Wychodząc od metaforycznego (figuralnego) ujęcia problemu zła, w oparciu o wybrane przemyślenia Leszka Kołakowskiego, rozważania składające się na artykuł zmierzają do namysłu nad „złem w polityce” w sensie niedomagań i nadużyć wolności: pokus władzy autokratycznej i totalitarnej. Dotyczą antropologicznego i politycznego przekraczania granic wolności kosztem (aż do zniesienia) wolności innych. Evil Politics or Trouble with the Devil. Reflections on the Political Demonology of Leszek Kołakowski Proceeding from a metaphorical (figurative) account of the problem of evil, and based on (...) class='Hi'>Leszek Kołakowski’s selected thoughts, this paper’s considerations aim to deliberate on “evil in politics” in the spirit of the shortcomings and excesses of freedom: namely, the lure of autocratic and totalitarian power. At issue is how the bounds of freedom are anthropologically and politically transgressed at the expense (to the point of abolishing) the freedom of others. (shrink)

Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is renowned worldwide for wrestling with serious philosophical conundrums with dazzling elegance. In this new book, he turns his characteristic wit to important themes of ordinary life, from the need for freedom to the wheel of fortune, from the nature of God to the ambiguities of betrayal. Extremely lucid and lacking in intellectual pretension, these essays speak in everyday language, spurring the reader’s own thoughts and providing a handle on which to debate and think about (...) the themes. The eighteen essays cover the following topics: power, fame, equality, lying, toleration, travel, virtue, collective responsibility, the wheel of fortune, betrayal, violence, boredom, freedom, luxury, God, respect for nature, superstition, and national stereotypes. (shrink)

Leszek Kołakowski explores 23 questions asked by great philosophers, introducing us to the great ideas and philosophers of Western thought.

Leszek Kolakowski delves into some of the most intellectually vigorous questions of our time in this remarkable collection of essays garnished with his characteristic wit. Ten of the essays have never appeared before in English. "Exemplary.

Leszek Kolakowski discusses, in a highly original way, the arguments for and against the existence of God as they have been conducted through the ages. He examines the critiques of religious belief, from the Epicureans through Nietzsche to contemporary anthropological inquiry, the assumptions that underlie them, and the counter-arguments of such apologists as Descartes, Leibniz, and Pascal. His exploration of the philosophy of religion covers the historical discussions of the nature and existence of evil, the importance of the concepts (...) of failure and eternity to the religious impulse, the relationship between skepticism and mysticism, and the place of reason, understanding, and in models of religious thought. He examines why people, throughout known history, have cherished the idea of eternity and existence after death, and why this hope has been dependent on the worship of an eternal reality. He confronts the problems of meaning in religious language. (shrink)

There is a remarkable similarity between some mathematical objects used in the Branching Space-Times framework and those appearing in computer science in the fields of event structures for concurrent processing and Chu spaces. This paper introduces the similarities and formulates a few open questions for further research, hoping that both BST theorists and computer scientists can benefit from the project.

Niniejszy artykuł przedstawia poglądy oryginalnego polskiego filozofa z pierwszej połowy XX stulecia – Jana Stachniuka. Wyróżniającymi elementami tej koncepcji z zakresu filozofii społecznej są jego rozważania dotyczące kultury, swoistej,,wspakultury”, historiozofii, roli mitów w społecznym bycie.

Argues that philosophical inquiries are valuable even though they may produce no absolute values and discusses knowledge, religion, and philosophers of the past.

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.

Niniejsza wypowiedź jest próbą ukazania wyższości intelektualnej jednostki wybitnej nad jednostkami przeciętnymi. Transgresja jest tutaj formą przejścia, przemiany artysty, negującego zastany porządek świata, pragnącego podłożyć podwaliny pod nową rzeczywistość widzianą oczami szalonego geniusza - Friedricha Nietzschego, do którego często się odwołuję. Jego pojęcie \"Nadczłowieka\" jest tożsame z pojęciem genialnego twórcy, jednostki wybitnej, niezrozumiałej przez pospólstwo, która swoimi horyzontami twórczymi wybiega daleko poza własną epokę\".

The author tries to give an explication of the concept of a performative expression as well to show the practical application of this idea for the analysis of juridical and ethical language.

The message is that physics has an „outward bound” of scientific inquiry in the field of cosmology. I present it in the historical development. Physics and astronomy, developing since the seventeenth century, inherited from the early Greek philosophers the conception that the Universe as a whole is invariable. In nineteenth century this conception in conjunction with the conception of eternity of the Universe gave rise to contradictions with other laws of physics indicating that cosmology is not a branch of physics (...) since the notion of the Universe is not a physical one. Cosmology returned to physics as its important branch due to the advent of general relativity theory and the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Modern cosmology generates fundamental problems creating real limits to inquiries in physics viewed as an empirical science. The very notion of the Universe shows that the scientific method reaches there limits of its applicability. Does „to exist” mean „to be observed by someone”? Should the definition of the Universe be based on a current physical theory, e.g. on Einstein’s general relativity, giving rise to a kind of mathematical instability? Is the fashionable concept of the „multiverse” a physical one or is a purely metaphysical notion in a scientific disguise? If the Universe is unique, is it meaningful to describe it in the framework of physics, which by its method always assumes that the number of objects it describes, is unlimited? Apart from these permanent philosophical problems there are concrete urgent problems generated by cosmology: the nature of dark matter and dark energy. These two species of „substance” appear only in cosmology and do not fit the laboratory physics; contrary to the three centuries long tradition of modern science, now cosmology inspires physics in a troublesome way. A separate class of limits to physics is generated by the theorem in general relativity that the Universe emerged from an initial curvature singularity of the spacetime. At the singularity the whole scientific inquiry breaks down. Cosmology of the very early Universe suggests that in its evolution two specific epochs took place, that of quantum gravity and an inflationary epoch. The underlying them two physical theories are incomplete and seem to be inherently untestable. Furthermore, the experimentally verifiable physics cannot explain the origin of the initial conditions determining properties of the Universe which emerged from the singularity. (shrink)

We point out a yet unnoticed flaw in Dutch Book arguments that relates to a link between degrees of belief and betting quotients. We offer a set of precise conditions governing when a nonprobabilist is immune to the classical Dutch Book argument. We suggest that diachronic Dutch Book arguments are also affected.

According to the commonsensical model of educating researchers, young researchers must first acquire the knowledge achieved thus far and then solve new problems by developing applications of the accepted theory. This model, which presupposes a positivist theory of science, is incapable of explaining why the major breakthroughs in science have been carried out by young researchers. On the idealizational view of science, it becomes clear that commonsensical model must be rejected and replaced with an alternative, according to which the primary (...) duty of young researchers is to revise the existing theories. It is the young researchers who are usually creative enough, ignorant enough, and exhibit a sufficient degree of nonconformism, to be capable of developing really new scientific theories. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of a Minkowskian Branching Structure ("MBS" for short). Then we prove some results concerning the phenomenon of funny business in its finitary and infinitary variants.

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) fut directement impliqué dans presque tous les grands débats philosophiques en Allemagne au tournant du XIXe et du XXe siècle : sur le rapport entre psychologie et logique, sur les conditions transcendantales de la conscience de soi, sur l'historicité de l'existence humaine, sur l'herméneutique et la question du sens, sur la philosophie de la compréhension ou encore sur la signification philosophique de la vie (de l'existence) et des valeurs. Certains de ces débats, notamment celui sur l'autonomie cognitive (...) des sciences humaines, ont été inaugurés par Dilthey lui-même. L'une des problématiques où un nouveau dialogue avec sa pensée pourrait se nouer aujourd'hui serait sans aucun doute, précisément, la question de la possibilité de la réconciliation des études objectives de l'histoire avec l'expérience que l'homme fait de l'historicité radicale de sa compréhension. En effet, Dilthey n'accepte pas que l'homme puisse se dérober à sa responsabilité face à l'histoire sous prétexte que l'histoire, elle, s'est déjà dérobée à sa compréhension. Tout au contraire : c'est parce qu'il en est responsable que l'homme ne peut se dérober à la compréhension de l'histoire, même si le chemin de la compréhension est long et pénible. (shrink)

This book was written with the purpose of revealing the duty of each individual to search for truth and the meaning of existence. Thinking requires determination and endurance. It is not easy. Above all, passion for truth is necessary for every honest seeker.

We extend a result by Gallow concerning the impossibility of following two epistemic masters, so that it covers a larger class of pooling methods. We also investigate a few ways of avoiding the issue, such as using non-convex pooling methods, employing the notion of imperfect trust or moving to higher-order probability spaces. Along the way we suggest a conceptual issue with the conditions used by Gallow: whenever two experts are considered, whether we can trust one of them is decided by (...) the features of the other! (shrink)