Merely a threat? Worldwide transformation as a chance of development - psychological reflection The author considers the psychological aspects of globalisation, drawing attention to the possible effects of worldwide transformations. She presents definition problems and characterises the main currents and mechanisms of globalisation at the turn of the 20th and 21st century. Several standpoints of contemporaneity researchers concerning the evaluation of the effects of undergoing transformations have also been recalled. Noticing the diverse effects for development and the functioning of individuals (...) and groups, she concentrates on a selected aspect of the living environment, namely, on diversity. She formulates the thesis that the heterogeneity of the environment, which constitutes a characteristic of globalisation, stimulates development in its various phases and fields, optimising particularly the functioning of reflective persons who enter into dialogue with contemporaneity. (shrink)

In his work on internality, identification, and caring, Harry Frankfurt attempts to delineate the organization of agency peculiar to human beings, while avoiding the traditional overintellectualized emphasis on the human capacity to reason about action. The focal point of Frankfurt’s alternative picture is our capacity to make our own motivation the object of reflection. Building upon the observation that marginal agents (such as young children and Alzheimer’s patients) are capable of caring, I show that neither caring nor internality need to (...) depend on the phenomena of reflectiveness. I develop alternative interlocking accounts of caring and internality that are independent of both reflectiveness and evaluation, but that can still do justice to the central role of carings in the organization of agency characteristic of human persons. (shrink)

A being has moral standing if it or its interests matter intrinsically, to at least some degree, in the moral assessment of actions and events. For instance, animals can be said to have moral standing if, other things being equal, it is morally bad to intentionally cause their suffering. This essay focuses on a special kind of moral standing, what I will call “full moral standing” (FMS), associated with persons. In contrast to the var- ious accounts of what ultimately grounds (...) FMS in use in the philosophical literature, I will propose that the emotional capacity to care is a sufficient condition of an individual’s FMS as a person. In developing this account, I will appeal to a set of intuitions not previously mined for this purpose: those generated by conflicts of interests between different life phases of a single individual. (shrink)

Why does a baby who is otherwise cognitively similar to an animal such as a dog nevertheless have a higher moral status? We explain the difference in moral status as follows: the baby can, while a dog cannot, participate as a rearee in what we call “person-rearing relationships,” which can transform metaphysically and evaluatively the baby’s activities. The capacity to engage in these transformed activities has the same type of value as the very capacities (i.e., intellectual or emotional sophistication) that (...) explain unimpaired adult humans’ high moral status. We attempt to extend this account to individuals with severe cognitive impairments. (shrink)

In his work on internality, identification, and caring, Harry Frankfurt attempts to delineate the organization of agency peculiar to human beings, while avoiding the traditional overintellectualized emphasis on the human capacity to reason about action. The focal point of Frankfurt’s alternative picture is our capacity to make our own motivation the object of reflection. Building upon the observation that marginal agents are capable of caring, I show that neither caring nor internality need to depend on the phenomena of reflectiveness. I (...) develop alternative interlocking accounts of caring and internality that are independent of both reflectiveness and evaluation, but that can still do justice to the central role of carings in the organization of agency characteristic of human persons. (shrink)

We discuss applications of our account of moral status grounded in person-rearing relationships: which individuals have higher moral status or not, and why? We cover three classes of cases: (1) cases involving incomplete realization of the capacity to care, including whether infants or fetuses have this incomplete capacity; (2) cases in which higher moral status rests in part on what is required for the being to flourish; (3) hypothetical cases in which cognitive enhancements could, e.g., help dogs achieve human-like cognitive (...) capacities. We thereby show that our account does not have the counterintuitive implications alleged by DeGrazia and other critics. (shrink)

This article discusses what is involved in having full moral status, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status and surveys different views of the grounds of moral status as well as the arguments for attributing a particular degree of moral status on the basis of those grounds.

According to Gawande, Lazaroff “chose badly.” Gawande suggests that physicians may be permitted to intervene in choices of this kind. What makes the temptation to intervene paternalistically in this and similar cases especially strong is that the patient’s choice contradicts his professed values. Paternalism appears less problematic in such cases because, in contradicting his values, the patient seems to sidestep his own autonomy. This chapter addresses the dangers of overextending this interpretation. I argue that it is not so easy to (...) judge when a person is not genuinely exercising autonomy, and that choosing contrary to one’s own values does not necessarily amount to sidestepping one’s autonomy. The key insight is to recognize the importance of the attitude of caring as an integral part of some expressions of autonomy. This will allow us to develop an alternative picture of minimal autonomy, according to which it is possible to choose against one’s values while genuinely exercising autonomy. For practical purposes, in medicine and elsewhere, this means that, in cases like Lazaroff’s, those tempted toward paternalism must exercise particular caution before they deem a choice to be disen- gaged from autonomy: even if a choice contradicts the person’s own values, it might be rooted in caring, and then, despite initial appearances to the contrary, it may still command the highest level of protection against paternalism. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore uncertainty inherent in emotion recognition technologies and the consequences resulting from that phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach The paper is a general overview of the concept; however, it is based on a meta-analysis of multiple experimental and observational studies performed over the past couple of years. Findings The main finding of the paper might be summarized as follows: there is uncertainty inherent in emotion recognition technologies, and the phenomenon is not expressed enough, not addressed (...) enough and unknown by the users of the technology. Practical implications Practical implications of the study are formulated as postulates for the developers, users and researchers dealing with the technologies of automatic emotion recognition. Social implications As technologies that recognize emotions are becoming more and more common, and perhaps more decisions influencing people lives are to come in the next decades, the trustworthiness of the technology is important from a scientific, practical and ethical point of view. Originality/value Studying uncertainty of emotion recognition technologies is a novel approach and is not explored from such a broad perspective before. (shrink)

This study examined individual differences in sensitivity to human-like features of a robot’s behavior. The paradigm comprised a non-verbal Turing test with a humanoid robot. A “programmed” condition differed from a “human-controlled” condition by onset times of the robot’s eye movements, which were either fixed across trials or modeled after prerecorded human reaction times, respectively. Participants judged whether the robot behavior was programmed or human-controlled, with no information regarding the differences between respective conditions. Autistic traits were measured with the autism-spectrum (...) quotient questionnaire in healthy adults. We found that the fewer autistic traits participants had, the more sensitive they were to the difference between the conditions, without explicit awareness of the nature of the difference. We conclude that although sensitivity to fine behavioral characteristics of others varies with social aptitude, humans are in general capable of detecting human-like behavior based on very subtle cues. (shrink)

Based on the growing problem of heart diseases, their efficient diagnosis is of great importance to the modern world. Statistical inference is the tool that most physicians use for diagnosis, though in many cases it does not appear powerful enough. Clustering of patient instances allows finding out groups for which statistical models can be built more efficiently. However, the performance of such an approach depends on the features used as clustering attributes. In this paper, the methodology that consists of combining (...) unsupervised feature selection and grouping to improve the performance of statistical analysis is considered. We assume that the set of attributes used in clustering and statistical analysis phases should be different and not correlated. Thus, the method consisting of selecting reversed correlated features as attributes of cluster analysis is considered. The proposed methodology has been verified by experiments done on three real datasets of cardiovascular cases. The obtained effects have been evaluated regarding the number of detected dependencies between parameters. Experiment results showed the advantage of the presented approach compared to other feature selection methods and without using clustering to support statistical inference. (shrink)

This study examined individual differences in sensitivity to human-like features of a robot’s behavior. The paradigm comprised a non-verbal Turing test with a humanoid robot. A “programmed” condition differed from a “human-controlled” condition by onset times of the robot’s eye movements, which were either fixed across trials or modeled after prerecorded human reaction times, respectively. Participants judged whether the robot behavior was programmed or human-controlled, with no information regarding the differences between respective conditions. Autistic traits were measured with the autism-spectrum (...) quotient questionnaire in healthy adults. We found that the fewer autistic traits participants had, the more sensitive they were to the difference between the conditions, without explicit awareness of the nature of the difference. We conclude that although sensitivity to fine behavioral characteristics of others varies with social aptitude, humans are in general capable of detecting human-like behavior based on very subtle cues. (shrink)

Multicellular organisms contain numerous symbiotic microorganisms, collectively called microbiomes. Recently, microbiomic research has shown that these microorganisms are responsible for the proper functioning of many of the systems of multicellular organisms. This has inclined some scholars to argue that it is about time to reconceptualise the organism and to develop a concept that would place the greatest emphasis on the vital role of microorganisms in the life of plants and animals. We believe that, unfortunately, there is a problem with this (...) suggestion, since there is no such thing as a universal concept of the organism which could constitute a basis for all biological sciences. Rather, the opposite is true: numerous alternative definitions exist. Therefore, comprehending how microbiomics is changing our understanding of organisms may be a very complex matter. In this paper we will demonstrate that this pluralism proves that claims about a change in our understanding of organisms can be treated as both true and untrue. Mainly, we assert that the existing concepts differ substantially, and that only some of them have to be reconsidered in order to incorporate the discoveries of microbiomics, while others are already flexible enough to do so. Taking into account the plurality of conceptualisations within different branches of modern biology, we will conduct our discussion using the developmental and the cooperation–conflict concepts of the organism. Then we will explain our results by referring to the recent philosophical debate on the nature of the concept of the organism within biology. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to examine some important features of Peirce's and Wittgenstein's accounts of the nature of signs. The analysis shows that there are at least four points, regarding the nature of signs, on which Peirce and Wittgenstein agree. These are: the triadic nature of signs, the presence of degenerate signs in our discourses, the role of rules in the constitution of meaning, and the indispensable role of a community in creating and maintaining the network of signs. (...) Discovering these similarities does not mean that Peirce's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of semiotics are identical, as their authors make different assumptions about e.g. the aims of semiosis, but they nevertheless reach very similar conclusions. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has long provided fruitful resources for the study of issues in medical ethics. In particular, study of the moral virtues of the good doctor—like kindness, fairness and good judgement—have provided insights into the nature of medical professionalism and the ethical demands on the medical practitioner as a moral person. Today, a substantial literature exists exploring the virtues in medical practice and many commentators advocate an emphasis on the inculcation of the virtues of good medical practice in medical education (...) and throughout the medical career. However, until very recently, no empirical studies have attempted to investigate which virtues, in particular, medical doctors and medical students tend to have or not to have, nor how these virtues influence how they think about or practise medicine. The question of what virtuous medical practice is, is vast and, as we have written elsewhere, the question of how to study doctors’ moral character is fraught with difficulty. In this paper, we report the results of a first-of-a-kind study that attempted to explore these issues at three medical schools in the United Kingdom. We identify which character traits are important in the good doctor in the opinion of medical students and doctors and identify which virtues they say of themselves they possess and do not possess. Moreover, we identify how thinking about the virtues contributes to doctors’ and medical students’ thinking about common moral dilemmas in medicine. In ending, we remark on the implications for medical education. (shrink)

The paper aims at indicating opportunities and threats faced by gender studies in Poland. The author presents institutional problems (i.e. organizational, financial), which limit dynamic development of the discipline and its impact on the society. She also discusses tensions between an academic affiliation of gender studies and its political aspirations rooted in the tradition of feminist movement. Finally, the author describes recent methodological debates on gender discourse—its theoretical inspirations and practical use.

It is commonly accepted that we discuss the Gothic in terms of the margin. These two seem to be inseparable and associating them appears “just natural.” However, in light of the contemporary critical debate on the ubiquity of the Gothic, the mode’s “natural” marginality might appear somewhat out of place. While the Gothic is still increasingly popular in popular culture, it has also become incredibly popular among literary scholars. In fact, it not only permeates the culture we live in, but (...) it also appears to occupy a mainstream position in academia these days. Viewing the Gothic as a notion shaped to a certain extent by the critic, this article investigates-and reconsiders-the persistence of the Gothic margin in contemporary critical discourse. Following Paul A. Bové’s consideration of the ways in which institutionalized criticism partakes in discourse, it sees contemporary Gothic criticism as at least potentially operating within discourse in Michel Foucault’s terms, and thus considers the possibility of the Gothic margin being in fact a critical construct, functional within the contemporary discourse of criticism. Hence, the article poses questions about the origin of Gothic marginality, the contemporary status of the Gothic margin and its potential functionality, and finally, possible results of the loss of the marginal status for the Gothic as a critical object. It seeks the answers by means of scrutinizing critical accounts, such as Fred Botting and Dale Townshend’s introduction to the CriticalConcepts series on the Gothic, and by contrasting different attempts at presenting the Gothic and its status. Finally, it considers the distinction between the past-the era of critical neglect-and the present-allegedly the times of the vindication of the Gothic. In so doing, it aims at determining whether and why the marginality of the Gothic could indeed turn out to be constructed by the critics. (shrink)

Axiological Character of Egotic Sphere in Tischner’s ThoughtThe paper presents the conception of egotic consciousness understood from the axiological and phenomenological perspective. In the work Fenomenologia świadomości egotycznej Tischner presents phenomenological considerations about self-consciousness. In the light of the results of analyses conducted by Tischner, egotic consciousness is understood as axiological sphere. In the perspective of the phenomenology of egotic consciousness, being a result of revealing Tischner’s original thought, in its beginning, Husserl’s conception of transcendental consciousness is one of the (...) possibilities. (shrink)

Virtue-approaches to medical ethics are becoming ever more influential. Virtue theorists advocate redefining right or good action in medicine in terms of the character of the doctor performing the action. In medical education, too, calls are growing to reconceive medical education as a form of character formation. Empirical studies of doctors’ ethics from a virtue-perspective, however, are few and far between. In this respect, theoretical and empirical study of medical ethics are out of alignment. In this paper, we survey the (...) empirical study of medical ethics and find that most studies of doctors’ ethics are rules- or principles-based and not virtue-based. We outline the challenges that exist for studying medical ethics empirically from a virtue-based perspective and canvas the runners and riders in the effort to find virtue-based assessments of medical ethics. (shrink)

The central theme of Byrne’s book is the fundamental moral standing of people who are mentally handicapped. Most ethical theories and ordinary moral practice deem it uncontroversial that we owe special concern and respect to ordinary adult human beings; this concern and respect is the locus of most widely recognized moral obligations. Yet many theoretical approaches to ethics explicitly or implicitly call into question whether the same ethical treatment ought to be extended to the mentally handicapped. In seeking and providing (...) explanation for the ethical status we accord human beings, ethical theories point to valuable traits of humans—their rational capacities, reflective self- awareness, capacity for autonomy, the richness of experience these capacities make possible, and so on—traits that mentally handicapped individuals typically possess only in a truncated form, or lack altogether. Byrne’s goal is to rebut this widely accepted theoretical approach and to develop an alternative justification of the special ethical status of humans, one that applies in equal measure to all members of our species, including the mentally handicapped. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, an entity has moral status if and only if it or its interest matters morally for its own sake. Some philosophers, who think of moral status in terms of duties and rights owed to an entity, allow that moral status can come in degrees, with only some beings having status of the highest degree – that is, full moral status (FMS). We critically review the competing accounts of what qualifies one for FMS. Some accounts demand cognitive sophistication, which (...) excludes many children, while others are inclusive of children but fail by (a) putting children morally on a par with most animals (experiencing subject of a life), (b) invoking criteria of dubious moral relevance (potentiality, membership in a biological species), or (c) not securing impartial moral status (special relationships). We end with our own account, which attempts to rectify such problems, addressing specifically the moral status of children. (shrink)

Against the ideal of value-free science I argue that science is not––and cannot be––value-free and that relevant values are both cognitive and moral. I develop an argument by indicating various aspects of the value-ladenness of science. The recognition of the value-ladenness of science requires rethinking our understanding of the rationality and responsibility of science. Its rationality cannot be seen as merely instrumental––as it was seen by the ideal of value-free science––for this would result in limiting the autonomy of science and (...) reducing scientists to “minds to hire”. The scientific rationality must be seen as practical rationality which takes into account the full horizon of values. The scientific responsibility must also be broaden in scope and type. On this basis I draw three practical conclusions concerning the organization of research and training of young scientists, appealing to Plato’s claim that those most capable of healing are also those most capable of harming. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between work engagement and the psychological traits of employees, such as attitudes towards work and work ethic. Additionally, the study included demographic characteristics of employees and organizational characteristics. Research was conducted using the Polish adaptations of two well known methods: Multidimensional Work Ethic Profile and Utrecht Work Enagagement Scale, as well as the Work Attitude Questionnaire - a new Polish method. 360 adult employees of two large Polish regions took part (...) in the study. The analysis showed a significant influence of hedonic-autotelic attitude, as well as four dimensions of work ethic on work engagement. It seems to be an important conclusion that work engagement turned out to be far more determined by the subject’s psychological traits than demographic and organizational ones. These results, indicating the special role of the perception of work as a central value, can be used only in the area of attitudes towards work formed during adolescence but also in the area of motivating the employees by the organization. (shrink)

In the paper, we study a model of influence in a social network. It is assumed that each player has an inclination to say YES or NO which, due to influence of other players, may be different from the decision of the player. The point of departure here is the concept of the Hoede-Bakker index - the notion which computes the overall decisional 'power' of a player in a social network. The main drawback of the Hoede-Bakker index is that it (...) hides the actual role of the influence function, analyzing only the final decision in terms of success and failure. In this paper, we separate the influence part from the group decision part, and focus on the description and analysis of the influence part. We propose among other descriptive tools a definition of a (weighted) influence index of a coalition upon an individual. Moreover, we consider different influence functions representative of commonly encountered situations. Finally, we propose a suitable definition of a modified decisional power. (shrink)

To construct a synthetic cell we need to understand the rules that permit life. A central idea in modern biology is that in addition to the four entities making reality, matter, energy, space and time, a fifth one, information, plays a central role. As a consequence of this central importance of the management of information, the bacterial cell is organised as a Turing machine, where the machine, with its compartments defining an inside and an outside and its metabolism, reads and (...) expresses the genetic program carried by the genome. This highly abstract organisation is implemented using concrete objects and dynamics, and this is at the cost of repeated incompatibilities (frustration), which need to be sorted out by appropriate «patches». After describing the organisation of the genome into the paleome (sustaining and propagating life) and the cenome (permitting life in context), we describe some chemical hurdles that the cell as to cope with, ending with the specific case of the methionine salvage pathway. (shrink)

Tributes to Professor Andrzej Kopcewicz - Agnieszka Salska New Media Effects on Traditional News Sources: A Review of the State of American Newspapers - Richard Profozich Review of The Body, ed. by Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow - Grzegorz Kość “Taste good iny?”: Images of and from Australian Indigenous Literature - Jared Thomas Speaks with Teresa Podemska-Abt Engaging the “Forbidden Texts” of Philosophy - Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper.

Richard Swinburne (Swinburne and Shoemaker 1984; Swinburne 1986) argues that human beings currently alive have non{bodily immaterial parts called souls. In his main argument in support of this conclusion (modal argument), roughly speaking, from the assumption that it is logically possible that a human being survives the destruction of their body and a few additional premises, he infers the actual existence of souls. After a brief presentation of the argument we describe the main known objection to it, called the substitution (...) objection (SO for short), which is raised by Alston and Smythe (1994), Zimmerman (1991) and Stump and Kretzmann (1996). We then explain Swinburne's response to it (1996). This constitutes a background for the discussion that follows. First, we formalize Swinburne's argument in a quantified propositional modal language so that it is logically valid and contains no tacit assumptions, clearing up some notational issues as we go. Having done that, we explain why we find Swinburne's response unsatisfactory. Next, we indicate that even though SO is quite compelling (albeit for a slightly different reason than the one given previously in the literature), a weakening of one of the premises yields a valid argument for the same conclusion and yet immune to SO. Even this version of the argument, we argue, is epistemically circular. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to analyse selected anthropometric features of children, adolescents and young adults from middle-class families in Kolkata, India, by BMI and adiposity categories. Standardized anthropometric measurements of 4194 individuals aged 7–21 were carried out between the years 2005 and 2011. The results were compared by BMI and adiposity categories. Statistical significance was assessed using two-way-ANOVA and linear regression analysis was performed. The study population could be differentiated in terms of BMI and adiposity categories for all (...) examined anthropometric characteristics. After taking age into consideration, differences were observed for males in the case of body height and humerus breadth in BMI and adiposity categories, and for femur breadth in the case of adiposity categories. For females, differences were noted in body height measurements in BMI and adiposity categories, a sum of skinfold thicknesses in BMI categories, and upper-arm and calf circumferences in adiposity categories. The patterns of differences in the BMI categories were found to be similar to those in adiposity categories. The linear regression analysis results showed that there was a significant relationship between BMI and body fat ratio in the examined population. Underweight individuals, and those with low adiposity, were characterized by lower extremity circumferences and skeletal breadths. These features reached highest values in overweight/obese persons, characterized by high body fat. However, the differences observed between each BMI and adiposity category, in most cases, were only present in early childhood. (shrink)

The Jubilee Centre’s new report, Virtuous Medical Practice, examines the place of character and values in the medical profession in Britain today. Its findings are drawn from a UK-focused multi-methods study of 549 doctors and aspiring doctors at three career stages, first and final year students and experienced doctors.