Russell’s Theories of Events and Instants from the Perspective of Point-Free Ontologies in the Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School

This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in : History and Philosophy of Logic, 45(2), 161--195, on 25.04.2024, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01445340.2023.2293414.We classify two of Bertrand Russell’s theories of events within the point-free ontology. The first of such approaches was presented informally by Russell in “The World of Physics and the World of Sense” (Lecture IV in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)). Based on this theory, Russell sketched ways to construct instants as collections of events. This paper formalises Russell’s approach from (1914). We will also show that in such a reconstructed theory, we obtain all axioms of Russell’s second theory from (1936) and all axioms of Thomason’s theory of events from (1989). Russell’s work certainly influenced the works of Stanisław Leśniewski, his student Alfred Tarski, and Czesław Lejewski—prominent members of the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS). We see our work in the tradition of the research of Leśniewski and Tarski. Building on the technical tools developed in this environment and in the spirit of the traditional research of the LWS, we engage here, in particular, with two classic works by Russell on fundamental ontology

A comprehensive study of floods in Poland in the 17th–18th centuries

Study region Poland, with the regions of Baltic Coast and Pomerania, Masuria-Podlasie, Greater Poland, Masovia, Silesia, and Lesser Poland located in the basins of the Baltic Coast rivers, the Vistula River and the Oder River. Study focus This study focused on completing the documentation of historical floods in Poland before the 19th century and providing a valuable source for historical hydrology studies in Europe. To this end, a comprehensive database of all floods for the 17th–18th centuries was used, that was based on documentary evidence from 293 sources and 978 weather notes describing all flood occurrences. New hydrological insights for the region The finding of this study revealed the occurrences of 678 floods, including 37 new cases that have been discovered and documented only in this research. Spatial analysis of the results revealed that most of the floods occurred in the Vistula River basin. The number of floods by season was greatest for summer (JJA) (47 %) and smallest for autumn (7 %). Investigation of the origin of floods indicated that rain was the main factor contributing to occurrences of floods in Poland (38 %). The estimation of the intensity of floods showed that most of the floods were “smaller, regional floods” (257 cases) based on the Brázdil et al. (2006b) classification and “extraordinary” (501 cases) in the Barriendos & Coeur (2004) classification

Literackie portrety niedźwiedzia Wojtka

Historia niedźwiedzia Wojtka jest prawdziwa, choć wydaje się nieprawdopodobna. Bohaterski miś-żołnierz armii dowodzonej przez gen. Andersa doczekał się już co najmniej 15 swoich pomników w Polsce i na świecie, wielu przedstawień teatralnych, kilku filmów i piosenek, wielu programów telewizyjnych, audycji radiowych, podcastów internetowych, gry planszowej, piwa i licznych gadżetów. Jednak w upowszechnianiu wiedzy i legend na jego temat wciąż największe zasługi mają literackie opowieści – oparte na faktach z domieszką fikcji lub treści niemożliwych do zweryfikowania

Wiejskie organizacje pozarządowe 20 lat po rozszerzeniu Unii Europejskiej. Przegląd wybranych wskaźników odporności [w:] Polska wieś i polskie rolnictwo 20 lat w Unii Europejskiej, red. Paweł Chmieliński, Grzegorz Gorzelak, Warszawa 2024, s. 393 - 412

Przystąpienie Polski do Unii Europejskiej stało się jednym z ważniejszych impulsów przyczyniających się do rozwoju zorganizowanych form działalności obywateli, w tym takich, które są nakierowane na rozwój lub ochronę obszarów wiejskich i wsi, jej przyrody, krajobrazu, kultury, historii, społeczności, polityki czy ekonomii. W unijnej polityce społecznej i rozwoju regionalnego czy szeroko zakrojonej Wspólnej Polityce Rolnej istotną rolę odgrywają organizacje pozarządowe, które – niekiedy na wyrost – są traktowane jako emanacja społeczeństwa obywatelskiego, społeczności lokalnej czy po prostu głos mieszkańców wsi. Dzięki wsparciu polityk unijnych, krajowych, regionalnych i lokalnych wraz z wpisanymi w nie mechanizmami rozwoju, programami wsparcia i finansowymi transferami powiększyła się przestrzeń działania III sektora. Aktualnie na obszarach wiejskich jest zarejestrowanych ok. 25 tys. organizacji pozarządowych (Charycka i in. 2020). Lokalne stowarzyszenia, fundacje, koła gospodyń wiejskich, uczniowskie kluby sportowe, kluby seniora, ochotnicze straże pożarne czy grupy działania – niezależnie od swojej formy organizacyjnej – stanowią istotne elementy funkcjonowania wiejskich społeczności

Polish Discourse Corpus (PDC): Corpus Design, ISO-Compliant Annotation, Data Highlights, and Parser Development

This paper presents the Polish Discourse Corpus, a pioneering resource of this kind for Polish and the first corpus in Poland to employ the ISO standard for discourse relation annotation. The Polish Discourse Corpus adopts ISO 24617-8, a segment of the Language Resource Management – Semantic Annotation Framework (SemAF), which outlines a set of core discourse relations adaptable for diverse languages and genres. The paper overviews the corpus architecture, annotation procedures, the challenges that the annotators have encountered, as well as key statistical data concerning discourse relations and connectives in the corpus. It further discusses the initial phases of the discourse parser tailored for the ISO 24617-8 framework. Evaluations on the efficacy and potential refinement areas of the corpus annotation and parsing strategies are also presented. The final part of the paper touches upon anticipated research plans to improve discourse analysis techniques in the project and to conduct discourse studies involving multiple languages

A Duty to Rescue and Its Cost

This research was funded in whole or in part by the National Science Centre, Poland, grant number 2020/39/B/HS5/00610. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.The purpose of the present paper is to analyse the problem of cost generated by the performance of a duty to rescue. The authors consider three distinct views of this problem by confronting a scenario in which one party decides to rescue another, where providing such assistance seems to involve an infringement upon the property rights of the third party. For example, A rescues drowning B but in the process of doing so A apparently trespasses upon C’s land. The question that the authors pose is: Assuming that there is a duty to rescue, who should be charged with the cost of what seems to be an infringement upon the third party’s property rights? The paper analyses the following possibilities: the cost should be borne by (a) the victim of the emergency, (b) the rescuer, (c) the third party whose rights seem to have been encroached upon. Even though the authors begin with a pronouncedly libertarian assumption about the third party’s absolute property rights, in the course of the discussion they come to the conclusion that it is exactly this assumption that should be further probed and ultimately relaxed in order to reach the most plausible solution to the present dilemma

Thomas Aquinas, Exegete of the Letter to the Hebrews

Grant OPUS “Biblical Exegesis and Jewish-Christian relations from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews” (no. 2019/35/B/ HS1/00305).This contribution seeks to introduce the reader to Aquinas’scommentary on the Letter to the Hebrews by examining the main exegetical techniques used by Aquinas, identifying the most important patristic and medieval sources and discussing the main theological topics of the Letter through the lens of Aquinas’s though