Research Centres Conference in Prague, and in June 1994 to the conference on “Ethics in Transition” organised in Gödöllö, Hungary, by the Democracy after Communism Foundation, Budapest. The authors wish to acknowledge the major contribution to this work of Mr Juraj Kusnierik of the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, who co‐ordinated the survey exercise. The project was sponsored by The Ethics Development Initiative, CARE, London; the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, Slovakia; SIS Ltd., Bratislava, Slovakia; and Maine Consulting Services, 16 Acrefield, Blackburn, Lancashire, England BB2 7BJ, to which all correspondence connected with this report should be addressed. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction to a lecture course "Elements of Descriptive Psychology" delivered by Anton Marty in around 1903/04. Marty offered courses on descriptive psychology at regular intervals in the course of his career at the University of Prague. The content of these courses follows closely the ideas of Marty’s teacher Franz Brentano, though with some interesting divergences and extrapolations. The present work is a historical and systematic introduction to an extract from notes taken of Marty’s lecture, with some (...) discussion of the work of Dilthey on similar topics, and of Marty’s influence on Franz Kafka and on the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer. (shrink)