The Conditions of Philosophy in Totalitarian and Post-Totalitarian Poland

This compound paper presents the views of two Polish philosophers on the strong international pressures influencing the development of Polish philosophy in recent times. The first part, by Leszek Koczanowicz, treats the philosophical situation and problems of totalitarian Poland under the influence of Soviet Marxism, while the second part, by Adam Chmielewski, focuses on the main trends and difficulties of post-totalitarian Poland, dominated by Western influence.     

Complex effects of NMDA receptor antagonist APV in the basolateral amygdala on acquisition of two-way avoidance reaction and long-term fear memory

Although much has been learned about the role of the amygdala in Pavlovian fear conditioning, relatively little is known about an involvement of this structure in more complex aversive learning, such as acquisition of an active avoidance reaction. In the present study, rats with a pretraining injection of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, 2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoic acid (APV), into the basolateral amygdala (BLA) were found to be impaired in two-way active avoidance learning. During multitrial training in a shuttle box, the APV-injected rats were not different from the controls in sensitivity to shock or in acquisition of freezing to contextual cues. However, APV injection led to impaired retention of contextual fear when tested 48 h later, along with an attenuation of c-Fos expression in the amygdala. These results are consistent with the role of NMDA receptors of the BLA in long-term memory of fear, previously documented in Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. The APV-induced impairment in the active avoidance learning coincided with deficits in directionality of the escape reaction and in attention to conditioned stimuli. These data indicate that normal functioning of NMDA receptors in the basolateral amygdala is required during acquisition of adaptive instrumental responses in a shuttle box but is not necessary for acquisition of short-term contextual fear in this situation.     

What chance-credence norms should be

Synthese - Multiple realizability says that the same kind of mental states may be manifested by systems with very different physical constitutions. Putnam (1967) supposed it to be...     

Education for Critical Community and the Pedagogy of Asylum: Two Responses to the Crisis Of University Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - The current heated debate on the deteriorating status of the university raises a range of pertinent questions, including: What role can the humanities play in...     

Memory of Politics and Politics of Memory. Reflections on the Construction of the Past in Post-Totalitarian Poland

Studies in East European Thought -