The belief to have fixed or malleable traits and help giving: implicit theories and sequential social influence techniques Two sequential social influence techniques, the foot-in-the-door and the door-in-the-face, seem to be symmetrical, but there are different moderators and quite different mechanisms underlying each of the strategies. What links both techniques is the social interaction between a person presenting a sequence of requests and an interlocutor. The techniques' effectiveness depends on the course and perception of the interaction and the difficulty of (...) requests in the sequence. The aim of the article was to verify various mechanisms of incremental and entity theorists compliance with the FITD and the DITF techniques. In a series of four studies it was shown that incremental theorists comply the FITD technique to a greater extend especially when a sequence of requests meets their mastery style of behavior thus means an interesting challenge to undertake or opportunity to deepen contact with a newly met person. Entity theorists are more prone to the DITF strategy as their helpless style of behavior and sense of guilt are triggered, thus a sequence of decreasing in magnitude demands is perceived as less threatening. (shrink)

As philosophers of mind we seem to hold in common no very clear view about the relevance that work in psychology or the neurosciences may or may not have to our own favourite questions—even if we call the subject ‘philosophical psychology’. For example, in the literature we find articles on pain some of which do, some of which don't, rely more or less heavily on, for example, the work of Melzack and Wall; the puzzle cases used so extensively in discussions (...) of personal identity are drawn sometimes from the pleasant exercise of scientific fantasy, at times from surprising reports of scientific fact; and there are those who deny, as well as those who affirm, the importance of the discovery of rapid-eye-movement sleep to the philosophical treatment of dreaming. A general account of the relation between scientific, and philosophical, psychology is long overdue and of the first importance. Here I shall limit myself to just one area where the two seem to connect, discussing one type of neuropsychological research and its relevance to questions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

This work tells the story of the rise of the modern German environmental imagination, with particular emphasis on its narrative and visual components.

Through analysis of film sequences focusing on DNA in two British Broadcasting Corporation nonfiction science television programs, Wonders of Life and Bang! Goes the Theory, first broadcast in 2013, contrasting “religious” and “secular” representations of science are identified. In the “religious” portrayal, immutable scientific knowledge is revealed to humanity by nature with minimal human intervention. Science provides a creation story, “explanatory omnicompetence,” and makes life existentially meaningful. In the “secular” portrayal, scientific knowledge is changeable; is produced through technical skill in (...) expert communities; and is ambiguous, potentially positive and negative for society. Television representations of science affect audience understandings, and this is particularly the case for nonfiction representations of science, as they are likely to be “taken more seriously” than fictional representations. The consequences of the “religious” representation of science are discussed, and it is argued that a widespread understanding of science as presented in the religious portrayal would negatively impact democracy. (shrink)

Vivemos nos desdobramentos daquilo que Manuel Castells (2005) nomeou de Sociedade em Rede, em cujo cerne estão as Tecnologias de Informação (TIs). Ele indicou as características-chave do novo cenário que diagnosticou, a saber, são tecnologias que agem sobre a própria informação e que também introduziram a lógica das redes; que promovem a convergência tecnológica e, por conseguinte, um sistema altamente integrado de aparatos técnicos; e que acentuadamente penetram pelos diferentes processos e âmbitos sociais. De lá para cá testemunhamos grandes e (...) rápidos saltos tecnológicos bem como o adensamento das transformações na dinâmica econômico-política organizacional e institucional e na construção das vidas humanas e não-humanas no planeta. Essas mudanças alcançaram não apenas modos informais de aprendizagem, mas também a educação formal. O objetivo desse artigo é discutir aspectos atuais da plataformização educacional presentes na educação básica brasileira, tendo como referência o ensino de Filosofia no Ensino Médio. Para tanto será desenvolvida reflexão sobre a plataformização educacional, fenômeno que diz respeito ao modelo de negócios presente na atual fase do capitalismo e que utiliza as plataformas sustentadas pela IA e também a constante extração de dados de quem transita pelas infovias do ciberespaço; sobre o que nomeamos como Escola do Cansaço, em diálogo com o conceito de Sociedade do Cansaço desenvolvido por Byung Chul Han; e sobre algumas implicações decorrentes que já se fazem presentes na administração do trabalho docente, na realização do trabalho docente e nas relações de ensino-aprendizagem. (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)

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)

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)

On the grounds of the libertarian ethics presented by Murray N. Rothbard, the state is an institution which acts against individuals and whole societies. The state steals money from its citizens (taxes), stands in the way of free market development and controls the economy, thus hindering entrepreneurship. Besides that, the state – through its rules and regulations – limits every man's right to make moral choices. The state is an immoral institution, therefore its citizens have the right to refuse to (...) pay taxes, follow orders, and even – in some circumstances – corrupt civil servants. In this paper we analyse Rothbard’s ethics and look into the arguments of critics of libertarian thought. Practical social and economic solutions that emerge from Rothbard’s point of view are also considered. (shrink)

Employee misconduct is prevalent in organizations and may be counterproductive in social and material terms. It is thus important to better understand how misconduct is construed by employees and the factors that determine its ethical acceptability in specific cases. This study explores attitudes towards unethical and minor deviant behaviours by examining the degree of acquiescence towards them in a sample of employees. Based on previous studies it was hypothesized that both organizational commitment and job satisfaction would be negatively related to (...) the acceptance of such behaviours in organizational settings. Results show that there is a relationship between the degree of acquiescence and organizational commitment and a more modest relationship with job satisfaction. They further indicate that organizational tenure impacts very significantly on the degree of acceptance. Although differences were found for age, neither gender nor organizational variables were found to be significant. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present selected relationships between social trust and the development of a territorial unit. Social trust affects the level of cooperation in society and decides about the competitiveness of a territorial unit [12, p. 7]. The main thesis of the article is the author’s conviction that there is a significant correlation between social trust and the activity of citizens, the consequence of which is the development of territorial units. This relationship applies to different categories (...) of units, the article mainly focuses on municipal units. The conclusions presented are a consequence of the analysis of information sources and surveys carried out in three cities: Cracow, Helsinki and Valletta. The socio-economic situation of Poland, Finland and Malta is varied, also due to historical and political conditions. Social trust in these cities depends on different factors. Everywhere, however, significantly affects the direction of urban development, accelerating and stabilising it. Trust is a component of social capital, which translates into the ability to build an innovative and modern economy. In countries where citizens trust each other, a sense of security increases which significantly affects well-being. (shrink)

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)

Feminists have long been aware that the notion of women is problematic and using it uncritically without further qualifications leads to exclusions. In the article, I argue that the source of these problems lies in the understanding of concepts as static and clearly defined. I deploy Hegel’s idea of syllogism to define dynamic concepts, which I term ‘fractal concepts’ because of their complexity and constant development. In such structures the balance between the universal, the particular and the individual is maintained (...) and, consequently, every woman is essential for the definition of such a non-essentialist notion of women. I propose that an epistemological interpretation of the Hegelian idea of recognition can be used to describe the development of fractal concepts in the confrontation of different perspectives. It also explains the obstruction of this process by the desire for domination and control, which results in the appropriation of group identities by their privileged members. I situate the logical and political framework developed in the paper in the context of feminist controversies around the concept of woman and argue that it provides us with a comprehensive account of intersectionality as well as an explicative solution to the regress problem. (shrink)

The study examines the question of how personal self-esteem, collective self-esteem and readiness for self-improvement are linked to satisfaction with life in women from countries differing with regard to level of collectivism. Our study participants were Polish and Indian female students. The obtained results indicate that personal self-esteem plays a very important role in satisfaction with life of women from the two countries. However, collective self-esteem is not directly related to satisfaction with life among women from the two cultures analyzed. (...) Structural Equation Modeling showed that: a) in the Indian group readiness for self-improvement is more important for satisfaction with life than in the Polish group and it is significantly related to satisfaction with life through collectivistic self-esteem, b) the direct influence of both personal and collective self-esteem on satisfaction with life is more significant in the Polish group than in the Indian group. (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)

Paper attempts to empiricaly verify a non-linear (parabolic) dependence of employment in Poland on minimum wage to average wage ratio (Kaitz coefficient). The aim of the analysis is to find the optimal value of the Kaitz coefficient. The obtained result confirms the hypothesis on a non-linear nature of the investigated dependence. However, during the minimum wage evaluation process it is worth noting that the Kaitz coefficient's influence on the employment is bi-directional. Increase in the Kaitz coefficient value will only have (...) a negative effect on employment after a certain threshold is crossed. Results pre-sented in the paper allow to identify such a critical value and to establish the coefficient value intervals with negative and positive influence on employment. (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)

Let Rhoda Speak Again: Identity, Uncertainty, and Authority in Virginia Woolf's The Waves Performing a rereading of Virginia Woolf's 1931 experimental modernist masterpiece of The Waves, in this article I focus on the elusive and conflicted character of Rhoda, whose significance has been either overlooked or marginalized in the available criticism of the narrative. By pointing out a number of problems in the existing scholarship devoted to Rhoda, I propose to define her as a transgressive figure of uncertainty through which (...) Woolf develops a critique of the unitary self. My point of departure for the following essay is Toril Moi's perspective on Woolf's oeuvre as openly feminist and deconstructive. Consequently, I begin with Moi's emphasis on Woolf's commitment to the problematization of the Western male humanism's underlying concept of the unitary self. Drawing from a number of critical and philosophical perspectives, I turn to Kim L. Worthington's idea of subjectivity as a sustained process of interpersonal narrativization in order to offer a more nuanced account of Rhoda's identity as compound and implicated in the dynamics of inter-subjective processes. I also consider Rhoda's much criticized rejection of identity vis-à-vis Woolf's strategy of impersonality, and, contrasting it with Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological concepts of the flesh and anonymous existence, I contend that Rhoda renounces the unitary selfhood, which corroborates Moi's critique of Woolf. Through a close analysis of Rhoda's position versus the other characters, as well as by examining how Rhoda's ego boundaries are delineated in the narrative, I demonstrate that Woolf's conflicted heroine emerges as an astute critic of gendered reality, since she is the one who most acutely feels the dualistic nature of selfhood and it is chiefly through her that Woolf points to the need to overcome this dualism. Shannon Sullivan's feminist revision of the Merleau-Pontian perspective on the anonymity and the body as well as the Deweyan notion of transactionality further helps to elucidate the ways in which Rhoda's experimental and subversive discourse engages in a polemic with the Cartesian conceptualization of identity presupposed on the dualism of mind and body simultaneously inquiring about a possibility of a non-dualistic and non-unitary conception of subjectivity. As a consequence, Rhoda gains authority and agency through uncertainty which prompts her to adopt an uncompromisingly and insistently questioning stance. Finally, I suggest reconsidering Rhoda's suicide as a metaphorical act of ‘distancing,’ as discussed by Zygmunt Bauman, via Adorno, in his 2006 Liquid Fear, another context for approaching Rhoda's uncertainty. (shrink)

Describing the formation of the Polish community in Spain in the 1990s, the article focuses on the political changes in both countries: processes of democratization (and, in the case of Poland, the resulting economic transformation) and then the EU enlargement, which contributed to this new influx. Polish expatriates, though not very numerous in comparison with other immigrant communities in contemporary Spain, became quite visible, especially in some towns of the Region of Madrid. In general, they enjoy a good reputation in (...) the host country, but initially they used to work in the secondary labor sector, often illegally. The situation changed after Poland’s accession to the European Union and the resulting opening of the Spanish labor market for Polish citizens at the beginning of the new century. New Polish immigrants to Spain are young, qualified, innovative, and their purpose is not only to earn a living, but first and foremost to continuetheir studies and undergo professional training. Their mobility is increased owing to modern transportation facilities and communication systems. Individualists for the most part, they do not maintain intensive contacts with the earlier-established Polish community and its social networks and institutions. (shrink)

The act of consuming in our new, global reality doesn’t have a lot in common with taking part in the classic ‘purchase and buy’ exchange relationship. The satisfaction of basic needs is no longer the main target of consumption. The contemporary consumer experiences a constant “hunger” and continual need for new objects and impressions, which is almost impossible to alleviate. It can cause frustration deepened by the feeling of spiritual emptiness. The article or the service itself becomes a fetish, indicating (...) a change in relations between the object and subject. This is related to the revelation of a new dimension of consumption, which itself starts taking on the features of the sacrum. The act of shopping takes on a similarity to certain more sacral rituals. The „puzzle” of sales, special offers and special occasions such as holidays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother’s Day etc, are the remains of the liturgical year. The impression of “sacralized consumption” is experienced in even greater depth when you step inside what has become known as the “new temples of consumption”, which take on the physical shape of the perfect space, full of harmony, where everything is fully controlled and totally safe, out of the context of time and place. The model of contemporary consumption gives a promise of immediate happiness and salvation, distracting the consumer from reality and giving him an ersatz of the medicine needed to treat his existential fears. Most members of Western society now accept this situation by taking part in it. The question is when they will start to reject those individuals who refuse this lifestyle and accuse them of acting against moral standards and the common good? (shrink)

This article provides a comparative analysis of the attitudes of three major monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – to the practice of usury and looks at why these attitudes developed in different ways. Each of the parts presents the opinions of one of the religious systems, analysing the Old and New Testaments, as well as the Koran, by looking at the duties that the Holy Scriptures required of their followers. The first part is devoted to Judaism. According to (...) this model, the moral value of usury was dependent on the ethnic and religious origins of the borrower probably because of special historical and cultural associations between the idea of money and the Jewish people. The second part is concerned with usury in Christian religion, presenting the attitude expressed in the Gospel, as well as later comments of Fathers of the Church, in order to put the change in moral attitudes to usury in its historical context. Finally, the article presents the point of view of Islam devoting particular attention to the historical reasons for the development of its specific attitude to usury, but also outlining contemporary solutions adopted in the present-day Islamic world. (shrink)