(RE)CLAIMING ENGLISH LANGUAGE TODAY

Author(s): Nadežda STOJKOVIC / Language(s): English / Issue: 26/2019

In the huge and most diverse discussion on the influence of the English language as a second, international, or bridge language, there are distinctive voices drawing attention to the fact that this language as nowadays so widely used in innumerable contexts, is no longer ‘owned’ by the community of speakers to whom it is mother language, those primarily of the countries from where English language originates. Moreover, the number of people speaking, or rather using English language today either as their second or foreign language, by far outnumbers people to whom it is native. Situation being such, it is further claimed the concept of ‘standard English’ reflects inherent inequality stance, for if it belongs to everyone speaking it, then insisting on the supremacy on only one of its variants means placing all those speakers of it in a subdued position, and this possibly being yet another facet of English an agent of neocolonialism and globalization (Pennycook 1998, Phillipson 1992). The spread of the English language has been much investigated as oppressive to the formation and expression of personal and collective identities, degrading national languages and through globalization diminishing the impact of local cultures (Bhaba 1990), that it challenges cultures and discourses, being the impetus for continuous re-codification and re-colonisation (Foucault 1980).

(spr.) Sprawozdanie z konferencji naukowej „Wokół poszukiwania życia w kosmosie”. Instytut Filozofii UKSW, Warszawa, 16 grudnia 2015 r.

Author(s): Adam Swiezynski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

A formal approach to organization of educational objectives

Author(s): Milan Segedinac,Mirjana Segedinac,Zora Konjovic,Goran Savic / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2011

The organization of educational objectives plays an important role in curriculum development process, since it enables the sequencing of educational experiences. The main goal of this paper is to propose a framework for the formal representation of educational objectives, which enables the evaluation of organization of educational objectives. The model is based on domain ontology, Bloom’s taxonomy and objectives organization in the competence-based knowledge space. The model is verified on the case study that evaluates the students‘ achievements in Chemistry field Solutions by conducting an informal knowledge test on the group of 199 14-year-old students of primary schools in the Republic of Serbia. The results obtained from the case study clearly indicate the necessity for including assessment of students‘ achievements in the organization of educational objectives. The proposed model enables evaluation of organization of educational objectives which could be further used for an iterative refinement of the organization of educational objectives.

A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF ONCOLOGICAL NUTRITION TEXT

Author(s): Oana Atomei / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 15/2018

Most non-literary texts discussing cancer may contain narrative elements and can be evaluated as narratives. We analyzed an educational nutrition brochure for patients with cancer. The narrative analysis can identify certain discourse perspectives and values. We identified some characteristics of narrative writing, including themes, characters and events. The narrator is the health professional (the voice of medical science), the main character (the hero) is the oncology patient, the bad character is cancer, and helper and donor characters are the doctor and dietician, diet and food nutrients. Sometimes cancer means fight for life. The human body can be seen as both a character and a narrative space.

A Philosophical Critique of the Concept of Miracle as a “Supernatural Event”

Author(s): Adam Swiezynski / Language(s): English / Issue: 49/2017

The notion of the supernaturality of an event may be understood in various ways. Most frequently ‘supernatural’ means ‘separated from nature’, i.e. different from nature. Thus, what is meant here is the difference in ontological character. The definitions of miracle, present in literature, emphasize the fact that we may talk about a miracle only when the phenomenon takes place beyond the natural order or stands in opposition to it. The description of a miracle as a ‘supernatural event’ contains in itself the reference to that which is natural. The supernaturality of an event means that it surpasses (transcends) naturality. Additionally, this transcendence contains a kind of opposition to that which is natural. However, the miracle as a supernatural event takes place within the scope of that which is natural, although it takes place in a different way from natural events. It seems that this supernaturality may involve two things: (1) the course of the miraculous event; (2) the cause of the miraculous event. We should consider each of them separately and specify what we understand by the supernatural course of the event and by the supernatural cause of the event. If we could prove that we can talk about supernatural events at least in one of the two signaled aspects of supernaturality, then we would be able to define the miraculous event as a supernatural one. The analyses proposed in the paper allow us to formulate the following statement concerning the miraculous event, which is, to a great extent, a critical correction of the traditional way of understanding it: the miracle may be correctly understood as a supernatural event, only when this supernaturality concerns the personal cause of the event and not its course.

A Radical Reinterpretation of Quinean Naturalism and Its View of Consciousness

Author(s): Pamela Ann J. Boongaling / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

McGinn maintains that Quinean naturalism cannot provide a viable position in the debate on the existence of consciousness and the external world for it does not have a place for phenomenal experience in its naturalized epistemology. In effect, it cannot or will refuse to address any version of a sceptic’s argument regarding the lack of sufficient grounds to prove the existence of consciousness and the external world. I argue otherwise by pointing out that Quinean naturalism must provide an account of phenomenal experience to ensure the consistency of its epistemic and ontic assumptions with its naturalistic worldview. In the process, I demonstrate that Quinean naturalism allows us to infer that the best explanation for the existence of both consciousness and the external world can be derived from how the roles of subjectivity and objectivity in our creation and assessment of our conceptual schemes are primarily derived from our phenomenal experience of the external world.

A Revisionary View of Texts, Textual Meaning, and Fictional Characters

Author(s): Anders Pettersson / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Using ideas from John Searle, Roy Harris, Michael Reddy, and Nelson Goodman, I argue that texts, such as they are commonly conceived, lack brute existence. The common idea of texts is a conceptual construction which is useful in practical everyday contexts but not in serious theorizing, where it creates illusions and contradictions. One of these illusions is the idea of an objective textual meaning, a meaning which is “in the text”: what we actually have in the way of textual meaning are the ideas of various persons – authors, readers, and commentators -- about the meaning of the text. When applied to fictional characters, this way of viewing things explains why it makes sense to regard fictional characters as being created and as lacking brute existence.

A survey of web ontology languages and semantic web services

Author(s): Napoleon Alexandru Sireteanu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2013

In the beginning World Wide Web was syntactic and the content itself was only readable by humans. The modern web combines existing web technologies with knowledge representation formalisms. In this sense, the Semantic Web proposes the mark-up of content on the web using formal ontology that structure essential data for the purpose of comprehensive machine understanding. On the syntactical level, standardization is an important topic. Many standards which can be used to integrate different information sources have evolved. Beside the classical database interfaces like ODBC, web-oriented standard languages like HTML, XML, RDF and OWL increase in importance. As the World Wide Web offers the greatest potential for sharing information, we will base our paper on these evolving standards.

A szabadság mint a lét struktúrájának meggyengítése

Adalékok a sartre-i szabadságfogalom értelmezéséhez

Author(s): Pál Petki / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2018

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, it is in the human being’s specific rapport to the world that Nothingness appears. Questioning is considered to be the fundamental modality of this rapport. He handles this as an entity with fundamental ontological relevance, owing to the fact that through its structural elements of denying and nihilation, it introduces negatités into the world, and thus it is capable of producing ontological articulations. The basis of Sartre’s specific interpretation of freedom results from these traits of Man’s existence in the world, which also leads to the definition of man as an existence capable of weakening the structure of being. The present thesis contains interpretations referring to these aspects of the significance of Sartre’s concept of freedom.

About Gymnosophy

Author(s): Sergiu Teodorescu,Aurelia Preda / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2014

The gymnosophy philosophy as a way to substantiate gymnastics; gymnastics and gymnosophy’s etymological explanation; the gymnosophy, considered "the wisdom of the naked" becomes, at some point, the philosopher's way of health and thereby gymnastics becomes practical way of obtaining health , nudity as a means of verifying the execution of exercise; gymnastics supplemented diet since antiquity; spirituality is found in bodily perfection of the gods of antiquity” "to pray for a sound mind in a healthy body"; legislating in antiquity, to gymnastics, to maintain health; physical activity, characteristic of contemporary, induces disease; sport, as a health way, acute need of every man.

Abstrakčiosios tapybos teorijos ir modernaus meno samprata

Author(s): Kristina Budryte / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 38/2004

This article considers some problems of theoretical interpretation, structural analysis and evaluation posed by specific examples of abstract art and explores some relations and differences between figurative and abstract forms of painting. Attention is paid to the historical context from the beginning of abstract art (Kandinsky, Malevich, etc) through its development (particularly Abstract Expressionism: Pollock, Rothko, Newmann, etc) to some philosophical tendencies and art theories of the 20th century. The dominant interpretation of abstract art is based on the premise that abstraction as an artistic movement is linked to modernism. The advent of postmodernism would therefore announce the end of abstraction, and an attempt has been made to push the understanding of abstraction beyond the ontological and transcendental realm where it has often been located. The article analyses philosophical tendencies which relate the emergence of new forms of art in Europe and the USA with abstract painting. Having reviewed theories of abstract painting, a definition of abstraction appears as one of the most radical transformations of modern art in the 20th century.

Abstrakčiosios tapybos teorijos ir modernaus meno samprata

Author(s): Kristina Budryte / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 37/2004

This article considers some problems of theoretical interpretation, structural analysis and evaluation posed by specific examples of abstract art and explores some relations and differences between figurative and abstract forms of painting. Attention is paid to the historical context from the beginning of abstract art (Kandinsky, Malevich, etc) through its development (particularly Abstract Expressionism: Pollock, Rothko, Newmann, etc) to some philosophical tendencies and art theories of the 20th century. The dominant interpretation of abstract art is based on the premise that abstraction as an artistic movement is linked to modernism. The advent of postmodernism would therefore announce the end of abstraction, and an attempt has been made to push the understanding of abstraction beyond the ontological and transcendental realm where it has often been located. The article analyses philosophical tendencies which relate the emergence of new forms of art in Europe and the USA with abstract painting. Having reviewed theories of abstract painting, a definition of abstraction appears as one of the most radical transformations of modern art in the 20th century.

Acedia a lype w pismach Ewagriusza z Pontu. Teo-antropologia ontologiczna

Author(s): Lidia Macheta / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 49/2017

The article examines the problem of the relationship between the two phenomena of the Evagrian theo-anthropology: acedia (listlessness) and lype (sadness). The problem is considered from the perspective of ontological anthropology (a human being is being studied from the side of possibilities and obligations of being oneself). The purpose of the analysis is to demonstrate and explain the differences between acedia and lype in terms of their anthropological justification. This goal is attained through the concepts of existential axiology. The article seeks to demonstrate that acedia and lype point in the human being to two different dimensions: acedia distorts in the existence the sphere of the attitude towards basic values; lype distorts in the existence the sphere of attitudes towards positive values, the realization of which signifies a fulfillment of existence.

Active Doings and the Principle of the Causal Closure of the Physical World

Author(s): Ansgar Beckermann / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Some philosophers hold that it would be impossible for us to do something actively if the physical world were causally closed, i.e., if in the physical world all events were caused by other physical events if they are caused at all. The reason for this view is that these philosophers adhere to what I call the traditional picture of action. Recently, Martine Nida-Rümelin tried to defend this picture by phenomenological considerations. According to the traditional picture a behavior can only count as something an agent does actively if it is ultimately caused by the agent in an agent-causal way. In this paper I adduce three arguments against agent causation: (1) We do not really understand what agent causation is. (2) If agent causation were real, we would be confronted with the strange fact that human agents can only cause certain tiny events in the brain. (3) There is no empirical evidence that agent causation is real. In the last part of my paper I present an alternative account of the difference between what agents do actively and what is done to them.

Ad rem, czyli ku nowej recepcji antyku w ponowoczesnym świecie

Author(s): Aleksander, Wojciech Mikolajczak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 30/2018

This article presents the shift in the ontological status and function of Ancient Greek and Roman cultural heritage undergone by Western civilization in the last decades of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Antique tradition has since ceased to be transmitted simply as a system of ideas, values or role models, which was successively actualized in the process of its reception. In the post-modern consciousness, Ancient Greek and Roman heritage began to be understood as an individual collection of objects, consumed by society and adapted for the implementation of specific aims and aspirations.

ADOLESCENCE, MUSIC AND EMOTIONS. AN IDIOGRAPHIC APPROACH

Author(s): Ramona-Cristina Balanescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

Phylogenesis and ontogenesis confirm the importance music has in man’s life. It is considered to accompany man during the entire life, from birth until death. Every age has its own music and rhythms… According to age psychology, it is well known that adolescence and post-adolescence close the first cycle of human development. Out of the two, the adolescence period has always raised the researchers’ interest, being carefully investigated. The interest granted to this period even led to the development of a distinct new field, namely that of the teenage psychology, which gave birth to a study subject for the teachers to be, at the Master’s Degree program level, in Romania, called the Psycho-pedagogy of teenagers, youths and adults. This article shall not insist on the theoretical components concerning the teenage years, also detailed in the specialized literature, but it is an attempt at scanning the teenage soul, through music, based on the analysis of the papers produced by 1st year Master’s Degree Program students, attending the National Music University in Bucharest, and handed in for the study subject of the Psycho-pedagogy of teenagers, young people and adults.

Adorno: elementi intelektualne biografije

Author(s): Hans-Günther Holl / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 06/1983

Historijski razvoj interesovanja za Adomovo djelo, gotovo zaboravljeno u Njemačkoj nekoliko godina poslije smrti autora Negativne dijalektike, svjedoči pouzdano o važnosti te filozofije — po suštini protivnoj »integraciji« a osuđenoj na »izolovanost« — od oduševljenog ali površnog pristajanja koje je najprije doživjela.

Aftermath: Whatever Happened to the Second Volume of Being and Time?

Author(s): Theodore Kisiel / Language(s): English / Issue: 57/2012

The aim of the article is to reconstruct the possible contents of the Second Half of Being and time. Author begins with presentation of the hermeneutical logic of philosophical concept formation, it is formal indication; then describes the announcements of the third Division in Being and Time. Finally, the original Heidegger’s concept of philosophy is recalled to stress the meaning of the third division of Part One of Being and Time.

Against Laws of Nature as Truthmakers for Presentists

Author(s): Pablo Rychter / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

This paper addresses the so-called ‘truthmaker problem’ or ‘grounding problem’ for presentism. In section 1, I set the stage by introducing presentism and the truthmaker problem. In section 2, I consider a proposed solution to it, which I call the ‘laws of nature proposal’ (LNP), recently defended by Markosian (2013). I argue that LNP fails as a solution to the truthmaker problem because it does not meet a constraint that is generally taken as constitutive of it: that the entities doing truthmaker work should be categorical. Then, in section 3, I discuss the prospects of abandoning this ‘categoricity constraint’. The conclusion of this discussion is that the presentist should be allowed to such a move. This, however, is not completely good news for the friends of LNP, since the abandonment of the ‘categoricity constraint’ opens the door to simpler solutions, like what is often called ‘Lucretianism’.

Ako nám v ontológii umenia pomôže odlíšenie diela a objektu? Lamarque o fyzikálnych a kultúrnych objektoch

Author(s): Ján Hrkút / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 1/2018

Diverse and extended philosophical approaches to the art cover also the ontological questions. There are plenty authors who are doing their research to explore the question on the nature of the existence of works of art. What is challenging on the existence of works of art? Artworks are basically things, but necessarily artifact, products of human intentional activity. But from the other point of view, they are just objects, sometimes strange, sometimes old, but (physical) objects. Nobody denies particular function and value of artworks. Nevertheless, this function and value of artworks is hidden in very interesting way. Someone who is not familiar to the work could miss artistic meaning of the work at all. Therefore, we can argue there are not explicit artistic properties in art. On the other hand, physical configuration of the artwork-object offers magnificent and enormous source of meaning, pleasure and content. But there are not other properties then physical. So, philosophers of art should explain how artworks exist in contrary to the nature existence of others entities or artifacts. The text examines the hypothesis of the physical object and R. Wollheim's arguments against this hypothesis. He put the robust argumentation in his famous ‘Art and its objects’. But, the core of the article is the reconstruction of P. Lamarque's approach. Lamarque in his book ‘Art & Object’ distinguishes two elements: work and object. He considers this as a key to explain how works of art exist. The object is considered to be a medium, and work is entity depending on cultural and institutional contexts. Lamarque argues that art occurs where there is specific cultural and institutional background and understanding of objects as works of art. Pure existence of object (physically similar to artwork) does not guarantee existence of artworks. Surprisingly, identical entity could be and could not be artwork in the same time. The difference is in the presence of absence of appropriate cultural and institutional contexts.