The essay attempts to outline the historical ideological ties between Spain and its former Latin American colonies, with the main accent on the period following Spain’s and most of Latin America’s conversion to democracy in the wake of the fall of the Franco regime and other Latin-American military dictatorships. The author offers a detailed analysis, focusing especially on the democratic, decidedly pro-European and left-liberal government in Spain and its impact on Latin America, most of which today shows clear leftist tendencies. (...) Also discussed are Latin-American reflections on universalism. (shrink)

José Ortega y Gasset not only expressed his views on subjects such as art or mass culture but he was also one of the promoters and founders of a United Europe which he considered a cultural unity. However, his view on the proper functioning of multicultural societies was as skeptical as his attitude towards the possibility of constructing an unified world that could be based on cultural coexistence of the Western World societies. This essay is an introduction and summary of (...) my detailed study under preparation on the idea of Europe in contemporary Spanish thought. An historical interpretation of Spanish civilization from its earliest beginnings to the present time is presented in the article. I undertake the problem of Spain’s European vocation, specific features of its Christian culture, especially Iberian links with the Islamic world and the question of changes in Spanish identity. The article presents reflections on Europe by the Generation of ‘98 Spanish writers and thinkers (chiefly Angel Ganivet, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maeztu) who, in the face of defeat (1898) in the Spanish-American War, proclaimed a program of moral and cultural rebirth for Spain. Their ambivalent attitude towards Europe was rejected by José Ortega y Gasset and Salvador de Madariaga, both the most pro-European 20th century Spanish intellectuals. The problem of Spanish relation to Europe was also widely discussed after the Civil War under General Franco regime. The evolution from initial isolation to a fuller integration with Europe of the regime and its conservative Catholic culture are also shown in the article. Much attention is devoted to the present-day civil and European Spain led by democratic socialists. (shrink)

This essay is an introduction and summary of my detailed study under preparation on the idea of Europe in contemporary Spanish thought. An historical interpretation of Spanish civilization from its earliest beginnings to the present time is presented in the article. I undertake the problem of Spain’s European vocation, specific features of its Christian culture, especially Iberian links with the Islamic world and the question of changes in Spanish identity. The article presents reflections on Europe by the Generation of ‘98 (...) Spanish writers and thinkers (chiefly Angel Ganivet, Miguel de Unamuno and Ramiro de Maeztu) who, in the face of defeat (1898) in the Spanish-American War, proclaimed a program of moral and cultural rebirth for Spain. Their ambivalent attitude towards Europe was rejected by José Ortega y Gasset and Salvador de Madariaga, both the most pro-European 20th century Spanish intellectuals. The problem of Spanishrelation to Europe was also widely discussed after the Civil War under General Franco regime. The evolution from initial isolation to a fuller integration with Europe of the regime and its conservative Catholic culture are also shown in the article. Much attention is devoted to the present-day civil and European Spain led by democratic socialists. (shrink)

The paper discusses the place occupied by Latin America and Eastern Europe in the contemporary world-system in the era of increasing globalization. It discusses the dominant types of consciousness in both parts of the world, where a tendency to overcome dependence and peripheral position are noticeable as is a desire for democracy and foreign relations based on partnership. What is long raised and very characteristic for thinkers coming from those very different regions of the globe are attempts to create a (...) new universalistic philosophy, more or less utopian, for the whole of mankind. (shrink)

The author outlines several globalization theories, focusing on those best represented in Polish literature. He clearly disagrees with the general definitions and interpretations of today’s globalization process, which he sets against the Polish universalistic tradition and its views on the world’s growing internationalization and universalization. Polish universalism embraces several nationally-oriented and Christian-universalistic philosophical schools.

In the history of human thought, various writers have called their philosophies universal, universalistic or simply “universalism”. Almost every philosophical or scientific theory claims to be of universal importance, to be a generalization and universality, but relatively few have believed that the term “universalism” to be the only adequate, and therefore only viable, description of their own thought system or newly constructed theory. Efforts to construct, develop or reconstruct a theory, viewpoint, vision or universalistic attitude—or merely to reinforce universalistic postulates—have (...) long been undertaken in many different countries. Such attempts include those that implicitly assume or imply some sort of universalism. I would like to emphasize that I am principally interested in the visions, frequently appearing in Poland, whose authors, and not merely commentators, have defined their own philosophy, more or less refined, as universalism. John Paul’s universalism is a continuation of a tradition of universalist thinking lasting two thousands years. It makes it possible to look at the reality of the individual man and of the whole of humanity in their personalistic and communitarian dimensions at one time. Christian universalism has been closely tied to the concept ofuniversalism that was related to the Pope and imperial Rome, or even to Byzantium. (shrink)

Under the influence of today’s post-modern human sciences and their relativistic, skepticism-imbued theories the universalism idea, until recently the philosophical driving-force behind efforts to build a global human community based on universal principles of rationality, has lost much of its attractiveness to pluralism. However, despite the recognition that human rationality expresses itself in many different ways, strivings towards a universal human community have by no means ceased. Some take the form of political projects, others are more spontaneous and take place (...) beyond both politics and philosophy. The present reflections on these strivings’ success chances go out from ideas formulated by Eugeniusz Górski in his study Civil Society, Pluralism and Universalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to state and describe realisations of the theoretical literary intertextuality at school. In the perception of literary works both at school and in the study of literature, operation of various categories of intertextuality can be distinguished, e.g. intratextual and intertextual, genological and intersemiotic, and even metatextual types. The materials studied confirm that the intertextual and intersemiotic types of analysis are most frequent.

This paper analyses whether current explainable AI (XAI) techniques can help to address taxpayer concerns about the use of AI in taxation. As tax authorities around the world increase their use of AI-based techniques, taxpayers are increasingly at a loss about whether and how the ensuing decisions follow the procedures required by law and respect their substantive rights. The use of XAI has been proposed as a response to this issue, but it is still an open question whether current XAI (...) techniques are enough to meet existing legal requirements. The paper approaches this question in the context of a case study: a prototype tax fraud detector trained on an anonymized dataset of real-world cases handled by the Buenos Aires (Argentina) tax authority. The decisions produced by this detector are explained through the use of various classification methods, and the outputs of these explanation models are evaluated on their explanatory power and on their compliance with the legal obligation that tax authorities provide the rationale behind their decision-making. We conclude the paper by suggesting technical and legal approaches for designing explanation mechanisms that meet the needs of legal explanation in the tax domain. (shrink)

Henryk Kurczab is a literature specialist, educator, lecturer and professor of Rzeszów Univertsity as well as Rzeszów College of Pedagogics. His book is a plenteous source of knowledge concerning dialogue, translatability and interaction of arts in the sense of semiotic ‘meaning’ and ‘sign’. The subject matter chosen by the author, i.e. arts correspondence, its own exemplification as well as interpretations, distinguish his work by individaulizing cognitive values.

This book is an attempt to demonstrate that the basic principles of phonological organization boil down to the interaction between the strength of nuclei as licensers of phonological structure and various non-rerankable scales of complexity occurring at different levels of phonological representation. The licensing relation between nuclei and the preceding onsets on the one hand, and governing relations between consonants, which are to a great extent determined by their internal melodic structure, allow us to view the phonological representation as a (...) self-organizing system, which is able to pr. (shrink)

Medical practice is ideally based on robust, relevant research. However, the lack of disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has motivated “innovative practice” to improve patients’ well-being despite insufficient evidence for the regular use of such interventions in health systems treating millions of patients. Innovative or new non-validated practice poses at least three distinct ethical questions: first, about the responsible application of new non-validated practice to individual patients ; second, about the way in which data from new non-validated practice are communicated (...) via the scientific and lay press ; and third, about the prospect of making new non-validated interventions widely available before more definitive testing. We argue that the authors of metabolic enhancement protocols for Alzheimer’s disease have overstated the evidence in favor of these interventions within the scientific and lay press, failing to communicate weaknesses in their data and uncertainty about their conclusions. Such unmeasured language may create false hope, cause financial harm, undermine informed consent, and frustrate the production of generalizable knowledge necessary to face the societal problems posed by this devastating disease. We therefore offer more stringent guidelines for responsible innovation in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. (shrink)