Throughout the centuries, the doctrine of divine simplicity laid at the heart of Christian theology. In Thomas Aquinas’ mature thought, simplicity occupies a privileged place among other attributes of God. A simple simple being is a being that does not consist of any parts or constituents. God’s being simple means that he does not exhibit any of the seven types of composition. The arguments that serve as the justification for this thesis can be divided into four groups which I labeled: (...) the argument from the lack of potentiality, the argument from the priority of parts to the whole, the argument from the anterior maker and the argument from perfection. All of them begin with identifying God with the first cause of all things and add other premises that are specific to them. The first argument — that the first cause does not have potentiality and every composite being does have it. The second — that everything that is composite depends on it’s parts while the first cause is not dependent upon anything. The third — that every composite being needs a cause or explanation and the first cause has neither. The fourth — that the first cause is a perfectly good being and such a being cannot be composite. The analyses that were conducted show that the first two reasonings seem to be unsound. The third of the arguments provides a fine justification for the thesis in question. The fourth may serve as an additional, but weaker justification for it. (shrink)

We study the first-order consequences of Ramsey’s Theorem fork-colourings ofn-tuples, for fixed$n, k \ge 2$, over the relatively weak second-order arithmetic theory$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0$. Using the Chong–Mourad coding lemma, we show that in a model of$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0$that does not satisfy$\Sigma ^0_1$induction,$\mathrm {RT}^n_k$is equivalent to its relativization to any proper$\Sigma ^0_1$-definable cut, so its truth value remains unchanged in all extensions of the model with the same first-order universe.We give a complete axiomatization of the first-order consequences of$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0 + \mathrm {RT}^n_k$for$n \ge (...) 3$. We show that they form a non-finitely axiomatizable subtheory of$\mathrm {PA}$whose$\Pi _3$fragment coincides with$\mathrm {B} \Sigma _1 + \exp $and whose$\Pi _{\ell +3}$fragment for$\ell \ge 1$lies between$\mathrm {I} \Sigma _\ell \Rightarrow \mathrm {B} \Sigma _{\ell +1}$and$\mathrm {B} \Sigma _{\ell +1}$. We also give a complete axiomatization of the first-order consequences of$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0 + \mathrm {RT}^2_k + \neg \mathrm {I} \Sigma _1$. In general, we show that the first-order consequences of$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0 + \mathrm {RT}^2_k$form a subtheory of$\mathrm {I} \Sigma _2$whose$\Pi _3$fragment coincides with$\mathrm {B} \Sigma _1 + \exp $and whose$\Pi _4$fragment is strictly weaker than$\mathrm {B} \Sigma _2$but not contained in$\mathrm {I} \Sigma _1$.Additionally, we consider a principle$\Delta ^0_2$-$\mathrm {RT}^2_2$which is defined like$\mathrm {RT}^2_2$but with both the$2$-colourings and the solutions allowed to be$\Delta ^0_2$-sets rather than just sets. We show that the behaviour of$\Delta ^0_2$-$\mathrm {RT}^2_2$over$\mathrm {RCA}_0 + \mathrm {B}\Sigma ^0_2$is in many ways analogous to that of$\mathrm {RT}^2_2$over$\mathrm {RCA}^*_0$, and that$\mathrm {RCA}_0 + \mathrm {B} \Sigma ^0_2 + \Delta ^0_2$-$\mathrm {RT}^2_2$is$\Pi _4$- but not$\Pi _5$-conservative over$\mathrm {B} \Sigma _2$. However, the statement we use to witness failure of$\Pi _5$-conservativity is not provable in$\mathrm {RCA}_0 +\mathrm {RT}^2_2$. (shrink)

Author: Kołodziejczyk Sebastian Tomasz Title: ON THE MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONCEPT OF BEING AND THE PLURALITY OF METAPHYSICAL DISCOURSES (O związkach między wielością dyskursów metafizycznych a pojęciem bytu) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.15, number: 2011/4, pages: 865-880 Keywords: METAPHYSICS, ARISTOTLE, BEING, CONCEPT OF BEING, CATEGORIES, UNIVERSALS, PARTICULARS, PARTICULARITY Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The aim of the paper is to argue that there is a mutual relationship between the (...) concept of being as it is conceived of in the classical Aristotelian metaphysics and the plurality of possible metaphysical discourses. That thesis is rooted in the inherent ambiguity of the concept of being and some consequences connected therewith. Three forms of metaphysical thinking are taken into account: the metaphysics of formal interpretation of the concept of being, metaphysics of existential determination of being, and metaphysics of the material content of every conceptual representation of being. (shrink)

We define a new NP search problem, the “local improvement” principle, about labellings of an acyclic, bounded-degree graph. We show that, provably in , it characterizes the consequences of and that natural restrictions of it characterize the consequences of and of the bounded arithmetic hierarchy. We also show that over V0 it characterizes the consequences of V1 and hence that, in some sense, a miniaturized version of the principle gives a new characterization of the consequences of . Throughout our search (...) problems are “type-2” NP search problems, which take second-order objects as parameters. (shrink)

We show, under the assumption that factoring is hard, that a model of PV exists in which the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse to the linear hierarchy; that a model of S21 exists in which NP is not in the second level of the linear hierarchy; and that a model of S21 exists in which the polynomial hierarchy collapses to the linear hierarchy. Our methods are model-theoretic. We use the assumption about factoring to get a model in which the weak (...) pigeonhole principle fails in a certain way, and then work with this failure to obtain our results. As a corollary of one of the proofs, we also show that in S21 the failure of WPHP (for Σb1 definable relations) implies that the strict version of PH does not collapse to a finite level. (shrink)

Philosophy of immunology is a subfield of philosophy of biology dealing with ontological and epistemological issues related to the studies of the immune system. While speculative investigations and abstract analyses have always been part of immune theorizing, until recently philosophers have largely ignored immunology. Yet the implications for understanding the philosophical basis of organismal functions framed by immunity offer new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology and medicine. Developed in the context of history of medicine, theoretical biology, and medical anthropology, (...) philosophy of immunology differs from these related branches of study in its focus on traditional philosophical questions concerning identity, individuality, ecology, cognition, scientific methodology and theory construction. This broad agenda derives from immunology’s multifaceted research program that has developed from its initial clinical challenges of host defense, transplantation, autoimmunity, tumor immunology, and allergy. In addition to these well-established research areas, immunity is now understood to play a central role in other physiological functions, development, ecology, and evolutionary mechanics. Holding together these diverse domains of inquiry lie philosophical commitments oriented by organismal identity. In this regard, pertinent issues are raised concerning cognition (organization of immune perception and information processing), the character of individuality (framed by the ecological context of immune-mediated assimilation and rejection), and the dynamics of complex systems (understood as holistic systems biology). Indeed, immunology, in the context of cognitive science, evolutionary biology, environmental sciences, and development provides multi-focal perspectives for philosophy of science. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Volume 22, Issue 03, December 2022. We study a new class of NP search problems, those which can be proved total using standard combinatorial reasoning based on approximate counting. Our model for this kind of reasoning is the bounded arithmetic theory [math] of [E. Jeřábek, Approximate counting by hashing in bounded arithmetic, J. Symb. Log. 74(3) (2009) 829–860]. In particular, the Ramsey and weak pigeonhole search problems lie in the new class. We give a purely computational (...) characterization of this class and show that, relative to an oracle, it does not contain the problem CPLS, a strengthening of PLS. As CPLS is provably total in the theory [math], this shows that [math] does not prove every [math] sentence which is provable in bounded arithmetic. This answers the question posed in [S. Buss, L. A. Kołodziejczyk and N. Thapen, Fragments of approximate counting, J. Symb. Log. 79(2) (2014) 496–525] and represents some progress in the program of separating the levels of the bounded arithmetic hierarchy by low-complexity sentences. Our main technical tool is an extension of the “fixing lemma” from [P. Pudlák and N. Thapen, Random resolution refutations, Comput. Complexity, 28(2) (2019) 185–239], a form of switching lemma, which we use to show that a random partial oracle from a certain distribution will, with high probability, determine an entire computation of a [math] oracle machine. The introduction to the paper is intended to make the statements and context of the results accessible to someone unfamiliar with NP search problems or with bounded arithmetic. (shrink)

The theory , axiomatized by the induction scheme for sharply bounded formulae in Buss’ original language of bounded arithmetic , has recently been unconditionally separated from full bounded arithmetic S2. The method used to prove the separation is reminiscent of those known from the study of open induction.We make the connection to open induction explicit, showing that models of can be built using a “nonstandard variant” of Wilkie’s well-known technique for building models of IOpen. This makes it possible to transfer (...) many results and methods from open to sharply bounded induction with relative ease.We provide two applications: the Shepherdson model of IOpen can be embedded into a model of , which immediately implies some independence results for ; extended by an axiom which roughly states that every number has a least 1 bit in its binary notation, while significantly stronger than plain , does not prove the infinity of primes. (shrink)

Virtual objects, such as online shops, the elements that go to make up virtual life in computer games, virtual maps, e-books, avatars, cryptocurrencies, chatbots, holograms, etc., are a phenomenon we now encounter at every turn: they have become a part of our life and our world. Philosophers—and ontologists in particular—have sought to answer the question of what, exactly, they are. They fall into two camps: some, pointing to the chimerical character of virtuality, hold that virtual objects are like dreams, illusions (...) and fictions, while others, citing the real impact of virtuality on our world, take them to be real—an actual part of the real world, just like other real objects. In this article, we defend the thesis that both sides are wrong. Using Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological ontology, we advocate a position according to which a virtual object is a computationally grounded intentional object that has its existential foundation in computational processes, which are compliant with a certain model of computation. We point out that virtuality is framed by some kind of ideal mathematical objects: i.e., mathematical models of computation, which in turn fall, each of them, under their respective ideas. We also refer to the idea of natural computation, which in conjunction with the ontological analysis carried out leads to the thesis that an object can be more or less virtual. (shrink)

Modifying the methods of Z. Adamowicz's paper Herbrand consistency and bounded arithmetic [3] we show that there exists a number n such that ⋃m Sm (the union of the bounded arithmetic theories Sm) does not prove the Herbrand consistency of the finitely axiomatizable theory $S_{3}^{n}$.

The paper discusses the notion of finite model truth definitions (or FM-truth definitions), introduced by M. Mostowski as a finite model analogue of Tarski's classical notion of truth definition. We compare FM-truth definitions with Vardi's concept of the combined complexity of logics, noting an important difference: the difficulty of defining FM-truth for a logic ᵍ does not depend on the syntax of L, as long as it is decidable. It follows that for a natural ᵍ there exist FM-truth definitions whose (...) evaluation is much easier than the combined complexiy of ᵍ would suggest. We apply the general theory to give a complexity-theoretical characterization of the logics for which the $\Sigma_{m}^{d}$ classes (prenex classes of higher order logics) define FM-truth. For any $d \geq 2.m \geq 1$ we construct a family $\{[\Sigma_{m}^{d}]^{\leg\kappa}\}\kappa\in\omega$ of syntactically defined fragments of $\Sigma_{m}^{d}$ which satisfy this characterization. We also use the $[\Sigma_{m}^{d}]\leg\kappa$ classes to give a refinement of known results on the complexity classes captured by $\Sigma_{m}^{d}$ . We close with a few simple corollaries, one of which gives a sufficient condition for the existence, given a vocabulary $\sigma$ , of a fixed number $\kappa$ such that model checking for all first order sentences over $\sigma$ can be done in deterministic time $n^{\kappa}$. (shrink)

Somatic diversification of antigen receptor genes depends on the activity of enzymes whose homologs participate in a mutagenic DNA repair in unicellular species. Indeed, by engaging error-prone polymerases, gap filling molecules and altered mismatch repair pathways, lymphocytes utilize conserved components of genomic stress response systems, which can already be found in bacteria and archaea. These ancient systems of mutagenesis and repair act to increase phenotypic diversity of microbial cell populations and operate to enhance their ability to produce fit variants during (...) stress. Coopted by lymphocytes, the ancient mutagenic processing systems retained their diversification functions instilling the adaptive immune cells with enhanced evolvability and defensive capacity to resist infection and damage. As reviewed here, the ubiquity and conserved character of specialized variation-generating mechanisms from bacteria to lymphocytes highlight the importance of these mechanisms for evolution of life in general. (shrink)

The classical arguments against metaphysics provided by Immanuel Kant, neopositivists and recently by analytical philosophers focus on the problem of meaning. In my paper I would like to shed a little bit of light on different dimensions of this problem in the metaphysical discourse and make a proposition how to overcome the difficulties that arise from this kind of discourse.

This paper is devoted to one of the most intriguing theory that was invented by medieval theologians and philosophers in order to explain the nature of God. I am not personally keen on the theological dimension of this idea, I would rather like to focus on its promising philosophical usefulness and its explanatory power. For the very long time I was hesitating what aspect of this theory to choose as the most interesting and most illuminating. I eventually made a decision (...) that there is still a very important and unsolved problem with 'pure experience' that has nothing to do with any concepts and theories; that is totally direct and devoid of any mediating factors. It seems to be very interesting to shed a little bit of light on it and combine it with what is at first sight such an old-fashioned theory as the theory of transcendental. My paper is divided into three sections. In the first of them will consider some difficulties connected with the problem of pure experience. In the second part the theory of transcendentals is outlined. The third section contains the application of the theory of transcendental to the problem of pure experience. (shrink)

Having been involved in a slew of recent scandals, many of the world’s largest technology companies embarked on devising numerous codes of ethics, intended to promote improved standards in the conduct of their business. These efforts have attracted largely critical interdisciplinary academic attention. The critics have identified the voluntary character of the industry ethics codes as among the main obstacles to their efficacy. This is because individual industry leaders and employees, flawed human beings that they are, cannot be relied on (...) voluntarily to conform with what justice demands, especially when faced with powerful incentives to pursue their own self-interest instead. Consequently, the critics have recommended a suite of laws and regulations to force the tech companies to better comply with the requirements of justice. At the same time, they have paid little attention to the possibility that individuals acting within the political context, e.g. as lawmakers and regulators, are also imperfect and need not be wholly compliant with what justice demands. This paper argues that such an omission is far from trivial. It creates a heavy argumentative burden on the part of the critics that they by and large fail to discharge. As a result, the case for Big Tech regulation that emerges from the recent literature has substantial lacunae and more work needs to be done before we can accept the critics’ calls for greater state involvement in the industry. (shrink)

We prove that any proof of a [Formula: see text] sentence in the theory [Formula: see text] can be translated into a proof in [Formula: see text] at the cost of a polynomial increase in size. In fact, the proof in [Formula: see text] can be obtained by a polynomial-time algorithm. On the other hand, [Formula: see text] has nonelementary speedup over the weaker base theory [Formula: see text] for proofs of [Formula: see text] sentences. We also show that for (...) [Formula: see text], proofs of [Formula: see text] sentences in [Formula: see text] can be translated into proofs in [Formula: see text] at a polynomial cost in size. Moreover, the [Formula: see text]-conservativity of [Formula: see text] over [Formula: see text] can be proved in [Formula: see text], a fragment of bounded arithmetic corresponding to polynomial-time computation. For [Formula: see text], this answers a question of Clote, Hájek and Paris. (shrink)

In this book, an international team of scholars from leading American, British and Continental European universities presents original ideas about religious epistemology, the philosophy of God's action in the world, including the problem of evil and Divine Providence, and the philosophical challenge of religious diversity.

Presented paper is my reply to Prof. Andrzej Biłat’s review of the book Przewodnik po metafizyce (A Companion to Metaphysics) edited by myself and published by WAM Press. It contains answers to both general and particular remarks and comments risen by Prof. Biłat.

The crisis of metaphysics has many roots. One of them is recognized to be a kind of semantic failure. It lies in the fact that the meaning and reference of metaphysical propositions as well as metaphysical terms seems to be problematic. This diagnosis was first established by I. Kant and then repeated by some of the XXth century philosophers. In this paper I will show what role is played by what I called the Requirement of Reference (RR) in the analysis (...) of the metaphysical discourse. I will argue that the RR draws the limitations for the conceptual and propositional schemata of metaphysics and, at the same time, prevents metaphysics from making de re assertions and utterances. I shall also examine in this light some of Ludwig Wittgenstein's theses from Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations in order to argue that two sorts of metaphysical considerations are possible despite of the above-mentioned criticism. One of them is the analysis of what might be shown but cannot be expressed in language. The other is the deep analysis of the conceptual schemata that constitute the foundations of human thought. (shrink)

We show that the bounded arithmetic theory V0 does not prove that the polynomial time hierarchy collapses to the linear time hierarchy . The result follows from a lower bound for bounded depth circuits computing prefix parity, where the circuits are allowed some auxiliary input; we derive this from a theorem of Ajtai.

This paper argues that the well-established fact of political irrationality imposes substantial constraints on how governments may combat the threat of political misinformation. Though attempts at regulating misinformation are becoming increasingly popular, both among policymakers and theorists, I intend to show that, for a wide range of anti-misinformation interventions (collectively termed “debunking” and “source labeling”), these attempts ought to be abandoned. My argument relies primarily on the fact that most people process politically-relevant information in biased and motivated ways. Since debunking (...) or factual correction of politically relevant misinformation (as well as source labeling) themselves consist of providing politically-relevant information, they are also very likely to be processed in irrational ways. This makes it extremely difficult to effectively correct people’s political beliefs and political information processing. Since governments should not pursue policies likely to be futile, they should refrain from mandating such interventions. My conclusion is of relevance to considerable literature in digital ethics of misinformation. It shows that many celebrated works in the field ignore political irrationality and fail to consider its implications. (shrink)

Is it wrong to distract? Is it wrong to direct others’ attention in ways they otherwise would not choose? If so, what are the grounds of this wrong – and, in expounding them, do we have to at once condemn large chunks of contemporary digital commerce (also known as the attention economy)? In what follows, I attempt to cast light on these questions. Specifically, I argue – following the pioneering work of Jasper Tran and Anuj Puri – that there is (...) a right to attention, and that its existence underlies some of our claims regarding the wrongness of distractions. However, I depart from both these authors in two respects: first, I present a new way of deriving the right to attention, grounding it in the more fundamental right to mental integrity. Second, I remain agnostic on whether the contemporary business practices of capturing attention in exchange for a variety of digital products and services are plagued by routine violations of the right. (shrink)

Digital privacy scholars tend to bemoan ordinary people’s limited knowledge of and lukewarm interest in what happens to their digital data. This general lack of interest and knowledge is often taken as a consideration in favor of legislation aiming to force internet companies into adopting more responsible data practices. While we remain silent on whether any new laws are called for, in this paper we wish to underline a neglected consequence of people’s ignorance of and apathy for digital privacy: their (...) potential to encourage capture by industry interests. In particular, we argue that such laws may be at increased risk of capture because they are unlikely to be democratically responsive. We make this claim on a twofold basis: first, well-known theoretical mechanisms explaining how the absence of responsiveness leads to capture, identified in prior political science and political philosophy literature, yield the prediction that digital privacy legislation is likely to be unresponsive and thus captured; second, empirical data concerning the European Union’s digital privacy laws, with a special focus on the General Data Protection Regulation, appears to confirm these predictions: the bloc’s (world’s?) flagship privacy protection law seems more responsive to corporate than citizen interests. (shrink)

This paper argues, against the prevailing view, that consent to privacy policies that regular internet users usually give is largely unproblematic from the moral point of view. To substantiate this claim, we rely on the idea of the right not to know (RNTK), as developed by bioethicists. Defenders of the RNTK in bioethical literature on informed consent claim that patients generally have the right to refuse medically relevant information. In this article we extend the application of the RNTK to online (...) privacy. We then argue that if internet users can be thought of as exercising their RNTK before consenting to privacy policies, their consent ought to be considered free of the standard charges leveled against it by critics. (shrink)

It has long been taken for granted that the immune system’s capacity to protect an individual from infection and disease depends on the power of the system to distinguish between self and nonself. However, accumulating data have undermined this fundamental concept. Evidence against the self/nonself discrimination model left researchers in need of a new overarching framework able to capture the immune system’s reactivity. Here, I highlight that along with the self/nonself model, another powerful representation of the immune system’s reactivity has (...) been developed in the twentieth century immunology. According to this alternative view, the immune system is not a killer of nonself strangers but a peace-maker helping to establish harmony with the environment. The balance view of the system has never become part of the dominant paradigm. However, it is gaining more and more currency as new research develops. Advances in mucosal immunology confirm that instead of distinguishing between self and foreign the immune system reacts to microbial, chemical and self-induced alterations to produce responses that counterbalance effects of these changes. (shrink)

The extent to which normal (nonmalignant) cells of the body can evolve through mutation and selection during the lifetime of the organism has been a major unresolved issue in evolutionary and developmental studies. On the one hand, stable multicellular individuality seems to depend on genetic homogeneity and suppression of evolutionary conflicts at the cellular level. On the other hand, the example of clonal selection of lymphocytes indicates that certain forms of somatic mutation and selection are concordant with the organism-level fitness. (...) Recent DNA sequencing and tissue physiology studies suggest that in addition to adaptive immune cells also neurons, epithelial cells, epidermal cells, hematopoietic stem cells and functional cells in solid bodily organs are subject to evolutionary forces during the lifetime of an organism. Here we refer to these recent studies and suggest that the expanding list of somatically evolving cells modifies idealized views of biological individuals as radically different from collectives. (shrink)

This paper argues that the well-established fact of political irrationality imposes substantial constraints on how governments may combat the threat of political misinformation. Though attempts at regulating misinformation are becoming increasingly popular, both among policymakers and theorists, I intend to show that, for a wide range of anti-misinformation interventions (collectively termed “debunking” and “source labeling”), these attempts ought to be abandoned. My argument relies primarily on the fact that most people process politically-relevant information in biased and motivated ways. Since debunking (...) or factual correction of politically relevant misinformation (as well as source labeling) themselves consist of providing politically-relevant information, they are also very likely to be processed in irrational ways. This makes it extremely difficult to effectively correct people’s political beliefs and political information processing. Since governments should not pursue policies likely to be futile, they should refrain from mandating such interventions. My conclusion is of relevance to considerable literature in digital ethics of misinformation. It shows that many celebrated works in the field ignore political irrationality and fail to consider its implications. (shrink)

The immune system, to protect the body, must discriminate between the pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes and respond to them in different ways. How the mucosal immune system manages to make this distinction is poorly understood. We suggest here that the distinction between pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes is made by an integrated system rather than by single types of cells or single types of receptors; a systems biology approach is needed to understand immune recognition.

It is a well-known fact that mathematics plays a crucial role in physics; in fact, it is virtually impossible to imagine contemporary physics without it. But it is questionable whether mathematical concepts could ever play such a role in psychology or philosophy. In this paper, we set out to examine a rather unobvious example of the application of topology, in the form of the theory of persons proposed by Kurt Lewin in his Principles of Topological Psychology. Our aim is to (...) show that this branch of mathematics can furnish a natural conceptual system for Gestalt psychology, in that it provides effective tools for describing global qualitative aspects of the latter’s object of investigation. We distinguish three possible ways in which mathematics can contribute to this: explanation, explication and metaphor. We hold that all three of these can be usefully characterized as throwing light on their subject matter, and argue that in each case this contrasts with the role of explanations in physics. Mathematics itself, we argue, provides something different from such explanations when applied in the field of psychology, and this is nevertheless still cognitively fruitful. (shrink)

It might become possible to build artificial minds with the capacity for experience. This raises a plethora of ethical issues, explored, among others, in the context of whole brain emulations (WBE). In this paper, I will take up the problem of vulnerability – given, for various reasons, less attention in the literature – that the conscious emulations will likely exhibit. Specifically, I will examine the role that vulnerability plays in generating ethical issues that may arise when dealing with WBEs. I (...) will argue that concerns about vulnerability are more matters of institutional design than individual ethics, both when it comes to creating humanlike brain emulations, and when animal-like emulations are concerned. Consequently, the article contains reflection on some institutional measures that can be taken to protect the sims' interests. It concludes that an institutional framework more likely to succeed in this task is competitive and poly-centric, rather than monopolistic and centralized. (shrink)

Author: Sipiński Bartłomiej Title: THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPRESSION OF THE ESSENCE OF THE PERSON (Fenomenologiczne określenie Osoby) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2006, vol:.6, number: 2006/1, pages: 91-100 Keywords: PERSON, MAX SCHELER, PHENOMENOLOGY, PHENOMENOLOGICAL EXPRESSION Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The main problem of this article is a try to find the meaning of an essence of the Person. Asking about the Person in colloquial meaning is asking about the cultural pattern of (...) the Person at the same time. What can be helpful in leaving the cultural pattern of the Person without leaving an essence of problem known as a Person, but difficult to indicate without an example? Answer at this question, will be probably similar with finding an essence of the Person as a pure comprehension. Phenomenology, as a finding of certainty can be a method in that “personalistic adventure”, especially in version of the German phenomenologist – Max Scheler, who was trying to explain comprehension of the Person from the emotional point of view. Emotions, which can be understood as a phenomenon of the Person appearing in the practical function, and creating a culture with its examples of the Person, and finally giving its place in non personal surrounding world. Here appears solution. By using Scheler’s method describing the Person from the emotional side, it seems to be possible to separate the pure comprehension from the cultural pattern of the Person. That shows another reduction, next to well known reductions in Phenomenology. It could be something like an emotional reduction, which separates the Person from non personal structure of surrounding world and not gives a cultural pattern of the Person at the same time. The next move is building a dialogue as a relation between Persons, which defines them as a dialogical subjects. (shrink)

It is frequently argued that false and misleading claims, spread primarily on social media, are a serious problem in need of urgent response. Current strategies to address the problem – relying on fact-checks, source labeling, limits on the visibility of certain claims, and, ultimately, content removals – face two serious shortcomings: they are ineffective and biased. Consequently, it is reasonable to want to seek alternatives. This paper provides one: to address the problems with misinformation, social media platforms should abandon third-party (...) fact-checks and rely instead on user-driven prediction markets. This solution is likely less biased and more effective than currently implemented alternatives and, therefore, constitutes a superior way of tackling misinformation. (shrink)

Advocates of the computational theory of mind claim that the mind is a computer whose operations can be implemented by various computational systems. According to these philosophers, the mind is multiply realisable because—as they claim—thinking involves the manipulation of syntactically structured mental representations. Since syntactically structured representations can be made of different kinds of material while performing the same calculation, mental processes can also be implemented by different kinds of material. From this perspective, consciousness plays a minor role in mental (...) activity. However, contemporary neuroscience provides experimental evidence suggesting that mental representations necessarily involve consciousness. Consciousness does not only enable individuals to become aware of their own thoughts, it also constantly changes the causal properties of these thoughts. In light of these empirical studies, mental representations appear to be intrinsically dependent on consciousness. This discovery represents an obstacle to any attempt to construct an artificial mind. (shrink)

Abstract:Non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental ethics face problems that cannot be resolved within a holistic framework of natural value since such frameworks posit abstract and general properties as the bearers of intrinsic value and thus ignore the moral claims of individual organisms. Two paradigm examples of such approaches, Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic and Arne Neass' Deep Ecology suffer from this problem. Christine Korsgaard's argument for the conceptual separation of intrinsic and instrumental valuing, however, serves as a strong theoretical grounding for a (...) reconceptualization of the value of nature, which can best be described as an enlightened anthropocentrism, while preserving the spirit of Leopold's and Naess' proposals. (shrink)