The effect of globalization is not only an improvement of living conditions in many developing countries, but also a widening of development disparities and economic inequalities between countries of the rich North and the poor South. Fair trade can be considered as a response to emerging problems of development. Therefore it is a form of assistance directed to the marginalized producers in the Global South by enabling them to manufacture, sell and distribute goods to markets in developed countries. This is (...) an alternative to the existing formula of international trade, whose aim is to help producers in the South by integrating them into the current trading system under certain conditions. The idea is to create a new business relationship between producer and consumer, where the production and consumption are bound together in a new supply chain and where the economic benefits are distributed more fairly. It means that the prices of fair trade products are set at a level that would ensure a steady income to the producer and would lead to raising their living standards and prosperity. The ethical aspects of the fair trade system are clear, the problem is whether the fair trade standards can be used on a wider scale in the global economy, where there is a clash of certain ethical values with market economy rules based on maximizing profits and increasing efficiency. (shrink)

Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA, mathias_risse{at}ksg.harvard.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> It is a widespread view that support for Fair Trade is called for, whereas agricultural subsidies are pegged as unjustifiable. Though one supports farmers in developing countries while the other does the same for those in already developed ones, there are, nonetheless, similarities between both scenarios. Both are economically `inefficient', upholding production beyond what the market would sustain. In both cases, supportive arguments (...) can assume two forms. First, such arguments might draw on normative claims made by producers. In the case of agricultural subsidies, farmers in developed countries assert claims against their fellow citizens, who ought to accept redistributive measures to keep them in business. In the case of Fair Trade, the claim can be made by farmers in developing nations against consumers, who ought to pay higher prices to keep them in business (under conditions deemed acceptable). Second, arguments to keep producers in business might be presented as the prerogative of both groups: even if farmers in developed countries did not have a claim to be kept in business, these countries would have the right to take measures to do so because they value their products. In the case of Fair Trade, even if farmers in developing nations had no claim against consumers, it is a consumer prerogative to pay more to keep them in business because they value their product or the process of producing it. There are, of course, differences between these scenarios as well, but in light of these parallels in the moral cases for subsidies and Fair Trade, it will be illuminating to examine the arguments for and against subsidies and Fair Trade together. Key Words: trade • subsidies • fairness • markets • development. (shrink)

In meinem Referat werde ich an das philosophische Problem der Ewigkeit der Welt anknüpfen. Wenn wir dieses Problem philosophisch betrachten, müssen wir uns auf das frühe Stadium der Weltevolution ziehen, d.h. auf das „präphysische" Stadium. Als „präphysisch" bezeichne ich das Frühstadium der kosmologischen Evolution, das angesichts der damaligen extremen Verhältnisse durch begründete fundamentale Theorien der gegenwärtigen Physik, wie Quantenmechanik, Relativitätstheorie oder Thermodynamik nicht zu beschreiben oder zu erklären ist. Heute kennen wir nur die obere Zeitgrenze dieses Stadiums, die sog. Plancksche (...) Schwelle, die 10~^3 s. beträgt. Das Hauptproblem im Prozess der ontologischen Charakteristik dieses Stadiums ist der Versuch, seine untere Zeitgrenze festzulegen. Mit diesem Problem ist nämlich eine der ältesten und viel diskutierten philosphischen Fragen verbunden, und zwar das Problem der Ewigkeit der Welt und : (1) das Problem des Zeitraums des „präphysischen" Stadiums (es geht um das Festlegen seiner unteren Zeitgrenze - dauerte es unendlich lang oder aber nur einen winzigen Sekundenteil?), (2) ist der Anfang der Zeit (falls es ihn gäbe) zugleich der Anfang der Welt?, (3) bildet der Grosse Ausbruch den absoluten Anfang der Welt oder nur den Anfang eines von mehreren Stadien in ihrer Evolution, (4) setzt die Möglichkeit des absoluten Anfangs der Welt unbedingt die Kreation Gottes voraus (die supranatürliche Kreation) oder läbt eine Möglichkeit die Entstehung der Welt auf eine natürliche Weise zu (die natürliche Kreation), (5) das Problem des „sonderlichen" Moments. Alle diese Fragen, stelle ich auf der Basis der neueren Errungenschaften der Physik und Kosmologie dar. (shrink)

Artykuł omawia wzajemne kontakty i wspólnotę myśli dwóch wybitnych pisarzy i filozofów Bolesława Micińskiego i Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza, którzy mimo dużej różnicy wieku byli blisko zaprzyjaźnieni. Podejmowane przez nich problemy odsyłają do międzywojennej atmosfery filozoficznej w Polsce i w Europie, a także do ożywionych dyskusji w gronie krytyków literackich i awangardowych pisarzy. Witkiewicz jako pierwszy Polak zapoznał się z psychoanalizą i znacznie wpłynął na jej znajomość u Micińskiego, choć ich sposoby rozumienia teorii Freuda wyraźnie się rozeszły. Miciński był też gorącym (...) zwolennikiem teorii Czystej Formy, realizatorem jej założeń w swojej twórczości i rzecznikiem unaukowienia krytyki literackiej poprzez jej mocne osadzenie w filozofii. Witkacy patronował jego poglądom estetycznym wyłożonym najpełniej w nieopublikowanej pracy magisterskiej Rzeczywistość i jej deformacja w sztuce napisanej pod kierunkiem Władysława Tatarkiewicza. Obaj zdecydowanie opowiadali się przeciw wszelkiemu redukcjonizmowi w filozofii; byli przeciwnikami fizykalizmu Koła Wiedeńskiego oraz antymetafizycznego nastawienia szkoły lwowsko-warszawskiej. Zwłaszcza Miciński dostrzegał słabość myśli analitycznej i poszukiwał dla filozofii formy bardziej pojemnej. W końcowym okresie twórczości Micińskiego stanął w wyraźnej opozycji wobec totalitaryzmu i mechanizacji życia, co było znamienne również dla Witkacego. Dla autora Portretu Kanta Witkiewicz był z pewnością mistrzem w dziedzinie filozofii, wciąż jednak pozostaje otwarte pytanie, ile od swego młodszego przyjaciela zaczerpnął autor Szewców? (shrink)

W artykule zaprezentowano nieznany list Bolesława Micińskiego do ks. Augustyna Jakubisiaka znaleziony w jego archiwum w Bibliotece Polskiej w Paryżu. Jest to okazja do przypomnienia tych wybitnych, choć nieco zapomnianych filozofów oraz do prezentacji ich powiązań intelektualnych. Poznali się w 1937 r. w Paryżu i odtąd utrzymywali bliskie kontakty, aż do śmierci Micińskiego w 1943 r. Od początku łączył ich sprzeciw wobec idealistycznej filozofii niemieckiej oraz neopozytywizmu Koła Wiedeńskiego z jego materializmem, scjentyzmem i sceptycyzmem. Miciński odkrywał u ks. Jakubisiaka bliskie (...) sobie poglądy na temat przestrzeni i czasu. W ostatnich esejach Micińskiego z okresu wojny pojawiają się tezy o charakterze moralnym, które głosił ks. Jakubisiak, a mianowicie jednostkowość i autodeterminizm. Jednostkowość oznacza dowartościowanie jednostki w obliczu wszystkiego, co może jej zagrażać, zwłaszcza totalizmów. Z kolei autodeterminizm to przyznanie ludzkiemu bytowi absolutnej autonomii i wolności, która działa w przyjętym uprzednio kierunku. Było to zanegowanie determinizmu i ateizmu. Konteksty wypowiedzi Micińskiego na temat jednostki i autodeterminizmu wskazują, że nie tylko przejął on od Jakubisiaka istotne dla niego pojęcia, lecz także osadził je w bliskim sobie kontekście światopoglądowym. Myśl polskiego duchownego musiała być dla Micińskiego podwójnie inspirująca. Po pierwsze, odkrywał w jego pracach znane sobie style filozofowania wywodzące się od św. Augustyna, Leibniza, Pascala czy Kanta. Z drugiej strony poszerzał pola własnych poszukiwań i znajdował odpowiedzi na istotne egzystencjalne pytania; zwracał się w kierunku współczesnej nauki, a zwłaszcza chrześcijaństwa, które stawało się dla niego coraz ważniejszym intelektualnym i duchowym azylem. (shrink)

In his article untitled Messages in Art Jerrold Levinson discusses the idea of a message behind a work of art. He argues that despite certain disclaimers put forward by artists it is „hard to deny that artworks (...) very often do have messages, and far from inexpressible ones”. From given examples it would seem that Levinson assumes that musical work just as other artworks sometimes generate messages and that in order for a work of music to be successful in expression (...) this message should be comprehensible and certainly not incoherent. The author of this paper draws on Levinson's “Messages in Art” as well as his “Music as Narrative and Music as Drama” to explore further the issues mentioned above. In particular the author argues that seeing musical works through the message it may generate is somewhat reductive and that musical work as well as other artworks are prone to abiding by an aesthetic code and therefore even when they allow for interpretation in terms of messages or morals these messages are incoherent or vague at best. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study was designed to address the hypothesis that differences and similarities in patterns of attentional processing in recently proposed types of anxiety and depression are connected with the dominant function they play in stimulation processing and their structural components. Participants filled out the Anxiety and Depression Questionnaire, which assesses types of anxiety and depression, and completed the Emotional Faces Attentional Test one week later. The obtained results confirmed our prediction and suggested that the proposed typology of anxiety and (...) depression is valid in the adaptive meanings of both phenomena. (shrink)

This paper presents the aspect of the dynamics of the verb valency and discusses the question of valency grammar. There are two primary conditions that cause the valency to change: grammatical and contextual. The point of this discription is to define changes of valency and to rank them in order to simplify the use of German constructions.

We investigate computability theoretic and topological properties of spaces of orders on computable orderable groups. A left order on a group G is a linear order of the domain of G, which is left-invariant under the group operation. Right orders and bi-orders are defined similarly. In particular, we study groups for which the spaces of left orders are homeomorphic to the Cantor set, and their Turing degree spectra contain certain upper cones of degrees. Our approach unifies and extends Sikora’s [28] (...) investigation of orders on groups in topology and Solomon’s [31] investigation of these orders in computable algebra. Furthermore, we establish that a computable free group Fn of rank n>1 has a bi-order in every Turing degree. (shrink)

Już w latach sześćdziesiątych zjawisko walencji znacznie zyskało na znaczeniu. Przyczyną tego mógł być fakt, iż gramatyka oparta na teorii walencji w coraz większym stopniu znajdowała swoje miejsce w nauczaniu języków obcych. W procesie uczenia się języka obcego istnieje bowiem zależność pomiędzy przyswajaniem znaczeń słów a zapamiętywaniem ich struktur syntaktycznych, co niewątpliwie bazuje na zjawisku walencji. Punktem wyjścia tej tezy jest zasada, według której wyrazy o podobnym znaczeniu tworzą konstrukcje o podobnej składni, co z kolei wypływa z faktu, iż wyrazy (...) bliskoznaczne wykazują podobne cechy walencyjne. Problem pojawia się podczas przyswajania języka obcego, albowiem język ojczysty w większym lub mniejszym stopniu wpływa na proces uczenia się. Chodzi tu oczywiście o zjawiska: transferu oraz interferencji, z czego zjawisko interferencji zaistniałe poprzez przenoszenie konstrukcji języka ojczystego na konstrukcje w języku obcym prowadzi do tego, że uczący się popełniają błędy. Biorąc pod uwagę sposób przedstawiania składni i konstrukcji językowych w oparciu o teorię walencji, nie da się zaprzeczyć, iż wzrasta zapotrzebowanie na informacje o cechach walencyjnych głównych części mowy. Językoznawcy starają się wyjść temu naprzeciw i redagują słowniki walencyjne, w których oprócz takich właśnie informacji zawierane są również modele poprawnych konstrukcji zdaniowych z danym słowem. W Niemczech od połowy XX w. istnieją dwa instytuty, gdzie prowadzone są badania nad zjawiskiem walencji poszczególnych części mowy: das Herder-Institut der Universität Leipzig oraz das Institut für deutsche Sprache Mannheim. W prezentowanym artykule przedstawione zostały słowniki zredagowane przez językoznawców działających w tych instytutach, jak również inne koncepcje słowników walencyjnych. Na uwagę zasługują tu przede wszystkim prace kontrastywne, jak np. opisany w artykule Słownik walencyjny niemieckich i polskich czasowników. Analizie poddane zostały każdorazowo: budowa słownika, informacje zawarte przy poszczególnych hasłach, adresat, założenia oraz praktyczność danej pozycji. (shrink)

This article deals with the dichotomy of static and dynamic valency. Although the attribute static means constancy and characteristic dynamic is most associated with changeability and variantibility, both types of verbal valence show fixed and variable aspects. Quite obviously this is related to the specificity of valency – to its multilayered qualities. This paper presents attempts to show in what sense static valency implies variantibility, and what fixed and what variable aspects are included in dynamic valency.

The author concentrates on the problem of dishonest approach to the responsibilities of the scientist and the scholar. She focuses on unconscionable uses of language in scientific publications resulting in making lies. The term ‘lie’ is so used as to refer to any utterance which is put forward under a pretence of making a scholarly statement, if that statement contains false sentences which have been put in deliberately. Different techniques of lying are reviewed: making blatantly untrue statements, concealment of the (...) truth, linguistic manipulations in descriptions and explanations aimed at producing false impressions. The author asks the question, who lies more often, the people who belong to the elite or those who remain in the social peripheries? The answer is qualified by a further distinction which separates moral peripheries from institutional peripheries. (shrink)

Drawing from an ethics of care, relational approaches to autonomy have recently emerged in bioethics. Unlike individual autonomy with its emphasis on patients’ rights, choice, and self-determination which has been the hallmark of bioethics consistent with the ideology of individualism in neoliberal democracies in Western countries, relational autonomy highlights the relatedness, interdependency, and social embeddedness of patients. By examining the mediating role that male Hospital Liaison Committee members in Germany play in facilitating care that supports Jehovah's Witnesses’ refusal of blood (...) transfusions, this article moves beyond ‘dyadic relations’ and contexts of caregiving. It also contributes to a deeper understanding of care and relational conceptualizations of Witness patients’ autonomy globally. (shrink)

This paper presents the results of empirical research that explores the links between types of social participation and identity. The author availed herself of the neo-eriksonian approach to identity by Luyckx et al. and the concept of social participation types. The study involved 1,665 students from six types of schools: lower secondary school, general upper secondary school, technical upper secondary school, specialized upper secondary school, university, and post-secondary school. The results of the research, conducted with the use of Dimensions of (...) Identity Development Scale and Social Participation Questionnaire, indicate that transitive orientation increases with age and that, consequently, the frequency of assimilation and integration types of social participation tends to be higher in emerging adulthood in comparison with adolescence. The study showed that general upper secondary school students, contrary to their colleagues from technical and specialized upper secondary schools, did not differ in terms of transitive and moratorium orientation levels from lower secondary school students. The hypothesis about the relationship between transitive orientation and commitment scales was confirmed, whereas the hypotheses concerning the links between exploration scales and both dimensions of social participation were not validated. (shrink)

Powrót do filozofii starożytnej Grecji pozwala przypomnieć etyczny wymiar politycznej aktywności, w którym umiejętność łączenia dobra własnego z dobrem ogółu postrzegano jako świadectwo rozumnej natury człowieka wolnego i odpowiedzialnego zarazem. Republikański ideał życia zostaje przez Arendt skonfrontowany z dominującymi tendencjami politycznymi oraz ekonomicznymi, które rozwinęły się w nowożytnej kulturze europejskiej. Etyczne zdeprecjonowanie sfery publicznej prowadziło do postrzegania jej w kategoriach przymusu i przemocy, stanowiących zagrożenie indywidualnej wolności. Na znaczeniu zyskała natomiast sfera indywidualnej aktywności, związanej zwłaszcza z pracą wytwórczą, zarobkowaniem oraz (...) konsumowaniem. Zwyciężyła idea prywatności, bogactwa, rywalizacji. Narodziło się społeczeństwo masowe, składające się ze zatomizowanych jednostek niezdolnych do wzięcia na siebie odpowiedzialności za wspólnotę polityczną. (shrink)

The study examines the question of how personal self-esteem, collective self-esteem and readiness for self-improvement are linked to satisfaction with life in women from countries differing with regard to level of collectivism. Our study participants were Polish and Indian female students. The obtained results indicate that personal self-esteem plays a very important role in satisfaction with life of women from the two countries. However, collective self-esteem is not directly related to satisfaction with life among women from the two cultures analyzed. (...) Structural Equation Modeling showed that: a) in the Indian group readiness for self-improvement is more important for satisfaction with life than in the Polish group and it is significantly related to satisfaction with life through collectivistic self-esteem, b) the direct influence of both personal and collective self-esteem on satisfaction with life is more significant in the Polish group than in the Indian group. (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)

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate and reconstruct the philosophical thoughts in Marian Smoluchowski’s papers. He was an outstanding Polish physicist, who lived at the turn of the XIX and XX century. Smoluchowski was particularly interested in theoretical physics. His achievements in this discipline, some even very significant, have caused him to be perceived mainly as a physicist. His work in the theory of fluctuations and kinetic theory of gases, especially in the theory of Brownian motions, is (...) well known to physicists. My attention in this paper is focused on the metascientific problems which dominated his philosophical reflections. His analysis in the fields on philosophy of science ought to be perceived in light of physics. Philosophical reflections were at the margins of science which he practiced – physics was always the background to his deliberations. An important limit to our deliberations was set by concentrating on issues typical of the philosophy of science. In Smoluchowski’s case, however, it is difficult to say that his branch of philosophy is characterized by systematic reflection. It is difficult to classify his reflection in the framework of any given philosophical trend. (shrink)

The collection of papers addresses the perennial problem of the relation between language and meaning. It proposes various theoretical approaches to the issue ranging from a synergetic theory of meaning merging the cognitive and the socio-historical perspectives, through holistic, evolutionary models and a revision of some of the assumptions of Cognitive Metaphor Theory to the discussion of the role of pragmatic competence in meaning construction. A number of papers make recourse to corpus based studies and psycholinguistic experiments. The topics of (...) specific linguistic investigations cover such diverse issues as idiom processing, emotion words in Chinese, valuation of abstract nouns, the preposition <I>at and scalar adjectives. Several papers explore the application of the reflections on the nature of meaning to lexicography and translation. One, self-reflective article investigates the consequences of the unformulated assumptions about meaning for the coherence of proposed linguistic theories. The volume firmly places the study of meaning in the centre of the linguistic research by showing its significance for linguistic theory and its applications. (shrink)

Presented studies investigated the specificity of visual and auditory modalities in attentional processing of emotion, and its association with temperamental dimensions and trait-like attentional control. During preliminary study 30 participants were presented with the paper-pencil visual search task and emotional prosody detection tasks. Results revealed visual happiness superiority and auditory sadness superiority. During the main study, in addition to attentional performance, 51 subjects were administrated two questionnaires: EPQ-R and Attentional Control Scale. Introducing individual differences into analysis limited the general pattern (...) of modality distinctiveness in attentional processing of emotional stimuli obtained in the preliminary study. Findings for all personality traits studied separately showed that Extraversion and low Neuroticism were associated with the visual sadness superiority. Whereas interactional analysis indicated effective visual threat processing in extraverts with good AC and effective friendly prosody detection when Neuroticism and AC remain in inverse relationship. Hence, we have found that processing emotional targets in both modalities is associated with temperament dimensions and their interactions with attentional control. Additionally, findings from both studies suggest that general psychological laws might be challenged by individual differences. (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)

paper discusses the concepts of truth and appearance and the function they perform in the philosophy of Theodor Wisengrund Adorno.

Recently the virtual organization of work has become of crucial significance. The changes in the work environment induced by the Industry 4.0 revolution are also reflected in the emergence of virtual negotiations. New settings impose new challenges not only for negotiators, but also for higher education struggling to provide students with the best opportunities for comprehensive development. Given the applicability of virtual exchange (VE) in business higher education, the main objective of this paper is to present the usefulness of virtual (...) exchange as a tool to boost students’ skills that are necessary for virtual negotiations. Firstly, the concept of the 4th space was applied to compare the context of virtual negotiations and VE projects. Secondly, the learning outcomes of the VE projects were studied from the perspective of the requirements of virtual negotiations. (shrink)