Undoubtedly, such factors as different cultural background affects ‘the shape’ of economy. The impact of cultural factors on the economy, as well as its specific fields (particularly accounting), has been studied by, among others, Mueller, Hofstede and Gray. Reflections on the topic were also conducted in Polish literature, although relatively late. One of the cultural factors is, beyond doubt, religion, forming some ethical attitudes through the transfer of certain values, which become a guide to individual actions, and exerting an obvious (...) influence on the applicable standards in a society. The author does not pretend to consider the relations between religion and ethics, in the article only issues concerning possible to demonstrate influence of religious norms on accounting are raised. The aim is briefly to discuss the impact of Christianity, Islam and Confucianism on accounting systems and practices, based on literature studies. In conclusion, the question arises about the sense of the convergence of accounting standards, at least in the context of the current efforts undertaken in this field. (shrink)

Successful transitions to a sustainable bioeconomy require novel technologies, processes, and practices as well as a general agreement about the overarching normative direction of innovation. Both requirements necessarily involve collective action by those individuals who purchase, use, and co-produce novelties: the consumers. Based on theoretical considerations borrowed from evolutionary innovation economics and consumer social responsibility, we explore to what extent consumers’ scope of action is addressed in the scientific bioeconomy literature. We do so by systematically reviewing bioeconomy-related publications according to (...) the extent to which consumers are regarded as passive vs. active, and different domains of consumer responsibility. We find all aspects of active consumption considered to varying degrees but observe little interconnection between domains. In sum, our paper contributes to the bioeconomy literature by developing a novel coding scheme that allows us to pinpoint different aspects of consumer activity, which have been considered in a rather isolated and undifferentiated manner. Combined with our theoretical considerations, the results of our review reveal a central research gap which should be taken up in future empirical and conceptual bioeconomy research. The system-spanning nature of a sustainable bioeconomy demands an equally holistic exploration of the consumers’ prospective and shared responsibility for contributing to its coming of age, ranging from the procurement of information on bio-based products and services to their disposal. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 197-248.

Studies show that involuntary displacement often creates various threats for the community and individuals. To reduce these risks, Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, Health Impact Assessment, and Social Assessment are recommended. Whereas assessments focus mostly on the community level and studies describe cases of large population displacements, there is a lack of empirical evidence about how individuals cope with involuntary displacement and what factors contribute or hinder their successful adaptation in the target location. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 21 (...) people about their experience of resettlement due to a mine collapse in Bytom, Poland, that led to involuntary displacement of 560 people. Data was analyzed according to the constructivist grounded theory principles. Results show that this case illustrates a mixture of post-disaster and development-induced displacement. Various factors and resources that affected coping strategies were analyzed, including: material and legal status, health and age, communication skills, and relocation experience. Our findings suggest that, when circumstances allow, an individual resources assessment should also be conducted to counteract impoverishment and further marginalization of the disprivileged and vulnerable individuals. (shrink)

Need for closure and cognitive structuring among younger and older adults The paper reported two correlational studies. The aim of the Study 1 was to examine the hypothesis that age moderates the relationship between need for closure and cognitive structuring. Results of the study revealed that aging with increased need for closure was associated with better recognition of irrelevant information than schema-relevant items, in testing hypotheses about the target person. These findings are interpreted as demonstrating the age-associated failure of cognitive (...) abilities, reducing tendency to behave according to the level of epistemic motivation. The results of Study 2 demonstrated that older participants are characterized by higher NFC but by lower EFNC than young participants. These results are consistent with the conclusion that the negative relationships between NFC and cognitive structuring demonstrated by the older participants in Study 1 can be attributed to their lower level of EFNC. (shrink)

The development of self-regulation in early childhood is related to development of emotional regulation and attention, in particular executive attention. As the ability to self-regulate is crucial in life, it is important to reveal early predictors of self-regulation. The aim of the paper is to present the results of longitudinal studies on the relationships between the functioning of attention, regulation of emotion and later self-regulatory abilities. 310 children were assessed at three time points. At 12 months of age emotional regulation (...) in situation of frustration and attention regulation were assessed. At 18 and 24 months behavioral-emotional regulation in the Snack Delay Task was measured. Additionally parents assessed executive attention using The Early Childhood Behavior Questionnaire when children were 26 months old. Structural equation modelling revealed two different paths to development of self-regulatory abilities at 18 months: emotional and emotionalattentional and only one emotional-attentional path at 24 months. The early ability to focus attention and later executive attention functioning revealed to be important predictors of self-regulatory abilities both at 18 and 24 months of age. (shrink)

On the grounds of the libertarian ethics presented by Murray N. Rothbard, the state is an institution which acts against individuals and whole societies. The state steals money from its citizens (taxes), stands in the way of free market development and controls the economy, thus hindering entrepreneurship. Besides that, the state – through its rules and regulations – limits every man's right to make moral choices. The state is an immoral institution, therefore its citizens have the right to refuse to (...) pay taxes, follow orders, and even – in some circumstances – corrupt civil servants. In this paper we analyse Rothbard’s ethics and look into the arguments of critics of libertarian thought. Practical social and economic solutions that emerge from Rothbard’s point of view are also considered. (shrink)

Mueller et al. discuss the role of acoustic cues in detecting language structure more generally. Across languages, there are clear links between acoustic cues and syntactic structure. They show that AGL experiments implementing analogous links demonstrate that prosodic cues, as well as various auditory biases, facilitate the learning of structural rules. Some of these biases, e.g. for auditory grouping, are also present in other species.

In this book, Andy Mueller examines the ways in which epistemic and practical rationality are intertwined. In the first part, he presents an overview of the contemporary debates about epistemic norms for practical reasoning, and defends the thesis that epistemic rationality can make one practically irrational. Mueller proposes a contextualist account of epistemic norms for practical reasoning and introduces novel epistemic norms pertaining to ends and hope. In the second part Mueller considers current approaches to pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, ultimately (...) arguing in favor of a new principle-based argument for pragmatic encroachment. While the book defends tenets of the knowledge-first programme, one of its main conclusions is thoroughly pragmatist: in an important sense, the practical has primacy over the epistemic. (shrink)

This article investigates the rise of the feminine creative voice in the age of modernism through the lens of Virginia Woolf’s fictional and nonfictional writings. Her invaluable insights into the long history of women’s subjugation, as well as the fortunes of her contemporaries, provide a framework for an examination of how women established their position as capable members of society in the changing modern milieu. This essay examines Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, and her polemical essay A Room of One’s (...) Own, with a view to demonstrating modern women’s path to creating their artistic identity. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity, I investigate women’s unique way of (re)gaining their confidence and articulating their own voice during the process of self-formation. Following Woolf’s lead, I consider their double status: as both an object of fascination in works of literature and a source of oppression in real life. I also use Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy of historically effected consciousness (Wirkungsgeschichtes Bewusstsein) to reveal the productive interpretative distance that can help us unravel the complexities of the historical and contingent nature of the development of the female artistic genius. An interrogation of women’s imaginative self-manifestations opens the way to the discovery of crucial truths that pertain to the hermeneutics of female creativity. (shrink)

What is the cash value of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and politics of religion? This paper analyzes the political promise of Rorty’s shift from atheism to anticlericalism in the last decade of his life. It seeks to deliver primarily a concise summary of this shift, and of its transformative motivation. Then a critique of this shift is followed by the suggestion of a friendly amendment: its extension towards a pragmatic pluralism. The outlined Rortyan conception of a serene, and, at the same (...) time robust, politics of religion is proposed as a promising answer to the question of how secular liberal citizens should react to the “return of the gods.”. (shrink)

This book deals with correspondence truth. It critically analyses selected known correspondence truth theories and proposes - as an alternative - the symbolic truth conception in which correspondence is a symbolisation and not copying.

I will argue for a novel variant of the knowledge norm for practical reasoning. In Sect. 2, I will look at current variations of a knowledge norm for practical reasoning and I will provide reasons to doubt these proposals. In Sects. 3 and 4, I develop my own proposal according to which knowledge is the norm of apt practical reasoning. Section 5 considers objections. Finally, Sect. 6 concerns the normativity of my proposed knowledge norm and its significance.

The work begins by asking the questions of how contemporary phenomenology is concerned with music, and how phenomenological descriptions of music and musical experiences are helpful in grasping the concreteness of these experiences. I then proceed with minor findings from phenomenological authorities, who seem to somehow need music to explain their phenomenology. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Jean-Luc Nancy and back to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, there are musical findings to be asserted. I propose to look at phenomenological studies of (...) the musical aspects of existence as they appear in various philosophical works bringing together different accounts of music and aesthetics and pointing towards phenomenological study as a methodology for everyday aesthetics. While there are many different areas of music phenomenology such as studies of sound and listening, studies in perception of musical works, in experience of artistic creation, in singing and playing musical instruments, and phenomenology of transcendent or religious horizons of the experience of music, it is most promising—I suggest—to look at phenomenological studies of music from the perspective of everyday happenings and discoveries of musical aspects of life. Thus, I attempt to display the uses of phenomenology in finding musical aspects of everyday existence as well as in describing and illuminating the art of music. A look at Roman Ingarden’s and Mikel Dufrenne’s most intuitive and promising ideas will be broadened with a perspective from Don Ihde and Arnold Berleant. (shrink)

Several lines of evidence suggest that children born via Cesarean section are at greater risk for adverse health outcomes including allergies, asthma and obesity. Vaginal seeding is a medical procedure in which infants born by C-section are swabbed immediately after birth with vaginal secretions from the mother. This procedure has been proposed as a way to transfer the mother's vaginal microbiome to the child, thereby restoring the natural exposure that occurs during vaginal birth that is interrupted in the case of (...) babies born via C-section. Preliminary evidence indicates partial restoration of microbes. However, there is insufficient evidence to determine the health benefits of the procedure. Several studies, including trial, are currently underway. At the same time, in the clinic setting, doctors are increasingly being asked to by expectant mothers to have their babies seeded. This article reports on the current research on this procedure and the issues it raises for regulators, researchers, physicians, and patients. (shrink)

This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II. Six new chapters have been added, and several chapters from the previous edition have been extensively revised. The discussion of empirical work in public choice has been greatly expanded. As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the (...) size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined including a normative analysis of the simple majority rule, Bergson–Samuelson social welfare functions, the Arrow and Sen impossibility theorems, Rawls's social contract theory and the constitutional political economy of Buchanan and Tullock. (shrink)

It is a popular thought that emotions play an important epistemic role. Thus, a considerable number of philosophers find it compelling to suppose that emotions apprehend the value of objects and events in our surroundings. I refer to this view as the Epistemic View of emotion. In this paper, my concern is with a rivaling picture of emotion, which has so far received much less attention. On this account, emotions do not constitute a form of epistemic access to specific axiological (...) aspects of their objects. Instead it proposes that they are ways of taking a stand or position on the world. I refer to this as the Position-Taking View of emotion. Whilst some authors seem sympathetic to this view, this it has so far not been systematically motivated and elaborated. In this paper, I fill this gap and propose a more adequate account of our emotional engagement with the world than the predominant epistemic paradigm. I start by highlighting the specific way in which emotions are directed at something, which I contrast with the intentionality of perception and other forms of apprehension. I then go on to offer a specific account of the valence of emotion and show how this account and the directedness of emotions makes them intelligible as a way of taking a position on something. (shrink)

Niniejszy artykuł stanowi praktyczną analizę czasowników utworzonych od jednego rdzenia -sprechen przy wykorzystaniu wszystkich możliwych w tym przypadku przedrostków czasownikowych. Celem analizy było jednakże nie tylko stworzenie części praktycznego słownika, w którym oprócz przykładów łączliwości danych czasowników na wzór istniejących słowników języka niemieckiego zawarte zostały również informacje dotyczące ich walencji, lecz biorąc pod uwagę całościowo badany paradygmat, chodziło o wykazanie zależności walencyjnych pomiędzy poszczególnymi derywatami, czyli ukazanie wpływu przedrostków na zmianę walencji czasownika o rdzeniu -sprechen.

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine raises fundamental ethical issues. As one example, AI systems in the field of mental health successfully detect signs of mental disorders, such as depression, by using data from social media. These AI depression detectors (AIDDs) identify users who are at risk of depression prior to any contact with the healthcare system. The article focuses on the ethical implications of AIDDs regarding affected users’ health-related autonomy. Firstly, it presents the (ethical) discussion of AI (...) in medicine and, specifically, in mental health. Secondly, two models of AIDDs using social media data and different usage scenarios are introduced. Thirdly, the concept of patient autonomy, according to Beauchamp and Childress, is critically discussed. Since this concept does not encompass the specific challenges linked with the digital context of AIDDs in social media sufficiently, the current analysis suggests, finally, an extended concept of health-related digital autonomy. (shrink)

The supple and ever-present search for the possibilities offered by the narrative form in fictional writing corresponds to the use of the narrative as a mode of understanding and explaining our being-in-the-world in philosophy. The intimate liaison between the realm of fictional imagination and that of human everydayness inspires writers to seek ways to tackle issues of temporality, the conflicting character of human drives, and the ultimately unresolvable tension between finitude and infinitude. As a literary and philosophical category, the narrative (...) remains an inexhaustible space for the exploration of the way we understand our lives. I propose a hermeneutic investigation of the interactions between the art of narration and the categories of space, presence/absence, and (be)longingness as evoked in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This article engages Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, and, more specifically, his notions of homelessness and homecoming, to shed light on the inimitable character of Woolf’s artistic representations of the spatial dimension of human existence, reality viewed as both tremulous and solid, as well as of human embodiment and the disparity/closeness between the corporeal and the spiritual. (shrink)

The Logical Foundations of Social Theory describes Gert Mueller’s argument that physical, biological, social, moral, and cultural reality form an asymmetrical hierarchy of founding and controlling relationships that condition social reality rather than mechanically determining it. This book analyzes social stratification, the moral order, and culture systems.

Bobier argued that hope is necessary for practical deliberation. I will demonstrate that Bobier’s argument for this thesis fails. The problem is that one of its main premisses rests on a sufficient condition for hoping that is subject to counterexamples. I consider two ways to save the argument, but show that they are unsuccessful in doing so.

Genetic modification of crop plants is frequently described by its proponents as a continuation of the ancient process of domestication. While domestication, crop breeding, and GM all modify the genomes and phenotypes of plants, GM fundamentally differs from domestication in terms of the biological and sociopolitical processes by which change occurs, and the subsequent impacts on agrobiodiversity and seed sovereignty. We review the history of domestication, crop breeding, and GM, and show that crop breeding and GM are continuous with each (...) other in many important ways, but represent a momentous break from domestication because they move plant evolution off of farms and into centralized institutions. The social contexts in which these processes unfold dictate who holds rights to germplasm and agricultural knowledge, shape incentives to effect particular kinds of changes in our crops, and create or constrict biodiversity. Presenting GM as a continuation of domestication puts forward a false equivalency that fundamentally misrepresents how domestication, crop breeding, and GM occur. In doing so, this narrative diminishes public understanding of these important processes and obscures the effects of industrial agriculture on in situ biodiversity and the practice of farming. This misrepresentation is used in public-facing science communication by representatives of the biotechnology industry to silence meaningful debate on GM by convincing the public that it is the continuation of an age-old process that underlies all agricultural societies. (shrink)

This essay presents a novel approach to specifying the meaning of the concept of populism, on the political position it occupies and on the nature of populism. Employing analytic techniques of concept clarification and recent analytic ideology critique, it develops populism as a political kind in three steps. First, it descriptively specifies the stereotype of populist platforms as identified in extant research and thereby delimits the peculiar political position populism occupies in representative democracies as neither inclusionary nor fascist. Second, it (...) specifies on this basis analytically–normatively the particular stance towards liberal representative democracy that unifies populism’s political position and explains how populist politics can be compelling for democratic citizens. The normative core turns out to require no more than two general principles of legitimizing political authority by elections. Surprisingly, it does not need a separate anti-pluralist or exclusionary commitment: it entails it. Third, this normative model allows a response to a contested question in the theoretical discussion, namely, whether populism can be democracy-enhancing. The article defends the negative answer in virtue of the normative core alone and does so as much vis-à-vis a minimal as vis-à-vis a normatively ambitious conception of democracy. The reconstruction of the normative core of populist ideology enables a novel argument to show that populism is incompatible with the continued democratic legitimation of political authority even in the normatively most austere conception of ‘electoral democracy’, not just with ‘liberal democracy’. Assuming a normatively more ambitious concept of democratic legitimation in terms of political autonomy, the model also produces an extremely direct argument showing that populists cannot fulfil their promise of ‘taking back control’ over political decision-making to the population. (shrink)

Author: Bogaczyk Małgorzata Title: THE DIFFERENT ART. ON THE PRIMITIVE ART, NAÏVE ART AND ART BRUT (Sztuka Inna. O sztuce prymitywnej, naiwnej i surowej) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2006, vol:.6, number: 2006/1, pages: 239-256 Keywords: DIFFERENT ART, PRIMITIVE ART, ART BRUT, NAÏVE ART Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail:In the sketch I show some similarities in the artist’s way of perceiving the work of art, the process of artistic creativity, and the fate (...) of work in the inner reality, to quote Proust. The fact that all art is met with wider or narrower reception is the background for my analysis of the general phenomenon of the popularity of art fascinating or being rejected because of its variety. (shrink)

Paper attempts to empiricaly verify a non-linear (parabolic) dependence of employment in Poland on minimum wage to average wage ratio (Kaitz coefficient). The aim of the analysis is to find the optimal value of the Kaitz coefficient. The obtained result confirms the hypothesis on a non-linear nature of the investigated dependence. However, during the minimum wage evaluation process it is worth noting that the Kaitz coefficient's influence on the employment is bi-directional. Increase in the Kaitz coefficient value will only have (...) a negative effect on employment after a certain threshold is crossed. Results pre-sented in the paper allow to identify such a critical value and to establish the coefficient value intervals with negative and positive influence on employment. (shrink)

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide established various mechanisms to facilitate the pandemic response and ensure the state’s functioning. As a consequence, the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis varies in countries, depending on the region. We are looking for answers to research questions: how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the finances of local government institutions in 2020–2021; Is it possible to distinguish the types of units where this impact was greater or smaller, and whether and how the (...) pandemic-related legislation influenced the fiscal relations between the state and local government, especially in the context of the local government institutions’ financial independence. We have noticed that financial solutions dedicated to local government units, as well as making local government fiscal rules more flexible, allowed to maintain the potential of the local economic base. They also had a diversified impact on the Polish local government institutions’ income level. (shrink)

Research on the cognitive abilities involved in decision making has shown that, under objective risk conditions (i.e., when explicit information about possible outcomes and risks is available), superior decisions are especially predicted by executive functions and exact number processing skills, also referred to as objective numeracy. So far, decision-making research has mainly focused on exact number processing skills, such as performing calculations or transformations of symbolic numbers. There is evidence that such exact numeric skills are based on approximate number processing (...) (ANP) skills, which enable quick and accurate processing of non-symbolic numbers (e.g. Chen and Li, 2014). Very few studies, however, have investigated ANP skills in the context of risky decision making and have analyzed direct associations among the aforementioned sub functions. Possible interactions between the closely related skills have not been considered. The current study (N = 128) examines interactions of ANP skills with executive functions and objective numeracy, in predicting risky choice behavior. ANP skills are represented by the accuracy in a dot-comparison task. Decision making is measured by two versions of the Game of Dice Task (GDT), which place different emphases on the reflection of potential risks. The results show two-way as well as three-way interactions between the measures of ANP skills, executive functions, and objective numeracy in predicting risky decisions in both GDT versions. The riskiest decisions were most frequently made in case of low scores in all of the three competencies, while good performance in any one of them resulted in significant reductions of disadvantageous decisions. The findings indicate that high ANP skills can positively affect choice behavior in individuals who have weaknesses in reflectively attributed skills, namely executive functions and objective numeracy. Potential compensatory effects and mechanisms of ANP in decision making are discussed. (shrink)