Richard III’s courtship of Lady Anne in William Shakespeare’s King Richard III is a blend of courtly speech and sexual extravaganza. His sexual energy and power of seduction were invented by Shakespeare to enhance the theatrical effect of this figure and, at the same time, to present Richard as a tragic character. Richard’s eroticism in Act 1 Scene 2 makes him a complicated individual. Playing a seducer is one of the guises he uses to achieve his political aims on the (...) one hand, and, on the other, the pose of a sexually attractive lover enables him to put his masculinity to the test. Throughout the scene Richard is haunted by his deformity that, together with his villainy, makes him a stranger to the world and an enemy to his family and the court. In order to overcome his self-image of a disproportional cripple he manifests his sexuality towards Anne to boost his self-esteem and to confirm that the lady will accept him despite his obvious physical shortcomings. This article uses Georges Bataille’s theory of eroticism and erotic desire to characterize Richard as a tragic individual and to explain the reasons behind his unexpected sexual behaviour in the seduction scene. (shrink)

The paper offers a new model of politics adequate for the Anthropocene epoch. It uses the concept of 'heterotopia' to argue for the environmental potential of Arendtian political philosophy. The adopted meaning of heterotopia combines its Foucauldian (as interpreted by L. De Cauter and M. Dehaene) and medical sources. It is argued that, thus understood, the concept can be applied to the Arendtian idea of judgment. In this capacity, the concept of heterotopia is both politically foundational and environmentally relevant. It (...) helps us maintain the idea of politics as humanely construed activity, while recognising that political actors are also natural beings, whose actions draw on and affect the non-human world. (shrink)

Grammar teaching has never belonged to mainstream ESP teaching/ learning practices. However, this apparent lack of concern with grammar in ESP materials runs counter to both subjective and objective needs of ESP learners. The first part of the paper presents students′ views on deficiencies of coursebooks for teaching English for Medical Purposes as well as author’s reflective thinking on the needs of medical undergraduates of vocational schools in Poland. It is suggested that some of the deficiencies of the materials might (...) be remedied and the students′ needs better taken care of if explicit teaching of formulaic language is introduced into ESP classroom environment. It is hypothesized that explicit teaching of formulaic language may stimulate grammar development in the long term and foster communicative competence of ESP learners in the short term. Therefore, the second part of the paper proposes pedagogically relavant classification of medical formulaic sequences motivated by the lexicogrammatical features of Medical English. The third part of the paper shows in what way the proposed classification of formulaic sequences might help teachers of medical English design tasks that are conducive to the development of formulaic competence of students of English for Medical Purposes. (shrink)

This qualitative study presents an analysis of the experiences of a teacher who had recently left working in an England state funded primary school. Using reflective lifeworld methodology, this study explored the teacher’s struggle to be authentic in the context of state funded education. Three prominent themes were identified as: 1) enhancement of every learner; 2) systemic oppression; and 3) tensions in being a teacher. The study concludes that being authentic as a teacher was experienced as being incompatible with the (...) current educational system. (shrink)

The assumption was verified that for patients suffering from cancer levels of anxiety and self-esteem differ compared to other patients before surgery. 120 patients of urology were assigned to subgroups according to diagnosis and the duration of hospitalization. Patients suffering from cancer declared higher anxiety than other patients. Longer hospitalization was connected to higher anxiety. A threat-congruent difference in explicit self-esteem was revealed only between two groups: 1. cancer and long hospitalization and 2. non-cancer and short hospitalization. For implicit self-esteem (...) the phenomenon of implicit compensation of self-esteem was predicted and confirmed: among cancer-sufferers the Name Letter Effect was greater than among other patients. Also, in the cancerpatients group, the result of Rudman et al. was replicated: increasing anxiety was connected with increasing implicit self-esteem. (shrink)

Decisions are taken by humans very often during professional as well as leisure activities. It is particularly evident during surfing the Internet: selecting web sites to explore, choosing needed information in search engine results or deciding which product to buy in an on-line store. Recommender systems are electronic applications, the aim of which is to support humans in this decision making process. They are widely used in many applications: adaptive WWW servers, e-learning, music and video preferences, internet stores etc. In (...) on-line solutions, such as e-shops or libraries, the aim of recommendations is to show customers the products which they are probably interested in. As input data the following are taken: shopping basket archives, ratings of the products or servers log files.The article presents a solution of recommender system which helps users to select an interesting product. The system analyses data from other customers' ratings of the products. It uses clustering methods to find similarities among the users and proposed techniques to identify users' profiles. The system was implemented in Apache Mahout environment and tested on a movie database. Selected similarity measures are based on: Euclidean distance, cosine as well as correlation coefficient and loglikehood function. (shrink)

One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work.

The main objective of this collection of papers is to explore ideas of generation and transformation in the context of postdependency discourse as it may be traced in women’s writing published in Bengali, Polish, Czech, Russian and English. As we believe, literature does not have merely a descriptive function or a purely visionary quality but serves also as a discursive medium, which is rhetorically sophisticated, imaginatively influential and stimulates cultural dynamics. It is an essential carrier of collective memory and a (...) significant indicator of group identity. Along with philosophy, literature explores the intellectual and emotional, aesthetic and ethical components of our lives, and, while focusing on a single feeling or unique event or phenomenon, aspires to capture the universal attributes of human experience. Hence, we intend to juxtapose interpretations of literature originating in very different cultural milieus, such as the Central East European and South Asian,with the literary treatment of the philosophical dilemmas that challenge authors of various nationalities in times of great political, economic and social upheaval and transformation following long periods of dependency and suppression, caused either by colonial and imperialist domination or by communist ideology. (shrink)

The considerations presented in this work are an attempt at giving an answer to the arising doubts: it is obvious to philosophers and logicians that such considerations must be grounded on a relevant conception of the truth and the lie, on bringing up one of the most difficult and disturbing philosophical problems, that is the problemate of the truth, on investigating what the lie is. The confusion about the notions related to the ambiguous terms of “the truth” and “the lie” (...) introduces, in turn, a confusion connected with attempts at answering the questions posed. Thus, in the first part of this paper, we will deal with the very notion itself, or – more precisely – with the notions of the truth; in the second one – with the notions of the lie, and in the third part – we will juxtapose the notions of the truth and the lie in such a way that in each case it should be possible to provide an answer to the question asked in the title of the work. Part four, being the final one, contains certain summary of it, as well as final considerations as a peculiar challenge. (shrink)

English title: Ricoeur and Derrida — the Heritage of Death. In this article the author juxtaposes two different attempts of defending life against Heidegger’s horizon of death (Sein zum Tode) (the survie (survival) of Jacques Derrida and the “Living up to Death” of Paul Ricoeur). Their false proximity introduces a new insight into the discussion about the paradoxical positiveness of deconstruction. Ricoeur’s concept of life makes impossible the understanding of deconstruction as faithfulness to the other not in his identity, but (...) precisely in his otherness. (shrink)

The paper intends to initiate a discussion on the politico-liberal concept of judgment. It is argued that whilst political liberalism (PL) – presented as an account of political objectivity – already appeals to judgment, this conception is an unsatisfactory one. This critical assessment is supported by the juxtaposition of PL with an Arendtian understanding of political objectivity which offers a more robust account of judgment. In the conclusion, the possibility of applying the Arendtian solution to PL is outlined.

The paper revises the idea of speech as a fundamental political faculty in response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. First, it is argued that, rather than as a subsystem of language, speech should be conceptualised as the expression of the embodied capacity of voice (in this respect, the paper follows Adriana Cavarero’s [2005] argument). Secondly, vocality is linked to the faculty of taste (understood as in Arendt’s reading of Kant) to locate politics in the broader order of materiality (physis).

The paper offers a contribution to the political account of wonder. The rationale for addressing this problem is provided by Hannah Arendt’s observations on the paradoxical relationship between wonder and politics—wonder appears here as both essential and indispensable to politics as the realm of opinions. This quandary corresponds to two common-sense uses of the term “wonder”—as an emotion and as an act of judging. It is argued that the political interpretation of wonder should link these two poles. Drawing on Martha (...) Nussbaum’s account of wonder and its reformulation developed by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, the paper offers such a synthesis by emphasising the environmental and aesthetic dimensions of the concept. (shrink)

Książka proponuje interpretację filozofii politycznej jednej z bardziej wpływowych współczesnych amerykańskich autorek – Marthy Craven Nussbaum. Praca skupia się na rozwijanej przez filozofkę wersji koncepcji zdolności (capability approach), która jest rozpatrywana w kontekście po- Rawlsowskiego egalitarnego liberalizmu. Biorąc pod uwagę takie zaplecze, książka ma na celu zbadanie warunków możliwości zrealizowania jego podstawowych założeń normatywnych, a więc wartości: wolności, równości i szacunku dla pluralizmu. Zgodnie z proponowaną interpretacją koncepcja Nussbaum ukazuje podstawy egalitarnego liberalizmu w nowym świetle, w tej mierze, w jakiej (...) zwraca uwagę na konieczność uzupełnienia instytucji o odpowiedni model rozumowania praktycznego. Książka wykazuje estetyczność takiej koncepcji, która przejawia się zarówno na poziomie pojęć (podobieństwa między doświadczeniem estetycznym a rozumowaniem praktycznym), jak i na poziomie przykładów (zastosowania sztuki dla kształcenia postaw obywatelskich). W ten sposób zaprezentowane ujęcie wpisuje się w ramy szeroko pojętej estetyki politycznej. Zagadnienia podejmowane w pracy obejmują między innymi następujące kwestie: dyskusja na temat tzw. waluty sprawiedliwości, liberalizm polityczny, psychologia moralna, emocje polityczne, władza sądzenia, związki między etyką a literaturą oraz kształcenie obywatelskie. Oprócz Marthy Nussbaum szczególne znaczenie dla argumentacji mają tacy autorzy, jak Amartya Sen, John Rawls, Charles Larmore, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Crispin Sartwell. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has made enormous contributions to the philosophy of action, epistemology, semantics and philosophy of mind and today is recognized as one of the most important analytical philosophers of the late twentieth century. _Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge_ addresses * Davidson's writings on epistemology and theory of language with their implications of ontology and philosophy of mind * the central issue of whether truth is the ultimate goal of enquiry, challenged by contributions from Richard Rorty and Paul Horwich (...) * Davidson's approach to semantics and applied linguistics as addressed by Kirk Ludwig, Gabriel Segal, Peter Pagin, Stephen Neale, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore and Reinaldo Elugardo * Davidson's advances in the philosophy of mind in relation to the views of Williard V. Quine, John McDowell and Peter F. Strawson, in essays by Roger Gibson and Anita Avramides. (shrink)

Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) has often been regarded as a direct text in its dealings with a multi-dimensional conception of dualism, insecurity, anxiety and weakness. In the constrained moral atmosphere of Victorian England, where such issues were consciously or even intentionally avoided, the novel seemed to be articulating difficult themes about which society preferred to remain silent. A specific literary tradition, the history of Great Britain, scientific discoveries and lively, scientific debates (...) of the 19th-century are ones of the most significant factors which make The Strange Case so original and memorable.The study poses a number of questions: Why does the history of the double return? What is a meaning of a double in a given context? What is so significant about this concept that it has inspired many others successors (e.g. Stephen King’s The Dark Half, 1989)? Why this motif is so popular? The project of delivering the answers to these questions in a one paper is not straightforward. Therefore, the main purpose of this article is limited to presentation and analysis of a conditionof men in the face of emerging Modernism with a close reference to philosophical ideas of the turn of the century. On such basis, it investigates the foundations of Stevensonian philosophy of dualism. (shrink)

In the teaching of John Paul II’s the need of solidarity globalization is particularly stressed out as well as that of humanization of globalization processes. With the aim of doing it, one should be guided by unchanging social values: the truth, freedom, justice, solidarity, subsidiarity, love. The globalization has two faces: ▪ the benefits which it brings to the world, individual countries and its main beneficiaries, that is international corporations. ▪ negative effects which the developing countries and all people of (...) the world experience (climatic changes, emission of harmful substances, drug addiction, moral nihilism, gradual decrease of human importance). It happens that complex processes caused by economical globalization make their way towards changing a human being into an element of a market, a bartered good or a factor devoid of meaning for decisive choices. As a consequence, a person may feel annihilated by impersonal mechanisms on a world’s scale and may gradually lose his own identity and personal dignity. Key words. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has made enormous contributions to the philosophy of action, epistemology, semantics and philosophy of mind and today is recognized as one of the most important analytical philosophers of the late twentieth century. Davidson's philosophy is characterised not only by its rigour and intellectual integrity but also by its continued interest in dialogue and re-evaluation of its paradigms. In the spirit of this openness, this volume brings together essays on the major themes of Davidson's thought by leading academics, along (...) with individually penned responses by the philosopher himself. (shrink)

The Introduction outlines, in a concise way, the history of the Lvov-Warsaw School—a most unique Polish school of worldwide renown, which pioneered trends combining philosophy, logic, mathematics and language. The author accepts that the beginnings of the School fall on the year 1895, when its founder Kazimierz Twardowski, a disciple of Franz Brentano, came to Lvov on his mission to organize a scientific circle. Soon, among the characteristic features of the School was its serious approach towards philosophical studies and teaching (...) of philosophy, dealing with philosophy and propagation of it as an intellectual and moral mission, passion for clarity and precision, as well as exchange of thoughts, and cooperation with representatives of other disciplines. The genesis is followed by a chronological presentation of the development of the School in the successive years. The author mentions all the key representatives of the School, accompanying the names with short descriptions of their achievements. The development of the School after Poland’s regaining independence in 1918 meant part of the members moving from Lvov to Warsaw, thus providing the other segment to the name—Warsaw School of Logic. The author dwells longer on the activity of the School during the Interwar period—the time of its greatest prosperity, which ended along with the outbreak of World War 2. Attempts made after the War to recreate the spirit of the School are also outlined and the names of continuators are listed accordingly. The presentation ends with some concluding remarks on the contribution of the School to contemporary developments in the fields of philosophy, mathematical logic or computer science in Poland. (shrink)

This article explores the question of how the members of the Lvov-Warsaw School promoted values that can be regarded as components of so-called logical culture. The author argues that these values are strictly connected with science. With references to Łukasiewicz, Czeżowski, and Kotarbiński,the article explores how values shape the logical culture and determines society as directed towards values. The article connects the meta-philosophical perspective with the philosophical one.

The notion of evil spirits influencing human behavior or mental processes is used in many cultures to justify various symptoms or experiences. It is also expressed in psychotic delusions of possession, but there is limited research in this area. This study explores how patients with schizophrenia came to the conclusion that they were possessed, and how this affected help-seeking. Interviews with two men and two women about their experiences and meaning-making were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three main themes were (...) identified: Links between traumatic experiences and psychotic symptoms, The emergence of religious themes in delusional contents, and Reluctance to use medical treatment and instead to seek exorcism. In each case, attributing problems to possession was supported by the local environment and media, led to seeking spiritual help, and delayed diagnostic assessment and treatment. However, using religious coping contributed to the sense of predictability and social support. Clinicians are encouraged to explore the experiences and conflicts expressed by the symptoms which people ascribe to possession and to negotiate alternative explanatory models with their patients. (shrink)

Justification of theorems plays a vital role in any rational human activity. It is indispensable in science. The deductive method of justifying theorems is used in all sciences and it is the only method of justifying theorems in deductive disciplines. It is based on the notion of proof, thus it is a method of proving theorems. In the Warsaw School of Logic (WSL) – the famous branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) – two types of the method: axiomatic deduction method (...) and natural deduction method were developed and practiced. In this paper, both of these methods are briefly discussed with an emphasis on their historical, groundbreaking significance for logic. The axiomatic method by means of rejection (proposed by Jan Łukasiewicz – a co-creator of the WSL), which is the method of the so-called rejection proof (rejection/refutation method) in logical systems and the proving method of generalized natural deduction, which is a hybrid deduction–refutation method of proving theorems, are also outlined in the paper. The author discusses their historical significance. This paper also contains a brief mention of the most significant results which the application of the discussed methods introduced into contemporary scientific research, not only logical one. (shrink)

The Warsaw School of Logic (WSL) was the famous branch of the Lviv-Warsaw School (LWS) – the most important movement in the history of Polish philosophy. Logic made the most important field in the activities of the WSL. The aim of this work is to highlight the role and significance of the WSL in the history of logic in the 20th century.

Logical and philosophical literature provides different classifications of reasoning. In the Polish literature on the subject, for instance, there are three popular ones accepted by representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School: Jan Łukasiewicz, Tadeusz Czeżowski and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (Ajdukiewicz in Logika pragmatyczna [Pragmatic Logic]. PWN, Warsaw (1965, 2nd ed. 1974). Translated as: Pragmatic Logic. Reidel & PWN, Dordrecht, 1975). The author of this paper, having modified those classifications, distinguished the following types of reasoning: (1) deductive and (2) non-deductive, and additionally two (...) types of them in each of the two, depending on the manner of combining their premises with the conclusion through the relation of classical logical entailment. Consequently, the four types of reasoning: unilateral deductive (incl. its sub-types: deductive inference and proof), bilateral deductive (incl. complete induction), and reductive (incl. the sub-types: explanation and verification), logically nonvaluable (incl. inference by analogy, statistic inference), correspond to four operators of derivability. They are defined formally on the ground of Tarski’s axiomatic theory of deductive systems, by means of the consequence operation _Cn_ (Tarski in Monatshefte Math Phys 37:361–404, 1930a, C R Soc Sci Lett Vars 23:22–29, 1930b). Also, certain metalogical properties of these operators are given, as well as their relations with Tarski’s consequence operations \(Cn^+\) ( \(Cn^+ = Cn\) ) and dual consequences \(Cn^{-1}\) (Słupecki in Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego Seria B Nr 3:33–40, 1959, Słupecki et al. in Stud Log 29:76–123, 1971, Wybraniec-Skardowska, in: Wybraniec-Skardowska, Bryll (eds) Z badań nad teorią zdań odrzuconych [Studies in the Theory of Rejected Propositions], Series B, Studia i Monografie, Zeszyty Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej w Opolu, Opole, 1969), and \(Cn^-\) (Wójcicki in Bull Sect Log 2(2):54–57, 1973)). (shrink)

Logic and linguistics have engaged in a many-faceted dialogue since the very beginnings of both disciplines in Antiquity. While participants may have had diverse views over the ages, arguably, the dialogue has always revolved around the relationship between human thought and natural language. While there are those who see these two domains as one and the same, or as a case of one-directional influence , we beg to differ. To us, the long historical tradition of authors such as Arnauld, Boole, (...) Turing, or Jespersen demonstrates the much richer perspectives on language and reasoning that are needed, including connections with intelligence and computability.Another major historical theme in the above dialogue are similarities or convergences between natural and artificial languages. It is clear that natural languages are not only semantically broader, but also much closer to human communication than artificial languages, and so linguistic grammars have long dealt with a larger set of problems than logical formalism. This specal issue of JoLLI consists six selected papers presented in the "Logic and Linguisics" Workshop in UNI-LOG 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, plus two papers by invited authors: Johan van Benthem, and Marcus Kracht and Uno Klein. It contains a number of samples of what is intriguing and promising work at the interfaces of logic and language. (shrink)

Corporate foundations are structures created by companies to conduct socially responsible activities. They are intended to make these activities more profes-sional, better organised and coordinated. The foundations can also serve as a way of creating a positive image of a firm. The aim of the article is to present this form of business activity through illustrating the basic characteristics of corpo-rate foundations and the issues connected with operating them in Poland.