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)

Predictive Processing theory, hotly debated in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, promises to explain a number of perceptual and cognitive phenomena in a simple and elegant manner. In some of its versions, the theory is ambitiously advertised as a new theory of conscious perception. The task of this paper is to assess whether this claim is realistic. We will be arguing that the Predictive Processing theory cannot explain the transition from unconscious to conscious perception in its proprietary terms. The explanations offer (...) by PP theorists mostly concern the preconditions of conscious perception, leaving the genuine material substrate of consciousness untouched. (shrink)

In an era of fiscal austerity and dualization of social protection, has organized labor become increasingly split along skill and industry lines? Against recent political science accounts of trade union involvement in social policymaking, this paper argues that, in the specific area of pensions, unions representing high-skilled workers and the core industrial sectors of the economy have paradoxically been led to increase their cooperation with unions representing the less privileged segments of labor, in order to improve coverage of private pensions (...) across the board. These unions’ motivations for doing so and the strategies they have employed have nonetheless differed according to the preexisting institutional design of domestic pension systems. The argument is supported with case studies of British, French, German, and Belgian unions’ involvement in contemporary pension reform. (shrink)

We investigate an extension of the formalism of interpreted systems by Halpern and colleagues to model the correct behaviour of agents. The semantical model allows for the representation and reasoning about states of correct and incorrect functioning behaviour of the agents, and of the system as a whole. We axiomatise this semantic class by mapping it into a suitable class of Kripke models. The resulting logic, KD45ni-j, is a stronger version of KD, the system often referred to as Standard Deontic (...) Logic. We extend this formal framework to include the standard epistemic notions defined on interpreted systems, and introduce a new doubly-indexed operator representing the knowledge that an agent would have if it operates under the assumption that a group of agents is functioning correctly. We discuss these issues both theoretically and in terms of applications, and present further directions of work. (shrink)

The Uppsala School in philosophy and the Vienna Circle are prima facie similar currents in contemporary philosophy. Both reject metaphysics, claim that reality is a spatio­‑temporal realm and adhere to noncognitivism in terms of values. However, justifications of these assumptions are quite different. In the following article we reconstruct main theses of both mentioned currents and then we indicate their impact on one of the major jurisprudential movements, namely Scandinavian Legal Realism. We focus on Alf Ross’ legal philosophy, as it (...) was an attempt to accommodate both: the philosophy of the Uppsala School and of the Vienna Circle. We trace those two sources of inspiration in Ross’ theory of legal validity and of legal concepts. (shrink)

People should be at the centre of attention within knowledge-based economics. The leaders of each enterprise ought to focus on providing the best conditions for their employees’ professional and individual development and treat them with respect in terms of their dignity and needs. In contemporary literature two notions in perceiving people in organisations are noticeable. The first one treats employees as ‘resources’ which have to be properly used or as ‘capital’ that should bring a decent return on investment. The second (...) notion derives a lot from Christian philosophy and sees the human as a person who treats work as a way to realize his calling and thus is able to take responsibility for the decisions made and actions taken. Acting in a constantly changing environment, people have to be flexible and able to take advantage of emerging opportunities and avoid threats. Within this process it is not a matter of being a human ‘being’ but rather becoming, which means that they are incessantly developing their potential. Although it is hard to predict human behaviour, the main task for managers is to lead in a way that will help employees use their full potential for both their own and the company’s benefit. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the structure of uncountable maximal antichains of Silver forcing and show that they have to be at least of size d, where d is the dominating number. Part of this work can be used to show that the additivity of the Silver forcing ideal has size at least the unbounding number b. It follows that every reasonable amoeba Silver forcing adds a dominating real.

"Philosophical Foundations of Understanding of the Common Good". The central question is whether recognizing the common good as the central value in the new Polish Constitution of 1997, means accepting the primacy of the state over an individual. The answer is negative. The preparatory work to the constitution is analyzed and the philosophical perspective is outlined which corresponds to the intentions of the authors of the constitution. The analyses concentrate on the philosophical tradition reaching from Plato to Aristotle and Thomas (...) Aquinas. /////////////////// W nowej Konstytucji Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej przyjętej w 1997 roku, dobro wspólne jest jedną z fundamentalnych wartości. Centralne pytanie brzmi, czy uznanie dobra wspólnego za wartość fundamentalną, nie jest uznaniem prymatu państwa wobec jednostki, czy nie wprowadza do porządku konstytucyjnego idei totalitarystycznych. Odpowiedź na to pytanie jest negatywna. Argumentując, autor dokonuje analizy prac przygotowawczych do Konstytucji, oraz zmierza do zarysowania filozoficznej perspektywy rozumienia dobra wspólnego, perspektywy odpowiadającej intencjom twórców Konstytucji. W analizach położony jest akcent na filozoficzną tradycję refleksji nad dobrem wspólnym sięgającą od Platona poprzez Arystotelesa do Tomasza z Akwinu. -/- . (shrink)

Experiences are interpreted as conscious mental occurrences that are of phenomenal character. There is already a kind of (weak) intentionality involved with this phenomenal interpretation. A stricter conception of experiences distinguishes between purely phenomenal experiences and intentional experiences in a narrow sense. Wittgenstein’s account of psychological (experiential) verbs is taken over: Usually, expressing mental states verbally is not describing them. According to this, I believe can be seen as an expression of one’s own belief, but not as an expression of (...) a belief about one’s belief. Hence, the utterance I believe it is raining shows that I believe that it is raining, although it is not said by these words that I believe that it is raining. Thinking thoughts such as I believe it is raining, but it is not raining (a variant of Moore’s paradox) is an absurdity between what is already said by silently uttering It is not raining and what is shown by silently uttering I believe it is raining. The paper agrees with a main result of Wittgenstein’s considerations of Moore’s paradox, namely the view that logical structure, deducibility, and consistency cannot be reduced solely to propositions—besides a logic of propositions, there is, for example, a logic of assertions and of imperatives, respectively. (shrink)

In Béziau a logic \ was defined with the help of the modal logic \. In it, the negation operator is understood as meaning ‘it is not necessary that’. The strong soundness–completeness result for \ with respect to a version of Kripke semantics was also given there. Following the formulation of \ we can talk about \-like logics or Beziau-style logics if we consider other modal logics instead of \—such a possibility has been mentioned in [1]. The correspondence result between (...) modal logics and respective Beziau-style logics has been generalised for the case of normal logics naturally leading to soundness–completeness results [see Marcos :279–300, 2005) and Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski :229–248, 2005)]. In Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski :185–196, 2008), :189–203, 2009) some partial results for non-normal cases are given. In the present paper we try to give similar but more general correspondence results for the non-normal-worlds case. To achieve this aim we have to enrich original Beziau’s language with an additional negation operator understood as ‘it is necessary that not’. (shrink)

In the context of modal logics one standardly considers two modal operators: possibility ) and necessity ) [see for example Chellas ]. If the classical negation is present these operators can be treated as inter-definable. However, negative modalities ) and ) are also considered in the literature [see for example Béziau ; Došen :3–14, 1984); Gödel, in: Feferman, Collected works, vol 1, Publications 1929–1936, Oxford University Press, New York, 1986, p. 300; Lewis and Langford ]. Both of them can be (...) treated as negations. In Béziau a logic \ has been defined on the basis of the modal logic \. \ is proposed as a solution of so-called Jaśkowski’s problem [see also Jaśkowski ]. The only negation considered in the language of \ is ‘it is not necessary’. It appears that logic \ and \ inter-definable. This initial correspondence result between \ and \ has been generalised for the case of normal logics, in particular soundness-completeness results were obtained [see Marcos :279–300, 2005); Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski :229–248, 2005)]. In Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski it has been proved that there is a correspondence between \-like logics and regular extensions of the smallest deontic logic. To obtain this result both negative modalities were used. This result has been strengthened in Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski :261–280, 2017) since on the basis of classical positive logic it is enough to solely use \ to equivalently express both positive modalities and negation. Here we strengthen results given in Mruczek-Nasieniewska and Nasieniewski by showing correspondence for the smallest regular logic. In particular we give a syntactic formulation of a logic that corresponds to the smallest regular logic. As a result we characterise all logics that arise from regular logics. From this follows via respective translations a characterisation of a class of logics corresponding to some quasi-regular logics where \ is the smallest element. Moreover, if a given quasi-regular logic is characterised by some class of models, the same class can be used to semantically characterise the logic obtained by our translation. (shrink)

In [1] J.-Y. Bèziau formulated a logic called Z. Bèziau’s idea was generalized independently in [6] and [7]. A family of logics to which Z belongs is denoted in [7] by K. In particular; it has been shown in [6] and [7] that there is a correspondence between normal modal logics and logics from the class K. Similar; but only partial results has been obtained also for regular logics. In a logic N has been investigated in the language with negation; (...) implication; conjunction and disjunction by axioms of positive intuitionistic logic; the right-to-left part of the second de Morgan law; and the rules of modus ponens and contraposition. From the semantical point of view the negation used by Došen is the modal operator of impossibility. It is known this operator is a characteristic of the modal interpretation of intuitionistic negation. In the present paper we consider an extension of N denoted by N+. We will prove that every extension of N+ that is closed under the same rules as N+; corresponds to a regular logic being an extension of the regular deontic logic D21. The proved correspondence allows to obtain from soundnesscompleteness result for any given regular logic containing D2, similar adequacy theorem for the respective extension of the logic N+. (shrink)

In Jaśkowski’s model of discussion, discussive connectives represent certain interactions that can hold between debaters. However, it is not possible within the model for participants to use explicit modal operators. In the paper we present a modal extension of the discussive logic $\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$ that formally corresponds to an extended version of Jaśkowski’s model of discussion that permits such a use. This logic is denoted by $\textbf{m}\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$. We present philosophical motivations for the formulation of this logic. We also give syntactic characterizations (...) of the logic and propose a comparison with certain other modal systems. In particular, we prove that $\textbf{m}\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$ is neither normal nor regular. On the basis of the axiomatization of $\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$, we give an axiomatization of $\textbf{m}\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$. We also give another axiomatization which is not based on the axiomatization of $\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$. Furthermore, we give a natural Kripke-style semantics for $\textbf{m}\textbf{D}_{\textbf{2}}$ and prove the respective adequacy theorems. (shrink)

Emotional creativity refers to cognitive abilities and personality traits related to the originality of emotional experience and expression. Previous studies have found that the COVID-19 epidemic and the restrictions imposed increased the levels of negative emotions, which obstructed adaptation. This research suggests that EC predicts the motivation for innovative adaptive behavior under the restrictions of COVID-19. In the case study of university professors, we show that EC predicts the motivation to creatively capitalize on the imposed online teaching in looking for (...) innovative research and personal development. Methodologically, we rely on the Emotional Creativity Inventory administered to a sample of 463 university professors from the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and Russia. The indicators for motivation for innovative performance included motivations to use distant methods of scientific research, to look for partners for conducting scientific research in other cities or abroad, to conduct interdisciplinary research, starting distance learning to enhance qualifications, and the perception that due to online teaching, there is more time for personal development. We employ a set of ordinal regression analyses controlling for age, gender, position, type of science, and country. The results suggest that Emotional Creativity and its three components predict the motivation of university professors to creatively capitalize on the imposed online teaching in looking for innovative research and personal development under the conditions of COVID-19. Furthermore, our results confirmed the gender and age differences in EC. The differences in EC according to position and type of science were not statistically significant. These results compel us to be aware of the importance of the emotional side of creativity to optimize stress-related behavior under the conditions of limited abilities to continue as usual. More space devoted to the manifestation of all the aspects of emotional creativity would improve adaptation to challenging circumstances and even allow one to capitalize on new opportunities. Moreover, we suggest that if personal intrinsic Emotional Creativity is high, the crises, such as the COVID-19 epidemic, may improve adaptation and trigger creative outcomes. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in comparative social research. The region should (...) still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

Idea powszechności legła u samych podstaw współczesnej ochrony praw człowieka i nadal jest często podkreślana w dyskursie typu praktycznego, na różnych płaszczyznach: politycznej, moralnej czy religijnej. Jednakże trudno o koncepcję praw człowieka pozwalającą pogodzić powszechność z właściwościami prawa, z postulatami respektu dla pluralizmu ugruntowanego tak w odmienności kulturowej, jak i wolności poszczególnych jednostek ludzkich. Wziąwszy pod uwagę, że powszechność jest fundamentalnym przy¬miotem praw człowieka, kłopoty z powszechnością są kłopotami ze zbudowaniem filozoficznej koncepcji praw człowieka w ogóle. Odrzucenie powszechności jest równoznaczne (...) z odrzuceniem podstaw współczesnej koncepcji tych praw. Opracowanie zmierza do identyfikacji rozmaitych aspektów powszechności praw człowieka i do uporządkowania argumentów przytaczanych w dyskusji nad powszechnością. (shrink)

Is Divine Knowledge Incompatible with Human Freedom? An Analysis of Some Arguments The problem that divine omniscience or divine foreknowledge makes free will impossible belongs to notoriously difficult to solve. In XX century one of the most important interpretation of this difficulty was provided by Nelson Pike. If God believes infallibly and in advance how Smith will act, this fact about the past excludes out all alternatives for Smith. But libertarian account of free will requires alternatives possibilities, so, it could (...) be argue that God’s foreknowledge is incompatible with our free will. This paper carefully criticizes Pike’s argumentation and suggests that because God’s foreknowledge doesn’t eliminate future alternatives through causal means, it is compatible with free will and that Pike’s argument and two briefly analyzed standard arguments for fatalism presented by Zagzebski failed. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct Bocheński’s method of philosophical analysis as well as to clarify the purpose of that method and its basic elements. In the second part of the paper I will compare Bocheński’s method with the methods of modern applied ontology.

Wywiad przeprowadzono 2 września 2021 (forma: Zoom); opublikowano 27 sierpnia 2023.

Two modern achievements, the modern figure of the intellectual and the modern institution of the university, have been undergoing a radical crisis of identity. The decline of the philosophical project of modernity is turning out to be a painful process for modern culture: once again it has to reformulate the aims of its social institutions (the university) and the tasks of its cultural heroes (the intellectual). The traditional modern figure of the intellectual seems untenable in our increasingly postmodern cultural surrounding. (...) The modern institution of the university may face a similar fate in our increasingly globalized surrounding: either it is going to accept the rules of bureaucratic consumer-oriented corporations, or it will have to try once again to find a new regulative idea. Thus, the history of the university and the history of the intellectual in the 20<SUP>th century being parallel, the present volume consists of essays in the philosophy of culture (devoted to the intellectual) and in the philosophy of education (devoted to the modern university) and attempts to link the two modern themes together. (shrink)

Ingarden conceives ontology as a philosophia prima, which deals with being as purely possible. It is an intuitive and a priori analysis of the content of the relevant ideas. It consists of three parts: existential, formal and material ontology. Existential ontology deals with the possible modes of existence. Problems of factual existence pertain to metaphysics, which is a separate branch of theoretical philosophy, based on ontology.

What are the ethical concerns among the growing populations of business people in Central & Eastern Europe, and how might they be dealt with practically in the course of business life? David Murray has been a management consultant since 1979 working primarily with the Hay Group in the area of strategic organisational change. Since founding Maine Consulting Services in 1991 he spends most of his time in the field of business and professional ethics, also holding a Visiting Fellowship at the (...) University of Central Lancashire. He is chairman of the Professional & Technical Board at the (British) Institute of Quality Assurance and a coordinating editor of the quarterly Organisations & People. Marek Kucia is a social researcher operating his own research agency (which organised the Polish part of this exercise) and an academic teaching sociology, and conducting and co‐ordinating Central European Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. He studied political science, sociology and philosophy at Krakow and studied for his PhD at Oxford. He has also worked for Gallup, London, in opinion and market research. This survey report is based on presentations made in April 1994 to the EBEN Research Centres Conference in Prague, and in June 1994 to the conference on “Ethics in Transition” organised in Gödöllö, Hungary, by the Democracy after Communism Foundation, Budapest. The authors wish to acknowledge the major contribution to this work of Mr Juraj Kusnierik of the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, who co‐ordinated the survey exercise. The project was sponsored by The Ethics Development Initiative, CARE, London; the Central European Foundation, SEN, Bratislava, Slovakia; SIS Ltd., Bratislava, Slovakia; and Maine Consulting Services, 16 Acrefield, Blackburn, Lancashire, England BB2 7BJ, to which all correspondence connected with this report should be addressed. (shrink)

The paper contains two concepts of implication that can be called analytic in the sense of Parry [5] or Fine [2]. Contrary to the Parry's approach, these implications do not involve S4 strict implication but the classical one. This fact refers to the similar notion of so-called demodalized analytic implication of Dunn [1] and strong implication of Vanderveken, cf. [4, 6]. The features of analytic classical implications are presented in the form of two propositional logics on the pure implicational language.