Number of Extensions of Non-Fregean Logics

We show that there are continuum many different extensions of SCI (the basic theory of non-Fregean propositional logic) that lie below WF (the Fregean extension) and are closed under substitution. Moreover, continuum many of them are independent from WB (the Boolean extension), continuum many lie above WB and are independent from WH (the Boolean extension with only two values for the equality relation), and only countably many lie between WH and WF.     

Próba uporządkowania podstawowego słownictwa prawniczego

Allatum est die 3 Junii 1963     

Emergency Research without Consent under Polish Law

Although Directive 2001/20/EC of the European Parliament and of Council of 4 April 2001 on the approximation of the laws regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to the implementation of good clinical practice in the conduct of clinical trials on medicinal products for human use does not contain an exception for emergency situations, and requires the informed consent of a legal representative in all cases where research is conducted on legally competent individuals who are unable to give informed consent, in Poland, emergency research can be conducted without consent. Polish regulations on emergency research can hardly be treated as a result of intentional legislative policy. Our provisions arise from multiple and sophisticated interpretations of different regulations that govern medical experiments on human subjects and clinical trials. These interpretations can be summarized as follows: (1) There are two categories of medical experiments: therapeutic and non-therapeutic experiments. Emergency research without consent may be conducted in the category of therapeutic experiment only (therapeutic experiment consists of the introduction by the physician of new or only partially proven diagnostic, therapeutic or preventive methods in order to achieve direct benefit to the health of the patients, and it can be carried out when hitherto applied methods were ineffective or their effectiveness was insufficient). (2). Emergency research may be conducted without consent if there is a situation of great urgency in which the research subject's life is in danger and there is no possibility of obtaining immediate consent from the research subject him or herself, or from his or her legal representative or guardianship court, and the research subject has not refused to give consent for the participation in an emergency therapeutic experiment. The legal representative or guardianship court shall be provided with all the relevant information concerning subject's participation in an experiment as soon as possible. All projects of emergency research with intent to be done without the research subject's consent must be approved by an independent bioethics committee. Because these five requirements seem to provide insufficient protection for a subject's autonomy and rights it is necessary to add to them two other conditions: (1) the emergency research could not be conducted using other research participants capable of giving informed consent; and (2) informed consent for continued participation in the emergency research shall be obtained from either the participant him or herself or the legally authorized representative as soon as possible (requirement of obtaining deferred consent). A consolidated single Act that will govern all aspects of medical experiments on human subjects, including emergency research, should be prepared and enacted as soon as possible.     

Randomized controlled trials versus rough set analysis: two competing approaches for evaluating clinical data

The present paper deals with the problem of evaluating empirical evidence for therapeutic decisions in medicine. The article discusses the views of Nancy Cartwright and John Worrall on the function that randomization plays in ascertaining causal relations with reference to the therapies applied. The main purpose of the paper is to present a general idea of alternative method of evaluating empirical evidence. The method builds on data analysis that makes use of rough set theory. The first attempts to apply the method show that it is an interesting alternative to randomized controlled trials.     

SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE MEANING OF LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE: “AMALGAM” NARRATIVES OF POLISH NATURAL SCIENTISTS

This article deals with phenomena occurring at the interface of the existential, the religious, and scientific inquiry. On the basis of in‐depth interviews with Polish physicists and biologists, I examine the role that science and religion play in their narrative of the meaning of the Universe and human life. I show that the narratives about meaning have a system‐related (“amalgam") character that is associated with responses to adjacent metaphysical questions, including those based on scientific knowledge. I reconstruct the typical amalgam questions of Polish scientists and come to a conclusion about the stability of religious and nonreligious amalgams in this group. Critically referring to the thesis concerning the secularizing impact of science, I conclude that science by itself does not have a destructive effect on Polish scientists’ confidence that life and the Universe are meaningful, but is rather an exacerbating factor of the existing worldview system.     

Most evidence for the compensation account of cognitive training is unreliable

Cognitive training and brain stimulation studies have suggested that human cognition, primarily working memory and attention control processes, can be enhanced. Some authors claim that gains (i.e., post-test minus pretest scores) from such interventions are unevenly distributed among people. The magnification account (expressed by the evangelical “who has will more be given”) predicts that the largest gains will be shown by the most cognitively efficient people, who will also be most effective in exploiting interventions. In contrast, the compensation account (“who has will less be given”) predicts that such people already perform at ceiling, so interventions will yield the largest gains in the least cognitively efficient people. Evidence for this latter account comes from reported negative correlations between the pretest and the training/stimulation gain. In this paper, with the use of mathematical derivations and simulation methods, we show that such correlations are pure statistical artifacts caused by the widely known methodological error called “regression to the mean”. Unfortunately, more advanced methods, such as alternative measures, linear models, and control groups do not guarantee correct assessment of the compensation effect either. The only correct method is to use direct modeling of correlations between latent true measures and gain. As to date no training/stimulation study has correctly used this method to provide evidence in favor of the compensation account, we must conclude that most (if not all) of the evidence should be considered inconclusive.