This book deals with correspondence truth. It critically analyses selected known correspondence truth theories and proposes - as an alternative - the symbolic truth conception in which correspondence is a symbolisation and not copying.

This article investigates the rise of the feminine creative voice in the age of modernism through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s fictional and nonfictional writings. Her invaluable insights into the long history of women’s subjugation, as well as the fortunes of her contemporaries, provide a framework for an examination of how women established their position as capable members of society in the changing modern milieu. This essay examines Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, and her polemical essay A Room of One’s (...) Own, with a view to demonstrating modern women’s path to creating their artistic identity. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, I investigate women’s unique way of (re)gaining their confidence and articulating their own voice during the process of self-formation. Following Woolf’s lead, I consider their double status: as both an object of fascination in works of literature and a source of oppression in real life. I also use Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichtes Bewusstsein) to reveal the productive interpretative distance that can help us unravel the complexities of the historical and contingent nature of the development of the female artistic genius. An interrogation of women’s imaginative self-manifestations opens the way to the discovery of crucial truths that pertain to the hermeneutics of female creativity. (shrink)

Recent literature reported that judgments of semantic coherence are influenced by a positive affective response due to increased fluency of processing. The presented paper investigates whether fluency of processing can be modified by affective responses to the coherent stimuli as well as an automaticity of processes involved in semantic coherence judgments. The studies employed the dyads of triads task in which participants are shown two word triads and asked to solve a semantically coherent one or indicate which of the two (...) is semantically coherent. Across two studies in a dualtask paradigm we show that a) attentional resources moderate insight into semantically coherent word triads, whereas b) judgments of semantic coherence judgments are independent of attentional resources. We discuss implications of our findings for how people might form intuitive judgments of semantic coherence. (shrink)

Drawing from an ethics of care, relational approaches to autonomy have recently emerged in bioethics. Unlike individual autonomy with its emphasis on patients’ rights, choice, and self-determination which has been the hallmark of bioethics consistent with the ideology of individualism in neoliberal democracies in Western countries, relational autonomy highlights the relatedness, interdependency, and social embeddedness of patients. By examining the mediating role that male Hospital Liaison Committee members in Germany play in facilitating care that supports Jehovah's Witnesses’ refusal of blood (...) transfusions, this article moves beyond ‘dyadic relations’ and contexts of caregiving. It also contributes to a deeper understanding of care and relational conceptualizations of Witness patients’ autonomy globally. (shrink)

The supple and ever-present search for the possibilities offered by the narrative form in fictional writing corresponds to the use of the narrative as a mode of understanding and explaining our being-in-the-world in philosophy. The intimate liaison between the realm of fictional imagination and that of human everydayness inspires writers to seek ways to tackle issues of temporality, the conflicting character of human drives, and the ultimately unresolvable tension between finitude and infinitude. As a literary and philosophical category, the narrative (...) remains an inexhaustible space for the exploration of the way we understand our lives. I propose a hermeneutic investigation of the interactions between the art of narration and the categories of space, presence/absence, and (be)longingness as evoked in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This article engages Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, and, more specifically, his notions of homelessness and homecoming, to shed light on the inimitable character of Woolf’s artistic representations of the spatial dimension of human existence, reality viewed as both tremulous and solid, as well as of human embodiment and the disparity/closeness between the corporeal and the spiritual. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and (...) depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena. (shrink)

This article argues that sustainability is essentially a contested concept that not only cannot be sufficiently defined in a one-forall blueprint, but requires a new mode of self-actualization of human potential in dialogical, cooperative learning processes. Inherent aporias and their ethical implications are illustrated by an analysis of the mainstream interpretation of the sustainability concept in the context of the relationship between the logic of accumulation and improvement and insatiable human desires as off-springs of a deeper ontological transformation of modernity. (...) A philosophical account of technology and modern sciencewill be introduced in order to investigate overconsumption driven by mimetic desires and the transformative and dialectic dynamics of desire. A contemplative learning model is suggested as a useful basis for a reasonable interpretation of the sustainability concept. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate and reconstruct the philosophical thoughts in Marian Smoluchowski’s papers. He was an outstanding Polish physicist, who lived at the turn of the XIX and XX century. Smoluchowski was particularly interested in theoretical physics. His achievements in this discipline, some even very significant, have caused him to be perceived mainly as a physicist. His work in the theory of fluctuations and kinetic theory of gases, especially in the theory of Brownian motions, is (...) well known to physicists. My attention in this paper is focused on the metascientific problems which dominated his philosophical reflections. His analysis in the fields on philosophy of science ought to be perceived in light of physics. Philosophical reflections were at the margins of science which he practiced – physics was always the background to his deliberations. An important limit to our deliberations was set by concentrating on issues typical of the philosophy of science. In Smoluchowski’s case, however, it is difficult to say that his branch of philosophy is characterized by systematic reflection. It is difficult to classify his reflection in the framework of any given philosophical trend. (shrink)

The job of scientists is to try to distinguish what is true from what is false by means of observation and experiment. That job has been made difficult by some philosophers of science who appear to give academic respectability to relativist, and even postmodernist, postures. This chapter suggests that the contributions of philosophers to causal understanding have been unhelpful. It puts the case for randomised studies as the safest guarantee of the reliability of scientific evidence. It uses the case of (...) hormone replacement therapy to illustrate the importance of randomisation, and the case of processed meat and cancer to illustrate the problems that arise in the absence of randomised tests. Finally, it discusses the opposition to randomisation that has come from some philosophers of science. (shrink)

Advising is an important area of human activity, it helps to clarify own experiences and thoughts, increases self-awareness and competence, leads to well grounded decisions and choices. In modern times advising gained even more importance as it has successfully became a part of a business world. This very practical aspect of advising significantly influences development of technology, management methods and organization of human work, while at the same time it may lead to problems and risks of economical, political or ecological (...) nature. Hence advising should be supported by philosophical consideration and ethical assessment – this is even more so, as advising in it’s theoretical, methodological and ethical foundations is well grounded in philosophy. Main perspectives of reflection on advising are driven by traditional philosophical questions and disputes. Historical research shows that many virtues are of stable properties that last across ages. Thus, drawing on experience of philosophers-advisors from Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Seneca we see that practical philosophy can give support in solving different problems of business advisory and can help in drawing professional code rules of advisor. (shrink)

Powrót do filozofii starożytnej Grecji pozwala przypomnieć etyczny wymiar politycznej aktywności, w którym umiejętność łączenia dobra własnego z dobrem ogółu postrzegano jako świadectwo rozumnej natury człowieka wolnego i odpowiedzialnego zarazem. Republikański ideał życia zostaje przez Arendt skonfrontowany z dominującymi tendencjami politycznymi oraz ekonomicznymi, które rozwinęły się w nowożytnej kulturze europejskiej. Etyczne zdeprecjonowanie sfery publicznej prowadziło do postrzegania jej w kategoriach przymusu i przemocy, stanowiących zagrożenie indywidualnej wolności. Na znaczeniu zyskała natomiast sfera indywidualnej aktywności, związanej zwłaszcza z pracą wytwórczą, zarobkowaniem oraz (...) konsumowaniem. Zwyciężyła idea prywatności, bogactwa, rywalizacji. Narodziło się społeczeństwo masowe, składające się ze zatomizowanych jednostek niezdolnych do wzięcia na siebie odpowiedzialności za wspólnotę polityczną. (shrink)

The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. The topics of (...) specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition <I>at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications. (shrink)

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (shrink)

The issue how to reduce of tax evasion is widely discussed in the literature. A public authority may affect the behavior of taxpayers, not only through economic factors, but also by strengthen fiscal discipline. In this process especially role play such issues as tax morale, tax mentality and perceived tax justice. The purpose of the study was to identify groups of taxpayers with similar attitudes towards taxes and similar tax behaviors. Cluster analysis elicited four types of tax payers: Intrinsic Tax (...) Payer, External Tax Payer, Intrinsic Tax Evader, External Tax Evader. In the study the most common were the first two types of taxpayers. Elicited types correspond with motivational tax postures identified by Braithwaite and Torgler. The conclusions sum up the key issues discussed, policy implications and the limitation of the analysis. (shrink)

The work begins by asking the questions of how contemporary phenomenology is concerned with music, and how phenomenological descriptions of music and musical experiences are helpful in grasping the concreteness of these experiences. I then proceed with minor findings from phenomenological authorities, who seem to somehow need music to explain their phenomenology. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Jean-Luc Nancy and back to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, there are musical findings to be asserted. I propose to look at phenomenological studies of (...) the musical aspects of existence as they appear in various philosophical works bringing together different accounts of music and aesthetics and pointing towards phenomenological study as a methodology for everyday aesthetics. While there are many different areas of music phenomenology such as studies of sound and listening, studies in perception of musical works, in experience of artistic creation, in singing and playing musical instruments, and phenomenology of transcendent or religious horizons of the experience of music, it is most promising—I suggest—to look at phenomenological studies of music from the perspective of everyday happenings and discoveries of musical aspects of life. Thus, I attempt to display the uses of phenomenology in finding musical aspects of everyday existence as well as in describing and illuminating the art of music. A look at Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s most intuitive and promising ideas will be broadened with a perspective from Don Ihde and Arnold Berleant. (shrink)

A theoretical analysis of our contemporary society's relationships to the dead, specifically the dead of Native Americans, as affected by the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Until recently, our contemporary culture has often only dealt with the relationships with the dead on a subconscious and superficial level. With the advent of N AGPRA, we must now explicitly address issues regarding obligations and relations to the dead. For the first time, these issues are institutionalized by federal legislation. (...) Although now written into law, the regulations have yet to be tested, and thus upheld, in federal court. In addition, the parameters of NAGPRA are vague. To minimize conflict we must eliminate vagaries. Clear definitions of how, why and under what circumstances we are (at least legally) obligated to the dead and what do our obligations reflect or say about the dominant culture may be thought of as defining our "death consciousness.". (shrink)