In the article I compare two theories of existence in time: Simons’s conception of continuants and occurrents and Ingarden’s ontology of temporally determined objects (i.e. objects enduring in time, processes and events). They can be regarded as different positions in the controversy over substantialism. The main problem of this controversy can be expressed by the question: what is the primary way of being in time—endurance or perdurance? Ingarden and Simons admit that there exist objects characterized by both ways of being (...) but for Simons, unlike for Ingarden, perdurants are the basic objects which the world is composed of. My aim is not to assess both ontologies but to use the comparison of them as the basis of a reconstruction of the principal problems contained in the controversy over substantialism. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Religia i prawda [Religion and Truth], by Piotr Moskal.

Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and physiological responses. Based (...) on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments. (shrink)

What kind of challenge does sexual and racial difference pose for postmodern ethics? What is the relation between ethical obligation and feminist interpretations of embodiment, passion, and eros? How can we negotiate between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic struggles against domination, injustice, and equality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other? We cannot address such questions, Ziarek argues, without putting into dialogue discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, (...) and the idea of radical democracy. Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers - including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray - the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. (shrink)

Changes in Metaphor Comprehension in Children The aim of the study was to follow the implicit patterns in children's responses to metaphor describing human by means of a name of animal. The main problem in present study was: which traits of topic would be spontaneously used by children from three age groups? The study followed a quasi-experimental design. The subjects were 77 children from three age groups: 5;6-6;0, 8;0-8;6, 9;6-10;0. The dependent variable: the level of comprehension of 18 metaphors with (...) vehicles from the animal domain and one topic - human. The variable was measured through individual Piagetian interviews. The study confirmed the hypothesis that the ability to activate metaphorical thinking in order to describe human attributes increases with age, with a turning point around 8 year of life. The traits mentioned by subjects could be classified into five categories: unambiguous evaluations, physical features, behavior, behavioral traits, dispositions and agency. Older children assigned more human dispositional traits, thoughts and preferences to the objects of metaphors. Younger ones often focused on the physical features of animals. With age, the tendency to give positive evaluations to the objects of metaphors increases. (shrink)

The subject of this article is the role of inductive reasoning (in the meaning of induction by incomplete enumeration) in the methodology of mathematics. The following types of induction have been distinguished: I 1) induction which causes formulation of axioms of different mathematical theories; I 2) enumerative induction which causes formulation of theorems on the basis of a finite number of cases; I 3) induction concerning the range of application of mathematical symbols; I 4) induction generalising the properties of finite (...) sets to the infinite case; I 5) induction pointing to analogies between problems belonging to different domains of mathematics. Inductive reasoning should not be put against the creativity of scientists, as induction is often an important, though not always conscious part of our cognition. The concept of notional metaphor can be useful for explaining the nature of inductive reasoning. With this concept, a general scheme of inductive reasoning has been proposed, which, in the opinion of the authors, is more adequate for presenting the nature of induction than traditional approaches. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the problem of relationship between processes and enduring objects. In the history of philosophy the enduring objects have been conceived as subjects of processes but it is rather unclear what has been seen as a subject of change in them and especially how being a subject of change is different from being a subject of properties. The author’s attempt to elucidate the relationship in question starts with an analysis of the commonsense view of processes and (...) enduring objects. He subsequently presents Roman Ingarden’s ontology of processes and enduring objects. The third part of the paper contains an analysis of main problems of this ontology. The author puts forward two theses: to be a subject of a process is not the same as to have some processual aspects; processes are special subjects of properties. (shrink)

The author examines the so-called paradox of identity through time. As he argues, the paradox is often elaborated by enumeration of several theses which generate a contradiction. According to these conditions, change is paradoxical and even impossible because it seems that objects persist as unchanging, or that every change destroys an object and generates a new one . In the first part of the paper the author discusses Roxanne Marie Kurtz’s version of such a view. Subsequently he analyses typical attempts (...) to resolve the paradox. The third section is devoted to applicability of the relation “=” to the correct formulation of the problem of identity through time. He argues that analytic philosophers too hastily decided that identity through time is a strict logical identity holding between quite mysterious “object before change” and “object after change”. It seems that such a view follows from the unjustified presupposition that logic is prior to ontology, i.e. that logic provides a categorial basis for ontology. Apart from this, the exact ontological status of the states described by expressions “object before change” and “object after change” escape our knowledge. In the fourth section he examines the condition of a-temporal exemplification based on the condition of simple exemplification . He argues that the latter is equivocal because one can distinguish several kinds of dependence . Some of them do not have to imply the extrinsic character of the properties involved in change. Key words IDENTITY, TIME, PARADOX. (shrink)

Patricia Highsmith’s stated reason for writing The Talented Mr. Ripley was to see if she could elicit empathetic engagement for her immoral protagonist Tom Ripley. Amongst other factors, she achieves her goal by allowing readers to align affectively with the protagonist’s road to self-discovery. Her experiment culminates with Tom’s fruition into an aggressive consumer, thus resolving his and the readers’ apprehensions. On the other hand, Anthony Minghella’s Ripley leaves more room for interpretation. In his interviews, the filmmaker states that he (...) does not aim for his protagonist to remain the sociopath from Highsmith’s novel. Instead, his story explores the absence of a father figure and how it affects his main characters. Consequently, he frames Tom as an underprivileged youth whose emotional instability brings about his demise. To this end, he employs victimization scenes, as well as moral disengagement cues. I argue that, amongst other factors, such an application of an industry-tested design of emphatic concern elicitation obscures the filmmaker’s initial intent. As a result, Minghella’s Tom can be seen as a manipulative sociopath, as well as a victimized tragic hero. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 4 Seiten: 617-653.

In this paper I present the Ingardenian distinction between inseparability and dependence. My considerations are both historical and systematic. The historical part of the paper accomplishes two goals. First, I show that in the Brentanian tradition the problem of existential conditioning was entangled into parts—whole theories. The best examples of such an approach are Kazimierz Twardowski’s theory of the object and Edmund Husserl’s theory of parts and wholes. Second, I exhibit the context within which Ingarden distinguished inseparability and dependence. Moreover, (...) Ingarden’s motivations are presented: the problem of understanding the Husserlian concept of “immanent transcendence,” the issue of the existence of purely intentional objects, and finally the problem of the relationship between individual objects and ideas. The systematic part deals with the ambiguity of Ingarden’s definition of inseparability. I seek to improve this definition by reference to the distinction between absolute and summative wholes. I also present some divisions of inseparability and dependence and investigate whether these types of existential conditioning are reflexive, symmetric, or transitive. (shrink)

Ewa Ziarek fully articulates a feminist aesthetics, focusing on the struggle for freedom in women's literary and political modernism and the devastating impact of racist violence and sexism. She examines the contradiction between women's transformative literary and political practices and the oppressive realities of racist violence and sexism, and she situates these tensions within the entrenched opposition between revolt and melancholia in studies of modernity and within the friction between material injuries and experimental aesthetic forms. Ziarek's political and aesthetic investigations (...) concern the exclusion and destruction of women in politics and literary production and the transformation of this oppression into the inaugural possibilities of writing and action. Her study is one of the first to combine an in-depth engagement with philosophical aesthetics, especially the work of Theodor W. Adorno, with women's literary modernism, particularly the writing of Virginia Woolf and Nella Larsen, along with feminist theories on the politics of race and gender. By bringing seemingly apolitical, gender-neutral debates about modernism's experimental forms together with an analysis of violence and destroyed materialities, Ziarek challenges both the anti-aesthetic subordination of modern literature to its political uses and the appreciation of art's emancipatory potential at the expense of feminist and anti-racist political struggles. (shrink)

While many linguists view language as either a cognitive or a social phenomenon, it is clearly both: a language can live only in individual minds, but it is learned from examples of utterances produced by speakers engaged in communicative interaction. In other words, language is what (Keller 1994. On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Taylor & Francis) calls a “phenomenon of the third kind”, emerging from the interaction of a micro-level and a macro-level. Such a dual perspective (...) helps us understand some otherwise puzzling phenomena, including “non-psychological” generalizations, or situations where a pattern which is arguably present in a language is not explicitly represented in most speakers’ minds. This paper discusses two very different examples of such generalizations, genitive marking on masculine nouns in Polish and some restrictions on questions with long-distance dependencies in English. It is argued that such situations are possible because speakers may represent “the same” knowledge at different levels of abstraction: while a few may have extracted an abstract generalization, others approximate their behaviour by relying on memorised exemplars or lexically specific patterns. Thus, a cognitively realistic usage-based construction grammar needs to distinguish between patterns in the usage of a particular speech community (a social phenomenon) and patterns in speakers’ minds (a cognitive phenomenon). (shrink)

Quid ais has as its two main functions in Latin to express surprise (“what are you saying?”), and to get the addressee’s attention (“tell me something…”); the latter type has a commanding tone. It is proven that quid ais in Plautus has a decidedly male character; that is, he avoided giving the phrase to women. To explain this finding, it is noted that 91% of instances of quid ais in Plautus are of the second “attention-getting” type. With its imperatival force, (...) this quid ais was probably not felt to be appropriate for Plautus’ female characters whose speech is generally more polite and deferential than male speech. Indeed, in the three cases when a woman does utter the phrase, she either assumes a male role, or belongs to a type which in recent scholarship has been shown to have a “commanding” style of speech: the meretrix or the uxor dotata. (shrink)

Latin is one of the best documented and most extensively studied of any language: nearly every area has been subject to continued and intense scrutiny, with ideas from recent subfields of linguistics providing a fresh look at some old topics. The Latin future imperative, the form that conveys commands for non-immediate execution, constitutes precisely such a topic in Latin linguistics: from the Roman Imperial period on, students have demarcated the usages, syntax and context-specific features associated with this form; more recently, (...) scholars have applied ideas from various linguistic subfields to achieve new insights. Given that the –toimperative is so well understood, it might come as a surprise to find that some matters pertaining to it are still debated. This paper will address four such contested areas: first, its register ; second, the form's politeness ; third, the temporal scope of the –toimperative ; and fourth, the sensitivity of the form to social factors, that is, to the identity of the speaker and the addressee. (shrink)

Pascal’s Wager is one of the most interesting and original arguments for the existence of God. It does not invoke advanced metaphysical concepts; instead, it employs the methods and concepts of probability calculus. Its argumentative power mainly rests on the appropriate interpretation of the determinants of human existence, which are taken to include our cognitive, moral and physical limitations. The article discusses different aspects of Pascal’s reasoning. In particular, it examines the wager in the context of Grace as something that (...) Pascal himself believed in. (shrink)

Artykuł porusza kwestie determinizmu oraz wolnej woli. Zagadnienie to, jak się zdaje, pomimo upływu lat nadal budzi wiele emocji i pozostaje aktualne. Pytanie o ludzką wolność jest bowiem jednym z tych, od których odpowiedzi głęboko uzależnione jest nasze pojmowanie własnej egzystencji, ogólny obraz świata, stosunek do rozmaitych koncepcji metafizycznych, a także rozumienie takich pojęć jak: moralność, sprawiedliwość, wina, odpowiedzialność czy autonomia. Z determinizmem dodatkowo łączy się egzystencjalny lęk o to, czy jesteśmy w stanie panować nad własnymi decyzjami i czy życie (...) nasze, w związku z tym, nie jest li tylko igraszką w rękach losu. Celem niniejszego artykułu, którego inspiracją była analiza pism F. Nietzschego1, jest próba uzasadnienia stanowiska odrzucającego koncepcję wolnej woli jako swego rodzaju złu dzenia panującego w ogólnoludzkiej świadomości. W związku z tym, tekst w głównej mierze koncentruje się na argumentach negujących idee wolnej woli, w mniejszym zaś stopniu na tych, które mogłyby przemawiać za jej utrzymaniem: nie uwzględnia np. zagadnień związanych z fizyką kwantową czy zasadą Heisenberga. Zamiarem moim było zabranie głosu w sporze o wolną wolę i jednoznaczne opowiedzenie się za stanowiskiem deterministycznym w taki sposób, aby sprowokować Czytelnika do własnych przemyśleń, a nawet zainspirować do napisania własnego artykułu, w którym będzie On argumentował np. za utrzymaniem koncepcji wolnej woli poprzez wskazanie na błędy w moim rozumowaniu. W tekście staram się m.in. sformułować definicję wolnej woli, przedstawić jej genezę oraz konsekwencje wynikające z przyjęcia deterministycznej wizji świata. (shrink)

This paper discusses the difference between the factual and the legal, both as to terms and as to statements, on the analogy of the methodologists' distinction of the observational and the theoretical. No absolute distinction exists, and pure `brute facts' do not exist in law because of the socialisation of physical world and juridification of the social world.; also, the effect of evidentiary constraints. Law/fact distinction depends on `applicability rules'. The problem of `mixed terms' is partly a matter of judicial (...) pragmatics, partly to do with the character of applicability rules, and their extensiveness. Semantic realism versus semantic instrumentalism in respect of legal terms -- the latter preferred. Tendency to abstract terms in advanced legal orders. (shrink)

This paper examines early syntactic development from a usage-based perspective, using transcripts of the spontaneous speech of two Englishspeaking children recorded at relatively dense intervals at ages 2;0 and 3;0. We focus primarily on the children’s question constructions, in an effort to determine (i) what kinds of units they initially extract from the input (their size and degree of specificity / abstractness); (ii) what operations they must perform in order to construct novel utterances using these units; and (iii) how the (...) units and the operations change between the ages of two and three. In contrast to nativist theories of language development which suggest that children are working with abstract syntactic categories from an early point in development, we suggest that the data are better accounted for by the proposal that children begin with lexically specific phrases and gradually build up a repertoire of increasingly abstract constructions. (shrink)

In the paper I discuss the problem of the nature of the relationship between objects and their properties. There are three contexts of the problem: of comparison, of change and of interaction. Philosophical explanations of facts indicated in the three contexts need reference to properties and to a proper understanding of a relationship between them and their bearers. My aim is to get closer to this understanding with the use of some models but previously I present the substantialist theory of (...) object and shortly argue for its main theses. The two models enabling us the understanding of the subject–properties structure are: the plastic stuff model and the functional model. On the ground of the first a subject is compared to a piece of plastic stuff which is informed by different shapes. Properties are ways how a subject is, they “give” some “figure” to a subject. The core idea of the second model is that essences (performing the role of subjects) are immanent functional laws governing correlations of properties. As such they are similar to mathematical functions which are saturated by values. The relationship between a subject and properties can be grasped by analogy to such a saturation. (shrink)

In this article the author analyzes the problem stated by Ingarden in his ontology: under what conditions can the subject−properties structure and the whole−parts structure coexist in one object? After the presentation of Ingarden’s doctrines concerning both structures, the author argues that for Ingarden a whole is nothing over and above a plurality of objects linked by relations. However, Ingarden was convinced that a compound object is not identical with a whole which is associated with it. Then the author analyzes (...) the difference between the two types of compound objects: higher-order objects and compound, primarily individual objects. The former are founded on parts while the latter are such that their parts are founded on them. Finally, the author considers Ingarden’s theory as an answer to the one–many problem. The author argues that Ingarden’s conception of a higher-order object cannot solve this problem, and he also points to some difficulties concerning primarily individual compound objects. (shrink)