Changing concepts comes with a risk of creating merely verbal disputes. Accounts of topic continuity (such as Herman Cappelen’s) are supposed to solve this problem. As this paper shows, however, no existing solution avoids the danger of mere verbalness. On the contrary, accounts of topic continuity in fact increase the danger of overlooking merely verbal disputes between pre- and post-ameliorators. Ultimately, this paper suggests accepting the danger of mere verbalness resulting from a change in topic as a downside of conceptual (...) engineering. Changing the topic under discussion may be worth the risk, however, in many cases. In fact, this paper proposes that the main goal of conceptual engineering should be seen as changing topics for the better. (shrink)

Autorki, wspierając się metodologią semiotyki, geopoetyki i komparatystyki, analizują toruńską „fikcję topograficzną” w lokalnych trylogiach kryminalnych Piotra Głuchowskiego, Roberta Małeckiego i Marcela Woźniaka, traktowanych w artykule jako element projektu literackiego pod hasłem „mordercze miasta”. W omawianych powieściach przeważają fabuły oparte na modelu śledztwa dziennikarskiego i dominuje styl dziennikarski. Badaczki wskazują, że toruńskie kryminały bazują na „pakcie topograficznym”, któremu towarzyszy „słaby” pakt autobiograficzny; zwracają też uwagę na zabiegi Małeckiego i Woźniaka podsycające poczytność ich utworów, m.in. gry intertekstualne i aluzje, co znajduje (...) odzwierciedlenie w „geopoetyce odbioru” i buduje topograficznie zaangażowaną wspólnotę interpretacyjną. Podkreślają jednak rolę nieco zapomnianej trylogii Głuchowskiego (zwłaszcza pierwszej powieści) w kreowaniu „morderczego Torunia”. Według autorek fikcja Głuchowskiego jest nie tylko najbardziej oryginalna, ale też najbardziej aktualna. Artykuł dowodzi, że kryminalne trylogie miejskie, kreujące narracyjną tożsamość Torunia, zdążyły już wytworzyć odrębną przestrzeń na literackiej mapie polskich „kryminalnych miast”. (shrink)

On a naive view of conceptual engineering, conceptual engineers simply aim at engineering concepts. This picture has recently come under attack. Sarah Sawyer (2018, 2020) and Derek Ball (2020) present two rather different, yet equally unorthodox, accounts of conceptual engineering, which they take to be superior to the naive picture. This paper casts doubts on the superiority of their respective accounts. By elaborating on the explanatory potential of “going meta”, the paper defends the naive view against Sawyer’s and Ball’s rival (...) proposals. (shrink)

Verbal disputes are often seen as closely related to a lack of substantivity. However, a systematic and comprehensive investigation of how verbalness relates to substantivity is still missing. The present paper attempts to close this gap. In addition to offering different conceptions of verbalness, the paper further develops Sider’s (Writing the Book of the World, OUP, Oxford, 2011) notion of substantivity. Ultimately, I argue for a more careful choice of terminology when it comes to assessing a dispute as “(merely) verbal” (...) or “nonsubstantive”. While the paper shows that there is no strict logical relation between mere verbalness and nonsubstantivity construed along the lines set out by Sider, it also demonstrates that further notable notions of (mere) verbalness and substantivity are in fact closely intertwined. (shrink)

The article highlights the practical realization of synergies, to improve social infrastructure in rural areas. The paper analyzes trends and positive consequences of the involvement of community organizations to improve rural infrastructure component elements. The research emphasizes that the financial and labor cooperation and the bulk of local authorities is the positive step towards improving social infrastructure in rural areas under the shortage of budgetary funds.

SummaryThe establishment of the discipline of architectural acoustics is generally attributed to the physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who developed the formula for reverberation time around 1900, and with it the possibility of making calculated prognoses about the acoustic potential of a particular design. If, however, we shift the perspective from the history of this discipline to the history of architectural knowledge and praxis, it becomes apparent that the topos of ‘good sound’ had already entered the discourse much earlier. This paper (...) traces the Europe-wide discussion on theatre architecture between 1750 and 1830. It will be shown that the period of investigation is marked by an increasing interest in auditorium acoustics, one linked to the emergence of a bourgeois theatre culture and the growing socio-political importance of the spoken word. In the wake of this development the search among architects for new methods of acoustic research started to differ fundamentally from an analogical reasoning on the nature of sound propagation and reflection, which in part dated back to antiquity. Through their attempts to find new ways of visualising the behaviour of sound in enclosed spaces and to rethink both the materiality and the mediality of theatre auditoria, architects helped pave the way for the establishment of architectural acoustics as an academic discipline around 1900. (shrink)

It is a startling fact that, despite its long and rich history, the debate about per- sonal identity is far from settled. The present paper examines two deflationary explanations for this: a) the dispute is merely verbal (verbalism); b) there cannot be sufficient justification for preferring one theory of personal identity over the others (epistemicism). As this paper argues, there is evidence that either verba- lism or epistemicism provides a correct account of the personal identity debate.

The article is devoted to transformations and the crisis of values in a global world. The genealogy of values is traced as a way of existence and justification of normativity characteristic of modernity. In this context, value is compared with cost. Both the first and second are reductions inherent in the modern way of human existence. Value personifies the reduction of the complex, heterogeneous, qualitatively diverse world of external goods of pre-industrial society to a single denominator of abstract labor. Same, (...) the complexly structured and heterogeneous reality of due acquired the appearance of a single space of values. In this context, the theoretical limitations of the pan-production view of human historical development are analyzed. The current war, which in its impact on humanity has acquired a de facto global character, is considered as a defining symptom of the crisis of values in global reality. War as a feature of the modern world is significant not in itself, but as an expression of the growing role of violence in the life of global civilization. In turn, the increase in violence and coercion is a manifestation of an even deeper process — the depreciation of values. The depreciation of values does not mean the destruction of certain specific values, but in general the role of the due in human life. In this regard, a key question arises about the prospects for overcoming the process of depreciation of values. By analogy with the three recognized paradigms of philosophizing (being, consciousness/subject, language), three historical paradigms of normativity are distinguished: transpersonal indisputable prescriptions (“commandments”); mediated by personal reflection and recognition of binding significance (values); abstinences — negative normative presumptions aimed at ensuring peaceful productive interaction with guaranteed autonomy of participants in interactions. The development of the normative practice of such abstinences may be with a possible scenario for overcoming the depreciation of values in the global world. (shrink)

Das Problem der Sterblichkeit und Unsterblichkeit gehört untrennbar zum Nachdenken des Menschen über sich und seine Stellung in der Welt. Auch für das antike Denken stellt diese Thematik ein anthropologisches Prisma dar. Es verbindet Fragen der praktischen und theoretischen Philosophie in existentiell relevanter Weise. Disziplinübergreifend beleuchtet der vorliegende Band wirkmächtige Positionen des frühgriechischen Denkens und erkundet dabei die Dimensionen menschlicher Begrenztheit.

In the article of Viktoria Zaporozhets «Main aspects of external church relations of UAOC in the 90’s. XX century» from the religious-scientific point of view is carried out a comprehensive analysis of the institutionalization of the UAOC in the 90's of the twentieth century in the context of her external-church relation. It is noted that inter-church relations of the UAOC during the specified period of her existence can be characterized as two-vector. It is emphasized that the first vector is (...) due to the processes of interaction between the UAOC and the UOC-KP and the UOC that took place at the canonical councils / sessions of commissions, and the second vector is related to the fact that the UAOC tried to gain the canonical status of the Ecumenical Patriarch through the diocese of Canada and the United States. At the same time it is noted that although there were diplomatic inter-Orthodox relations of the UAOC, nevertheless there were temple seizures from each other. It is proved that the church-state relations of the UAOC in this period can be characterized as stable, since it was granted the right to perform services and own property, to open Sunday schools, to freely serve services in the Ukrainian language, although sometimes it was possible to find a negative attitude to this religious organization from the side of power. (shrink)

The metalinguistic approach to conceptual engineering construes disputes between linguistic reformers and linguistic conservatives as metalinguistic disagreements on how best to use particular expressions. As the present paper argues, this approach has various merits. However, it was recently criticised in Cappelen’s seminal Fixing Language. Cappelen raises an important objection against the metalinguistic picture. According to this objection – the Babel objection, as I shall call it – the metalinguistic account cannot accommodate the intuition of disagreement between linguistic conservatives and reformers (...) who are speaking different languages. The objection generalises to metalinguistic approaches to e.g. moral disagreements. This paper discusses the Babel objection and shows how to dispel it. (shrink)

The article considers the leading and indisputable role of discursive practices in the existence of social institutions, especially in democratic governance. The necessity of searching for heuristi- cally effective approaches in the analysis of social reality in general, and especially modern soci- ality, is substantiated. In this context, the theoretical modernization of the institutional approach in the analysis of social phenomena by involving the concept of discourse in the structure of this approach is proposed. Emphasis is placed on the dual (...) meaning of social institutions — as ways of organizing the life of society and as instances (mediums) of normative, through which the order of social life is constituted, reproduced, and changed. This solves the “rule-organization” dilem- ma in neo-institutionalism. It is transferred to the mode of two inseparable and complementary functions of the institute — normative and regulative. The analysis of those semantic, organiza- tional, and procedural loadings which carry out discursive practices inactivity of institutes of society is given. In particular, emphasis is placed on the complex structure of normativity em- bodied by the public institution. It should at least highlight the explicit normativity of the system of rules and regulations on the one hand, and the order of discourse created and maintained by this institution, on the other. Discourse corresponds to the normativity in its usability — as a real process of normalization of life. Normativity exists only by generating certain practices of speech, communication, and argumentation (conclusion). This becomes the basis for distin- guishing the concept of an institution as a discursive mode of existence of a social institution on the one hand, and as a way of organizing discourse in society (order of discourse) — on the other. Among the main social effects of institutions are the generation of trust as the basis of social relations and the longevity of cultural experience. Emphasis is placed on the complexity of the existence and activities of institutions: each institution is involved in the general discursive-com- municative field of society, and in turn, influences it. (shrink)

In the article by analysed the specifics of the religious studies of the functioning of the UAOC in the post-Soviet period. It turns out that the study of this religious organization should be carried out by involving both religious studies, methods and principles, as well as sociological, political science. According to the author, such a position will allow us to comprehensively disclose the studied issues.

With the release of the latest IPCC report, the urgency to steer the transport sector toward ecological sustainability has been recognized more and more broadly. To better understand, the prerequisites for a transition to sustainable mobility, we argue that interdisciplinary mobility research needs to revisit the interaction between social structures and individual agency by focusing on social norms. While critical sociological approaches stress the structural barriers to sustainable mobility, political discourse over sustainable mobility is still largely dominated by overly individualistic (...) approaches, which focus on individual behavior change neglecting its social embeddedness. With discursive struggles over sustainable mobility intensifying, it becomes more urgent to better understand how structural contexts condition individual travel behavior, while at the same time showing how individuals engage in processes of social change. Against this backdrop, the article seeks to deepen the cooperation between sociological and psychological research in mobility transitions research. Building on a broad body of literature, we revisit recent theoretical approaches, which conceptualize the role of individual agency in sustainability transitions. On this basis, we highlight the role of social norms in mobility transitions as a key concept bridging individual behavior and social structures. Using Strong Structuration Theory as an integrative framework, we focus on the role of individual agency in processes of re-negotiation of social norms. Our main hypothesis is that individuals can contribute to mobility transitions by influencing and re-negotiating social norms, especially in the context of windows of opportunity. We analyze how focusing on the dynamic and conflicted nature of social norms can help to illustrate leverage points for a mobility transition as well as inspire future empirical research in the field. This includes that individuals can influence social norms through changing their own travel behavior as well as through engaging in discourse on transport policies. (shrink)

Communication can be defined as the process of sharing ideas, experiences, attitudes and knowledge by transmission of symbolic messages. Dental medicine is an area where technical skills are not the only prerequisites for being a good health care provider. Soft skills, such as active listening to the patient, appropriate verbal and non-verbal communication, empathy, and respecting ethical rules are significant in the dentist–patient communication process. Consequently, they influence patients’ attitudes, satisfaction, and ongoing health-related behaviour. Therefore, a training course on communication (...) skills has been introduced at the Faculty of Dental Medicine of the Medical University in Sofia. The aim is to improve students’ soft skills, and to form a behavioural design pattern concerning dentist–patient interactions. (shrink)

Die Anthroposophie Rudolf Steiners (1861-1925) ist eine der wichtigsten esoterischen Traditionen der Gegenwart. Ihre Bedeutung verdankt sie nicht nur Steiners stark philosophisch geprägter Weltanschauung aus dem Geist des Okkultismus, sondern vor allem den Praxisfeldern: Waldorfschulen, anthroposophischen Krankenhäusern, der biodynamischen Landwirtschaft und den weniger bekannten Dimensionen (Banken, Hochschulen, Stiftungen)... Die wissenschaftliche Forschung ist jedoch bislang schwach. Zwar liegen einige grundlegende Publikationen vor, an Detailforschung fehlt es jedoch überall. Der vorliegende Band enthält exemplarische Forschungen zu Waldorfpädagogik, Landwirtschaft, Steiners Philosophie, Kunst (Hilma af (...) Klint), Entwicklungen nach 1945 sowie Länderstudien (Bulgarien, Rumänien). Der Forschungsstand wird darüber hinaus durch bibliographische Informationen zu wichtigen Praxisfeldern sowie einen einleitenden Überblick über aktuelle Debatten dokumentiert. Damit wird Einstieg in die Anthroposophieforschung sowohl für akademische Forscher/-innen als auch für Interessenten der Praxisfelder erleichtert. Somit ermöglicht dieser Band auch eine Orientierung angesichts des Dschungels der weltanschaulich geprägten Literatur. (shrink)

La historia política de Rusia y España ofrece una oportunidad para comparar las medidas adoptadas durante la transición de un régimen autoritario a uno democrático, manteniendo la estabilidad política en el Estado. El Estado es un elemento central del sistema político. La estabilidad del Estado se convierte en una cuestión clave para los dirigentes del Estado, para los sujetos del poder político. La estabilidad política en una democracia requiere la preservación del tipo de organización del poder, que corresponde a los (...) sentimientos e intereses fundamentales socioeconómicos de los grupos sociales. A los factores políticos de la estabilidad pertenece la posibilidad de una participación equitativa en la vida política para todos los estratos sociales, en conformidad con el derecho democrático y las tradiciónes, así como la presencia de las instituciones políticas. El Estado debe ser social y servir al ciudadano y a la sociedad. Se ha demostrado que el Estado debe participar en la regulación de la economía y la circulación monetaria. La estabilidad política en el nivel internacional se logra por el equilibrio multipolar y por la diversidad de los Estados soberanos y equitativos. (shrink)

У статті обґрунтовано практичні заходи щодо усунення дисбалансу економічного становища регіонів та подолання наслідків світових фінансово-економічних криз шляхом уведення додаткових корегувальних екологічних коефіцієнтів до розрахунку міжбюджетних трансфертів. Це дає можливість оптимального розподілу фінансових ресурсів для задоволення реальних потреб місцевих бюджетів.

In the mid-decade, researchers have been researching large scale scientific studies on major archival documents. Certain things could be said about the emergence of trends that produce books of historical and religious personnel in the format of published archival files, which first appear when introduced: the opening of an archive, the preservation of the regime of inaccessible funds that allow scientists to access primary sources. In connection with this topic, this study is relevant and relevant.

The relevance of the topic is primarily due to the fact that in recent years the Protestant churches of Ukraine have increasingly been directing activities towards raising the educational level of their pastors and believers. The proportion of Protestants among university students who receive state diplomas in various specialties is noticeably increasing. Obviously, the emergence of such a tendency is not coincidental and is connected with the desire of Protestant organizations to increase their influence in order to achieve a more (...) successful policy of proselytism. (shrink)

Sobre la base de la teoría de “los mejores” de J. Ortega y Gasset el autor trató de investigar el papel de los estratos superiores de la sociedad, de la élite nacional en la modernización del régimen político en los principios de la democracia y la poliarquía. Fue revelado el papel en los procesos del gobierno y la administración del poder político y ejecutivo del aparato estatal, que consiste en los funcionarios públicos, profesional y moralmente preparados y capaces asegurar el (...) funcionamiento sostenible y soberano de las instituciones del Estado. En Rusia en el inicio del 2012 se comenzón las actividades socio-políticas llamadas en la ciencia política como la tecnología “de nacionalizaciόn” de las élites. Se produce una armonización de los intereses de los grupos políticos y empresariales de alto nivel social con los intereses del Estado y la sociedad civil. Fue realizado el análisis comparativo del impacto de las élites políticas de España y Rusia sobre la estabilidad política para garantizar el desarrollo socio-económico soberano de sus países. En la soberanía del Estado se refleja la plenitud de la autoridad governamental de los grupos sociales más altos, la élite nacional. Por separado se destacó la función de la élite político-militar como un aparato coercitivo legítimo, que asegura el bienestar del Estado democrático. Los modelos actuales de los regímenes políticos democráticos – no es una meta, sino un instrumento para lograr el bienestar del Estado y nación. Los acontecimientos en Rusia contemporánea comproban la actualidad científica de las obras del gran pensador J.Ortega y Gasset. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the transformations of society in the era of globalization. The global world is seen as a consequence of the successful implementation of the world-historical the Project of Modernity. Its completion results in the loss of its intellectual authority and historical effective- ness. The principal quality of contemporary society became its globality. The paradoxical phenomenon of the world, that had ceased to be a reality, became an integrative shape of the global transformations. Visibility took the privileged (...) place here. The degradation of reality is analyzed in its main forms: dematerialization of reality; decline and destruction of human sensory experience; destruction of the alive contacts with living beings and the capacity to empathize with somebody; the loss of the space of the human existence space features of a stable, predictable, structured se- mantic order. The consequence of that is the destruction of the foundations of the communities and society as a whole, which is fixed by the notion of their «vagueness». The correlation to this social metamorphosis is a new anthropological format — the singularity, which provides for the theoretical abolition of identity as a way for defining a man. It means the loss of an individual’s predictability and its determination as a social character. The network is the way through which the singularities interact, and swarms are the natural form of their association. Swarm is a historically new, unstructured, but subordinated to common impulses union, which consists of points of activity of different intensity. The analysis of society is incomplete without taking into account its discursive-communicative nature. In the global world there is a decline in the discourses. The signs of that process are the lack of legitimacy in classical instances of the meaning (truth, good, beauty, etc.), the degeneration of thinking into mixing, changing criteria of significance (dominance of curiosity and impression), social degradation of the media. The main feature of these changes is the latest phenomenon of information power (the power of depersonalized information space and information technology — those modes of circulation and use of information that became a determining factor in human life in the globalized world). (shrink)

Editorial for issue 30 of Nordisk judaistik – Scandinavian Jewish Studies, 'Boundaries of Jewish Identities in Contemporary Finland'.

Enlightenment writers have proposed projects to secure long-lasting peace within the belligerent environment of the European political landscape since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Madison and Rousseau, both declared critics of the Perpetual Peace project of the Abbé de St.-Pierre, were united in their opinion on the primacy of popular sovereignty within states to fulfil the goal of universal peace on the international level. Whereas the American constitution was built on a ‘peace pact’ to secure the union’s survival, the (...) French republican experiment was confronted with hostility from their European neighbours at the very outset. French minister Genêt’s plans for French intervention on the American continent, following the Girondins’ belligerent strategy against European monarchies, however, threatened to involve the early American Republic in universal war rather than peace. The so-called ‘Empire of Liberty’ that Thomas Jefferson, as well as Genêt, proclaimed for the future United States was based on a melding of unionist with republican principles, as it had been in the thinking of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, one of the fiercest opponents of the Anglo-Scottish incorporated union of 1707. This article aims to examine this connection as well as its enabling of a reconciliation between republicanism and the striving for empire as it took place on the American continent in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Emphasizing a keen interest in the corporeal/bodily in its dynamics and its cognitive characteristics, the authors show that the appeal to the corporeal as a cognitive option changes the understanding and perception of such traditional phenomena as the world, reality, space, things. The proposition that the subject constructs the world, and our bodily experience is determined by the word and constructed by discursive contexts, looks incomplete: its limited nature requires some additions. The authors underline that the study of human sensual (...) cognitive capabilities and the analysis of the cognitive map of the bodily forces us to pay attention to embodied rationality. Addressing it allows us to overcome constructivism, focused exclusively on the discourse of the word, because our intelligence was also shaped in accordance with the form of body action. The authors turned to the problem of mode the visibility of ethics and posed a provocative question as follows: can the cognitive abilities of the bodily act as a basis for ‘construction the morality’ and occupy n equal position with verbal discourse? To solve this problem, the authors analyzed relevant scientific findings and their influence on the nature of the development of constructivist epistemology, studied the debate on the issue of ethics taking place among the representatives of constructivism, and, in particular, analyzed discussions on tools of the constructivism. At present, all ideas and works of constructivism must take into account bodily rationality as their obligatory component (in its general instrumental and methodological basis), and bodily rationality can serve as the basis for “constructing morality.”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen learning from text, it is important that learners not only comprehend the information provided but also accurately monitor and judge their comprehension, which is known as metacomprehension accuracy. To investigate the role of a learner’s affective state for text comprehension and metacomprehension accuracy, we conducted an experiment with N = 103 university students in whom we induced positive, negative, or neutral affect. Positive affect resulted in poorer text comprehension than neutral affect. Positive affect also led to overconfident predictions, whereas (...) negative and neutral affect were both associated with quite accurate predictions. Independent of affect, postdictions were rather underconfident. The results suggest that positive affect bears processing disadvantages for achieving deep comprehension and adequate prediction accuracy. Given that postdictions were more accurate, practice tests might represent an effective instructional method to help learners in a positive affective state... (shrink)

У статті розглянуто проблеми охорони здоров'я населення в Україні та відповідні державні заходи щодо їх запобігання та усунення. Зокрема, автори вважають найбільш дієвими заходами з боку держави реалізацію комплексних програм управління здоров'ям працівників, що включають такі пункти як зниження питомої ваги поведінкових чинників ризику. З огляду на це профілактична робота і в суспільстві, й на конкретному підприємстві повинна передбачати роботу з попередження шкідливих звичок, формування здоров'язберігаючого середовища і громадської думки, що підтримує практики здоров'язберігаючої поведінки. Важливим аспектом концепції здоров'я працездатного населення (...) автори вважають пріоритет соціальних детермінант над впливом медицини і системи охорони здоров'я. (shrink)

The article examines the Finnish branch of Chabad Lubavitch as a fundamentalist and charismatic movement that differs from other branches of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in its approaches to outreach to non-observant Jews. Whilst introducing the history of Chabad Lubavitch in Finland and drawing on historical and archival sources, the authors locate the movement in a contemporary context and draw on 101 semi-structured qualitative interviews of members of the Finnish Jewish communities, who either directly or indirectly have been in contact with representatives (...) of Chabad Finland. The material is examined through the theoretical concept of ‘vicarious religion’. As the results of the article show, whilst Chabad very much adheres to certain fundamentalist approaches in Jewish religious practice, in Finland they follow a somewhat different approach. They strongly rely on people’s sense of Jewish identification and Jewish identity. Individuals in the community ‘consume’ Chabad’s activities vicariously, ‘belong without believing’ or ‘believe in belonging’ but do not feel the need to apply stricter religious observance. Whilst many of them are critical of Chabad and their activities, they do acknowledge that Chabad fills the ‘gaps’ in and outside the Jewish Community of Helsinki, predominantly by creating new activities for some of its members. (shrink)

Shortly after the Civil Marriage Act took effect in 1917 and the constitutional right to freedom of religion was implemented by the Freedom of Religion Act in 1922, the number of intermarriages started to rise in the Finnish Jewish congregations, affecting both their customs, and the structure of their membership. Initially, intermarried members and their spouses faced rejection in their congregations; however, during the second half of the twenty-first century, the attitudes towards intermarriages and intermarried congregants have changed significantly. Today, (...) a high number of intermarriages is one of the key defining characteristics of Finnish Jewish communities. This article will concentrate on the vernacular practices of intermarried women in the Jewish Community of Helsinki and Turku. The core material of this article consists of semi-structured ethnographic interviews conducted in 2019 and 2020 with members of the two Finnish Jewish communities. The women presented in this study often combine models from different traditions. Instead of abandoning Judaism altogether, they ‘do Judaism in their own way’ by creating and -inventing traditions they find meaningful for themselves and for their families. (shrink)

The identities, customs and habits of religious congregations are tightly connected to the history of these congregations and to the specific religious tradition or denomination they consider themselves to be a part of. They are also shaped by the legislative and bureaucratic regulations and processes of the secular society that is surrounding them. The aim of this study is to further our knowledge of some of these aspects of Jewish life as they relate to the Jewish Community of Helsinki in (...) the period 1930–70 by showcasing two examples that emerged as a result of the rising number of intermarriages in the congregation. (shrink)

The article deals with diversity of language signs in legal terminology. The aim of the article is to show the influence of both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors on the specificity of various linguistic units in the legal terminology. Though all terminological systems possess some similar features, there may be certain traits characteristic only for some of them. As specific systems of signs, legal terminologies show some peculiarities that are discussed in the article from the point of view of oppositions to (...) highlight the semiotic specifics of language units used by lawyers and also the organization of the terminological system under consideration. The oppositions under consideration emerge due to both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Extra-linguistic factors determine such oppositions as terminology of law: terminology of jurisprudence, modern terminology: historical terminology, terms: nomenclature signs. Linguistic factors stipulate the opposition of primary and derived terms. A combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors determines the following oppositions: native terms: borrowed terms, terms of the basic terminological system: terms attracted from other spheres of knowledge. Within these types of oppositions a number of more specific ones were elicited. The interaction of synchronic and diachronic approaches the article is based on allowed the authors to focus on the permanent semantic properties of the language signs pertaining to tribal customary and modern law, and on those emerging in the course of the evolution of law. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe and disabling mental illness, associated with persistent difficulties in social functioning. While gaining and retaining a job or staying socially integrated can be very difficult for the patients, the treatment of poor functionality remains challenging with limited options in pharmacotherapy. To address the limitations of medical treatment, several interesting and innovative approaches have been introduced in the field of psychotherapy. Recent approaches incorporate modern technology as well, such as virtual reality. A potential therapeutic benefit of virtual (...) reality is particularly significant when an interpersonal dimension of the problem needs to be addressed. One example is a Virtual Reality based Theory of Mind Intervention, a novel method, which enables patients to practice complex social interactions without the burden of real-life consequences. Our paper presents a case report showing promising results of VR-ToMIS. Ms. Smith is a 50- year-old patient who has been suffering from schizophrenia for 20 years. Although in her case there was no problem with compliance throughout the years, she had severe problems regarding social functionality. With VR-ToMIS, she improved in ToM and communicative-pragmatic skills. The effects of the intervention went beyond the increased scores of the tests. Before the intervention there was a risk of the patient becoming unemployed as she was unable to follow the main principles of communicative exchange. Usually, her contribution was more informative than was required. After the intervention her communication became more balanced and she could retain her job. This case suggests that VR-ToMIS may be a promising tool for treating social disfunction in schizophrenia. (shrink)

One of the components of anti-Soviet opposition in post-war Ukraine is resistance of believers to the policies of Soviet power. Particularly specific is the resistance of Greek Catholics formed under the conditions of prohibition of the activities of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Despite the government's harassment, the church continued to operate underground. Of interest to researchers is the period of the second half of the 1960s - the first half of the 1980s - the time of the growing systemic (...) crisis of the Soviet system. (shrink)