The paper focuses on metaphorical representation of military activities of the US-led international coalition and of ISIL which are construed on the basis of systematic metaphors drawn from the com...

Zaionc, M., λ-Definability on free algebras, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 51 279-300. A λ-language over a simple type structure is considered. There is a natural isomorphism which identifies free algebras with nonempty second-order types. If A is a free algebra determined by the signature SA = [α1,...,αn], then by a type τA we mean τ1,...,τn→0 where τi=0αi→0. It can be seen that closed terms of the type τA reflex constructions in the algebra A. Therefore any term of the (...) type n→τA defines some n-ary mapping in algebra A. The problem is to characterize λ-definable mappings in any free algebra. It is proved that the set of λ-definable operations is the minimal set that contains constant functions and projections and is closed under composition and limited recursion. This result is a generalization of the result of Schwichtenberg and Statman which characterize the λ-definable functions over the natural number type →, i.e algebra [1, 0], as well as of the result of Zaionc for λ-definable word operations over type n→, i.e algebra [1,...,1,0], and of the results about λ-definable tree operations , i.e in algebra [2, 0]. Some of the examples in Section 5 are based on a publication of Zaionc. (shrink)

Výsledkem rozboru lexikálního pole vražda a jemu příbuzných pojmů je zjištění, že tento pojem už ve svém významu obsahuje negativní hodnocení, na rozdíl od okolních pojmů. Avšak současná etika lokalizuje hodnotovost tohoto pojmu do slova špatný a soustředí se na jeho opak, slovo dobrý, jehož čistě etický význam se snaží izolovat. Plodnější však je chápat slovo vražda analogicky k jeho užití v justičním procesu soudem, kde z něj, ve formě rozsudku, dokonce plynou performativní a právní důsledky.An analysis of the lexical (...) field murder and its neighbouring concepts shows that this concept itself contains a negative value, as opposed to the other notions. But contemporary ethics tries to localize this negativity into the predicate wrong and concentrates on its opposite, good, whose purely ethical meaning it purports to isolate. But perhaps it is more useful to view the word murder analogically to its use in the judicial process, where performative and legal consequences follow. (shrink)

Článek reaguje na monografii Homo Natura: Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics (2020) současné akademičky Vanessy Lemmové zabývající se Nietzschovým úkolem „přesadit člověka zpět do přírody“, tzn. chápat jej jako bytost veskrze imanentní přírodě. Reakce směřuje především na jednu z hlavních tezí knihy, podle níž tato Nietzschova snaha otevírá možnost nového, postantropocentrického pohledu na člověka a jeho vztahu k přírodě – pohledu, v jehož centru zájmu již nestojí člověk, nýbrž život sám, resp. kontinuum života, jež se ztělesňuje v lidském druhu a (...) jehož je lidský druh rovnocennou součástí po boku ostatních organismů. Nietzschova myšlenka o homo natura podle Lemmové předznamenává myšlení současného posthumanismu vyznačujícího se právě snahou vytvořit takový pohled na člověka a jeho vztah k přírodě, který bybyl vhodným teoretickým rámcem pro sebepojetí člověka v epoše antropocénu. Článek tuto tezi doplňuje o Heideggerovu interpretaci Nietzschovy myšlenky nadčlověka podanou v sérii přednášek Co znamená myslet?, v níž je nadčlověk chápán jako ekologický ideál lidstva schopného zodpovědně převzít moc plynoucí z technického přetváření země. Cílem článku je ukázat, že, v souladu s interpretacemi Lemmové a Heideggera, u Nietzscheho lze nalézt způsob, jak by se lidstvo mohlo produktivně vyrovnat s realitou antropocénu, a to skrze přechod od „posledního člověka“ k „nadčlověku“, kde přechod k „nadčlověku“ je chápán jako idea nastolení nového vztahu mezi lidmi a přírodou, resp. mezi lidmi a zemí. (shrink)

Paradoxe polonais : si l'apprentissage de l'anglais fait partie de la formation professionnelle, le français est plutôt le résultat d'un choix motivé et volontaire, signe qualificatif de distinction. Les Polonais sont de plus en plus conscients de la valeur de la notion de « francophonie », à ne pas confondre ave le « caractère français »Somewhat paradoxically, learning English is seen in Poland as a standard requirement of vocational training, while learning French is seen as a matter of personal choice (...) and motivation and a marker of social distinction. Yet Poles are growing increasingly aware of the value of the notion of "francophonie" - not to be confused with the "caractère français". (shrink)

The paper concerns the problem of the legal responsibility of autonomous machines. In our opinion it boils down to the question of whether such machines can be seen as real agents through the prism of folk-psychology. We argue that autonomous machines cannot be granted the status of legal agents. Although this is quite possible from purely technical point of view, since the law is a conventional tool of regulating social interactions and as such can accommodate various legislative constructs, including legal (...) responsibility of autonomous artificial agents, we believe that it would remain a mere ‘law in books’, never materializing as ‘law in action’. It is not impossible to imagine that the evolution of our conceptual apparatus will reach a stage, when autonomous robots become full-blooded moral and legal agents. However, today at least, we seem to be far from this point. (shrink)

This article focuses on the production of children’s literature in New Zealand. It problematizes the current practices of releasing and distributing children’s literature, and explores these practices as technologies of control through processes of censorship and classification set by government agencies such as the Office for Film and Literature. Decisions about what is and what is not acceptable for children’s development, it is argued, are not neutral and are instead driven by a neoliberal image of the ‘happy’ uncomplicated child. The (...) article takes the example of the state-funded and distributed My Feelings series as a widely accessible text that is embedded in neoliberal ideology. As this series is distributed to all New Zealand early childhood centres and kindergartens, this article explores understandings of how politics of government influence children’s literature. The work of Václav Havel and Michel Foucault are drawn upon to demonstrate the mechanisms of ideologically driven forms of governmental power that directly impact on the constitution of certain types of childhoods. An example from a contrasting historical and political discourse in the form of communist Czechoslovakia suggests unexpected synergies between neoliberal and socialist ideological frameworks. This analysis further problematizes notions of power in the distribution of children’s literature, and illustrates the influence that political agendas have on the production of idealized political childhood subjectivities. (shrink)

Works by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Polish writer and the winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize for Literature, were subjected to verification by the DDR’s censorship apparatus several times. Censors considered his novellas which discussed 19th-century social issues as desirable and worth promoting among East German readers. His novel Krzyżacy, which was set in the Middle Ages, was accepted eagerly both by publishing houses and the censorship office as it enabled national socialism in Germany to be viewed in critical terms, as (...) the DDR distanced itself from the system. Reviewers did, however, find a major ideological threat for young readers in East Germany in a young adult novel entitled W pustyni i w puszczy, and for that reason it was withdrawn from the publishing procedure. (shrink)

In this note two notions of meaning are considered and accordingly two versions of synonymy are defined, weaker and stronger ones. A new semantic device is introduced: a matrix is said to be pragmatic iff its algebra is in fact an algebra of meanings in the stronger sense. The new semantics is proved to be universal enough (Theorem 1), and it turns out to be in some sense a generalization of Wójcicki's referential semantics (Theorem 3).

We formulate a cosmogonic indifference principle in cosmology in terms of a dynamical system theory. While the choice between generic and fine tuned initial condition for our Universe has a rather philosophical character, there is a very generic set of initial conditions which give rise to the concordance inflectional ΛCDM model which becomes in good agreement with astronomical observations.

It is shown here that Suarez (Found. Phys. 38:583, 2008) wrongly presents the assumptions behind the Leggett’s inequalities, and their modified form used by Groeblacher et al. (Nature 446:871, 2007) for an experimental falsification of a certain class of non-local hidden variable models.

The current cosmological observations of distant supernovae type Ia suggest the existence of dark energy component with negative pressure. The most obvious candidate for this dark energy is the cosmological constant which raises several theoretical difficulties. The problem of dark energy, due to our Universe is accelerating at present in principle is open. We argue that this problem will dominate the cosmology in XXI century. From the philosophical point of view it is interesting to provide evidence and comments for the (...) key issues related to the dark energy models just at the moment before scientific revolution. (shrink)

We consider the problem of possible topology for our Universe. It is shown that due to algebraic topology we can strictly define the shape of physical space whereas observations of anisotropy of microwave background radiation gives us an answer to the question whether our Universe is finite or not?

The author of the article deals with the causes of anti-naturalism in culture today from the point view of both a philosophical conception of evolutionary ontology, and the psychology of environmental problems. He highlights the real potential for a biophilic transformation of culture in the context of current knowledge on cognitive psychology, where emphasis is placed on the limits to the phenomena of cognitive dissonance. The author of the article seeks certain options to repress these limits in Gestalt theory, which (...) on some aspects corresponds substantially to the insights and goals of evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Sometimes, very often in fact, our persuasive efforts fail even though we are right and the arguments we use are logically correct. In the article we are trying to tell why this is so, and as it turns out there may be quite a few causes. First, the hearer may not be convinced because he has not been motivated to try and understand the speaker - understanding takes work, and as a rule we do not like to work. Or he (...) may not be convinced because he does not like the speaker himself. There are also many other potential causes, such as: balancing cognitive dissonance, faulty attributions, phenomena of assimilation and contrasting, or psychological mechanisms of consequence, conformism and reactance. (shrink)

Sentences describe situations, and from the point of view of pragmatics, the situation described by a sentence depends in turn on the context of use, i.e. on the situation in which the sentence is uttered. In general, situations are abstract imaginary entitles, but some of them do actually hold; these are called facts. If a sentence A uttered in situation a describes a fact, that is, if the situation described by A actually holds in the real world, then A is (...) said to be true . Hence there are at least two ways of defining the meaning of a sentence in pragmatics; first, the meaning of A could be that function from situations into {0, 1} which takes the value l for exactly those situations in which A is true; second, the meaning of A could be that function from situations into situations which, for an argument a, takes the value b exactly in the case when A, if uttered in situation a, describes situation b. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is a popularization of a book by Dan Sperber and Deirde Wilson, which is not as well-known among logicians and philosophers as it should be. It is, apart from the famous book by Lakoff and Johnson, probably the most important work on cognitive linguistics in the last two decades. All more extensive works on pragmatics and the philosophy of language written later contain references to this book. „The relevance theory” is now a term of art, (...) explicitly and forever associated with the names of the authors. It would be very easy to criticise this work, since from the logical point of view it contains many inaccuracies and dubious ideas, some of which are simply logically fallacious. However, it is a very deep and inspiring work at the same time - also for a logician. In my paper there are no supplements nor critical remarks. It is exclusively a faithful summary of the original ideas of Sperber and Wilson. (shrink)