Henryk Elzenberg (1887–1967)—a Polish philosopher, axiologist and existentialist claimed that creativity concealed the secret of life and death. Creativity connects many extremities and contradictions, it requires sacrifices, asceticism, perfectionism, but also yearning, liberty, sensuality and desire.

Henryk Elzenberg, a Polish axiologist, existentialist wrote about loneliness in the 30 contexts of the soul, virtues, protection, culturalization and personality, etc. He bases the negative image of loneliness on the identification of deficits, and the positive one on the identification of their transcendence (love, freedom, salvation). My text is an attempt to reconstruct the philosophy of loneliness on the basis of the book Kłopot z istnieniem. Aforyzmy w porządku czasu, 1907–1963 [Trouble with Existence. Aphorisms in the Order of (...) Time]. (shrink)

An important approach to understand how the brain gives rise to consciousness is to probe the depth of unconscious processing, thus to define the key features that cause conscious awareness. Here, we investigate the possibility for subliminal stimuli to shape the context for unconscious processing. Context effects have generally been assumed to require consciousness. In the present experiment, unconscious context processing was investigated by looking at the impact of the context on the response activation elicited by a subliminal prime. We (...) compared the effects of the same subliminal prime on target processing when the prime was embedded in different unconscious contexts. Results showed that the same prime can evoke opposite responses depending on the unconscious context in which it is presented. Taken together, the results of this study show that context effects can be unconscious. (shrink)

Aristotle's notion of experience plays an important role in his epistemology as the link between perception and memory on the one side, and higher cognitive capacities on the other side. However, Aristotle does not say much about it, and what he does say seems inconsistent. Notably, some passages suggest that it is a non-rational capacity, others that it is a rational capacity and that it provides the principles of science. This paper presents a unitary account of experience. It explains how (...) experience grows from perception and memory into a rational capacity, and in what way it provides the principles. (shrink)

Social constructivist approaches to science have often been dismissed as inaccurate accounts of scientific knowledge. In this article, we take the claims of robust social constructivism (SC) seriously and attempt to find a theory which does instantiate the epistemic predicament as described by SC. We argue that Freudian psychoanalysis, in virtue of some of its well-known epistemic complications and conceptual confusions, provides a perfect illustration of what SC claims is actually going on in science. In other words, the features SC (...) mistakenly ascribes to science in general correctly characterize the epistemic status of Freudian psychoanalysis. This sheds some light on the internal disputes in the field of psychoanalysis, on the sociology of psychoanalytic movement, and on the “war” that has been waged over Freud's legacy with his critics. In addition, our analysis offers an indirect and independent argument against SC as an account of bona fide science, by illustrating what science would look like if it were to function as SC claims it does. (shrink)

We give some information about the action of Aut on M, where M is a countable arithmetically saturated model of Peano Arithmetic. We concentrate on analogues of moving gaps and covering gaps inside M.

Cohen Kadosh, Tzelgov, and Henik [Cohen Kadosh, R., Tzelgov, J., and Henik, A. (2008). A synesthetic walk on the number line: The size effect. Cognition, 106, 548-557] present a new paradigm to probe properties of the mental number line. They describe two experiments which they argue to be inconsistent with the exact small number model proposed by Verguts, Fias, and Stevens [Verguts, T., Fias, W., Stevens, M. (2005). A model of exact small-number representation. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12, 66-80]. We (...) discuss the data, assumptions, and conclusions of Cohen Kadosh et al.'s paper in relation to existing models of numerical cognition. (shrink)

These lectures are concerned with the origins of the distinctive policies of the Stockholm School of Economics, of which Erik Lundberg was a leading member. Lundberg explores the historical development of the Stockholm School and considers its place in the wider Keynesian tradition which dominated macroeconomic thinking in the West from the 1930s till the 1970s. The author examines the failure of Keynesian policies both in Sweden and internationally, and offers some tantalising and provocative remedies for future policy-makers to ponder.

Leadership plays an essential part in creating competitive advantage and well-being among employees. One way in which formal leaders can deal with the variety of responsibilities that comes with their role is to share their responsibilities with team members (i.e., shared leadership). Although there is abundant literature on how high-quality peer leadership benefits team effectiveness (TE) and well-being, there is only limited evidence about the underpinning mechanisms of these relationships and how the formal leader can support this process. To address (...) this lacuna, we conducted an online survey study with 146 employees from various organizations. The results suggest that an empowering leadership style of the formal leader is associated with higher perceived peer leadership quality (PLQ) on four different leadership roles (i.e., task, motivational, social, and external leader). In addition, formal leaders who empower their team members are also perceived as better leaders themselves. Moreover, the improved PLQ was in turn positively related to TE and work satisfaction, while being negatively related to burnout. In line with the social identity approach, we found that team identification mediated these relationships. Thus, high-quality peer leaders succeeded in creating a shared sense of “us” in the team, and this team identification in turn generated all the positive outcomes. To conclude, by sharing their lead and empowering the peer leaders in their team, formal leaders are key drivers of the team’s effectiveness, while also enhancing team members’ health and well-being. (shrink)

The recent discussion of the concept of mental disorder has focused on what makes a mental disorder a disorder. A question that has received less attention is what makes a mental disorder mental rather than somatic. We examine three views on this issue -- namely, the internal cause view, the symptom view, and the pluralist view -- and assess to what extent these accounts are plausible. Three strategies used to pinpoint the mental in psychiatry are identified, namely negative characterizations, exemplification (...) of paradigmatic mental features, and an appeal to intentional content. We also examine different versions of nihilism. Finally, it is observed that the discussion of what makes a mental disorder mental has largely been unaffected by conceptions of the mental in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

We show that the stabilizer of an element a of a countable recursively saturated model of arithmetic M is a maximal subgroup of Aut iff the type of a is selective. This is a point of departure for a more detailed study of the relationship between pointwise and setwise stabilizers of certain subsets of M and the types of elements in those subsets. We also show that a complete type of PA is 2-indiscernible iff it is minimal in the sense (...) of Gaifman. (shrink)

The 'Discussion' section of this issue contains the following responses to Wilfred Beckerman's article 'Sustainable Development: Is it a Useful Concept?' Environmental Values 3,3 (1994): 191-209. Herman Daly, 'On Wilfred Beckerman's Critique of Sustainable Development'; Michael Jacobs, 'Sustainable Development, Capital Substitution and Humility: A Response to Beckerman'; and Henryk Skolimowski, 'In Defence of Sustainable Development'. These criticisms are answered by Beckerman in Environmental Values 4,2.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13.2 (2006) 133-141MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Dysfunctions, Disabilities, and Disordered MindsBengt BrüldeFilip RadovicRichard Gipps' and Jerome Wakefield's commentaries on our article are so different from each other that we have decided to deal with them separately. Gipps suggests that we adopt a different framework altogether. In his view, our main question—"What makes a mental disorder mental?"—is somehow defective, and it ought to be replaced by (...) an alternative question, namely, "What makes a mind disordered?" He thinks he can answer this question by providing an alternative account of the mental in terms of intentionality and suigeneris psychological understanding. He also suggests that mental disorders are "alterations within the intentional order." Wakefield, on the other hand, shares most of our "framework assumptions"; for example, he accepts the way we formulate our central question and how we present the different possible answers. The only part of our general project to which he objects is the attempt to find a principled account of what makes a mental function (dysfunction, mechanism, ability, or the like) mental. His main purpose is to defend and develop his own version of the internal cause view, namely, the idea that mental disorders are (harmful) mental dysfunctions. Because Gipps' comments are of a far more general nature than Wakefield's, we respond to Gipps first. This gives us an opportunity to make our "framework assumptions" more explicit.Gipps' Criticism of the Notion of Mental DisorderLet us first note that Gipps' suggestions are often vague. As Gipps himself puts it, his account is "clearly in need of much further clarification and elaboration" (121). This means that we sometimes have to reconstruct what he says to attribute sufficiently clear views to him.Gipps questions our assumption that there is such a thing as a general category of disorder, of which mental and somatic disorders can be regarded as subcategories. Or more precisely, he rejects the view that "disorder" is a proper category (or "semantic category," as he puts it), and he also seems to deny that "mental disorder" is a category. This is supposed to imply that our central question is somehow wrongly formulated, and to pave the way for his reformulation of this question (from now on, "the move").To determine whether Gipps' objection is valid or not, we need to know what he means by the term "category." However, all we are told is that a noun designates a (semantic) category if and only if it has a "unitary sense." Unfortunately, he does not specify what this "unitary sense" consists in. For example, does he implicitly assume that a noun designates a category if and only if there are necessary conditions for membership that are jointly sufficient? The example he offers (see [End Page 133] p. 118) suggests another possible interpretation, however. Here, he claims that the relation between the terms "mental disorder" and "physical disorder" are analogous to the relation between the terms "chemical reaction" and "emotional reaction." This suggests that the term "disorder" as it occurs in the phrase "physical disorder" and the term "disorder" as it occurs in the phrase "mental disorder" have different senses. This is an interesting suggestion that may well be correct, but Gipps does not offer any arguments for the assumption that "disorder" behaves like "reaction." Neither does he offer any examples of proper (semantic) categories.The Move from "Mental Disorders" to "Disordered Minds"In Gipps' view, mental disorders are best conceived of as disorders of the mind, and physical disorders as disorders of the body, and he therefore suggests that we ask what makes a disordered mind disordered rather than what makes a mental disorder mental. But why does Gipps believe that this move from "mental disorder" to "disordered minds" constitutes an improvement? The first reason has already been given, namely that the term "disorder" might not designate a proper category. But this is not a good reason for making the move Gipps suggests unless we assume that "mind" and "body" are proper categories. At this... (shrink)

This article provides an exploratory ethical critique of the AMBER Alert system. Using illustrative examples of actual AMBER Alerts and the public discourse regarding them, it notes potentially pro...

Recently, Matt King and Peter Carruthers have argued that the Real Self accounts of moral responsibility or autonomy are under pressure because they rely on a questionable conception of self-knowledge of propositional attitudes, such as beliefs and desires. In fact, they defend, as a plausible assumption, the claim that transparent self-knowledge of propositional attitudes is incompatible with mounting evidence in the cognitive sciences. In this chapter, we respond to this line of argument. We describe the types of self-knowledge that might (...) plausibly be involved, as psychological prerequisites, in the processes of identification and integration that lead to the constitution of the real self of an agent. We argue that these forms of self- knowledge do not require the type of transparent knowledge of propositional attitudes that, according to King and Carruthers, is incompatible with the results of contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

Coastal environments are increasingly shown to have a positive effect on our health and well-being. Various mechanisms have been suggested to explain this effect. However, so far little focus has been devoted to emotions that might be relevant in this context, especially for people who are directly or indirectly exposed to the coast on a daily basis. Our preregistered qualitative study explored how coastal residents experience the emotions they feel at the coast and how they interpret the effect these emotions (...) have on them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of eight Belgian coastal residents aged 21–25 years old. The interviews were analyzed with the approach of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five superordinate themes were identified and indicate that, for our participants, the coast represents a safe haven in which they can experience emotional restoration, awe, and nostalgia. These emotional states are accompanied with adaptive emotion regulating strategies, such as reflection and positive reappraisal, that may facilitate coping with difficult thoughts and feelings. Our study demonstrates the importance of investigating specific emotions and related processes triggered at the coast and how these could contribute to the therapeutic value of the coast. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore the antecedents of studying abroad. First, we explore motivations for and barriers against studying abroad in two groups of students (who had studied abroad, and who had not studied abroad). Second, differences in attachment dimensions and styles are examined in both groups. A deductive thematic analysis supported the thematic structure identified by Krzaklewska (2008) in regard to motivations. Furthermore, five barriers were identified using inductive thematic analysis. Although the same motivational and barrier (...) themes were found in both groups, there were some notable qualitative differences in meaning attached to them. A one-way MANOVA showed non-significant differences between the two groups of students and attachment dimensions. Finnaly, Fisher’s exact test was conducted, and the post hoc comparison showed that there was a statistically significant difference in the proportion of students who had studied abroad and had a secure attachment style compared to students who had not studied abroad. (shrink)

In this paper we study the model theory of extensions of models of first-order Peano Arithmetic by means of the arithmetized completeness theorem applied to a definable complete extension of PA in the original model. This leads us to many interesting model theoretic properties equivalent to reflection principles and ω-consistency, and these properties together with the associated first-order schemes extending PA are studied.

The 'Discussion' section of this issue contains the following responses to Wilfred Beckerman's article 'Sustainable Development: Is it a Useful Concept?' Environmental Values 3,3 (1994): 191-209. Herman Daly, 'On Wilfred Beckerman's Critique of Sustainable Development'; Michael Jacobs, 'Sustainable Development, Capital Substitution and Humility: A Response to Beckerman'; and Henryk Skolimowski, 'In Defence of Sustainable Development'. These criticisms are answered by Beckerman in Environmental Values 4,2.

Recent empirical work indicates that reduced autobiographical memory specificity can act as an avoidant processing style. By truncating the memory search before specific elements of traumatic memories are accessed, one can ward off the affective impact of negative reminiscences. This avoidant processing style can be viewed as an instance of what Erdelyi describes as the “subtractive” class of repressive processes.

To eliminate the leap of faith required to explain how visual consciousness arises from visual representation, O'Regan & Noë focus on the sensorimotor interaction with the outside world and ban internal representations from their account of vision. We argue that evidence for transsaccadic representations necessitates a central position for an internal, on-line stimulus rendition in any adequate theory of vision.

We describe an approach that enables a more complete evaluation of the validity of emotional intelligence measures. We argue that a source of evidence for validity is often overlooked by researchers and test developers, namely, evidence based on response processes. This evidence can be obtained through a definition of the ability, a description of the mental processes that operate when a person uses the ability, the development of a theory of response behaviour that links variation in the construct with variation (...) on the responses to the items of a measure, and a test of the theory of response behaviour through one or more strategies that we describe. (shrink)

The author presents Leszek Kołakowski from the perspective of his private acquaintanceship, lasting for about 47 years, as a witty man and a workaholic. L. Kołakowski never formed a classic “school”, but there is something all his disciples share: a thesis, key to understanding his ideas, which holds that “THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CORRECT OPINION IN THE HUMANITIES”, i.e. we will ALWAYS have opinions for and against, which goes against any dogmatism, wherever it may appear; this also bears consequences (...) in diagnosing the socio-political reality past and present. (shrink)

Gertrudis van de Vijver and Filip Geerardyn This book was conceived in the wake of an international congress on Sigmund Freud's pre-analytic writings, ...

BackgroundThere has been no in-depth research of public attitudes on withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging treatment, euthanasia, assisted suicide and physician assisted suicide in Croatia. The aim of this study was to examine these attitudes and their correlation with sociodemographic characteristics, religion, political orientation, tolerance of personal choice, trust in physicians, health status, experiences with death and caring for the seriously ill, and attitudes towards death and dying. MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted on a three-stage random sample of adult citizens of (...) the Republic of Croatia, stratified by regions, counties, and locations within those counties. In addition to descriptive statistics, ANOVA and Chi-square tests were used to determine differences, and factor analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis for data analysis.Results38.1% of the respondents agree with granting the wishes of dying people experiencing extreme and unbearable suffering, and withholding life-prolonging treatment, and 37.8% agree with respecting the wishes of such people, and withdrawing life-prolonging treatment. 77% of respondents think that withholding and withdrawing procedures should be regulated by law because of the fear of abuse. Opinions about the practice and regulation of euthanasia are divided. Those who are younger and middle-aged, with higher levels of education, living in big cities, and who have a more liberal worldview are more open to euthanasia. Assisted suicide is not considered to be an acceptable practice, with only 18.6% of respondents agreeing with it. However, 40.1% think that physician assisted suicide should be legalised. 51.6% would support the dying person’s autonomous decisions regarding end-of-life procedures.ConclusionsThe study found low levels of acceptance of withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging treatment, euthanasia, assisted suicide and physician assisted suicide in Croatia. In addition, it found evidence that age, level of education, political orientation, and place of residence have an impact on people’s views on euthanasia. There is a need for further research into attitudes on different end-of-life practices in Croatia. (shrink)