Dünyada müxtəlif dillər mövcuddur. Hal-hazırda əlavə xarici dil öyrənməyə maraq artmaqdadır. Təbii ki bu hər bir şəxsin öz istəyinə və seçiminə bağlıdır. Yəni hər kəs, hər hansı bir dili öyrəndiyi zaman, qarşısında iki məqsəd dayanır; ya o dili sevir, ya da o dili öyrənmək onun üçün lazımdır. Hər bir vətəndaşın borcudur ki, əvvəlcə öz ana dilini mükəmməl şəkildə öyrənsin. Lakin elm və texnologiyanın yüksək inkişaf etdiyi bir zamanda yalnız ana dilini bilmək kifayət etmir. İnsanın hər bir sahədə inkişafı üçün bacardığı (...) qədər başqa dillərə də yiyələnməsi artıq zəruridir. Yeni dil öyrənmənin faydaları çoxdur, yaddaşın güclənməsinə, söz ehtiyatının artmasına, nitqin gözəlləşməsinə səbəb olur. Həmçinin yeni dil öyrənməklə, insanın özünə güvəni artır, ünsiyyət dairəsi genişlənir. Bununla insan yalnız yeni sözlər deyil, yeni mədəniyyətlərlə də tanış olur və nəticədə dünyagörüşü artır. (shrink)

An award-winning mathematician shows how we prove what's true, and what to do when we can't. How do we establish what we believe? And how can we be certain that what we believe is true? And how do we convince other people that it is true? For thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to the Arabic golden age to the modern world, science has used different methods-logical, empirical, intuitive, and more-to separate fact from fiction. But it all had the (...) same goal: find perfect evidence and be rewarded with universal truth. As mathematician Adam Kucharski shows, however, there is far more to proof than axioms, theories, and laws: when demonstrating that a new medical treatment works, persuading a jury of someone's guilt, or deciding whether you trust a self-driving car, the weighing up of evidence is far from simple. To discover proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases and embrace uncertainty-and never more so than when existing methods fail. Spanning mathematics, science, politics, philosophy, and economics, this book offers the ultimate exploration of how we can find our way to proof-and, just as importantly, of how to go forward when supposed facts falter. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be (...) that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves. (shrink)

Jednym z głównych wyzwań stojących przed filozofami przyrody XVII wieku było znalezienie odpowiedzi na pytanie, co sprawia, że materia w ogóle działa? Dziedzictwo ‘materii pierwszej’ i jej czystej potencjalności było wciąż żywe, a przyjęcie teorii korpuskularnej czy atomistycznej niewiele tu zmieniało, dominowało wciąż przekonanie o całkowitej bierności ciał. Ich działanie domagało się jakiegoś wyjaśnienia, które stanowiłoby odpowiednik arystotelesowskiej, niematerialnej i aktywnej, formy. Wydaje się, że jedną z tradycji filozoficznych, do których sięgano w poszukiwaniu takiego wyjaśnienia, była emanacyjna metafizyka Plotyna. W (...) systemach XVII-wiecznych ulegała ona różnorodnym modyfikacjom, ale jej główna idea, wskazująca na aktywną rolę pewnych ‘zasad’, czy ‘duchów’ odpowiedzialnych za inicjowanie wszelkich zmian w materii i kierowanie nimi zgodnie z zamysłem Stwórcy, pozostawała fundamentem ówczesnych teorii działania materii. Przykładem takich rozwiązań są systemy Henry’ego More’a i jego dobrego znajomego z Cambridge, Izaaka Newtona. W pierwszym przypadku nie ma wątpliwości co do zasadniczego wpływu neoplatonizmu, w drugim jednak zdania historyków są podzielone. Newton sięga bowiem w poszukiwaniu ‘aktywnych zasad’ do badań alchemicznych, z nadzieją odnalezienia owych zasad nie tylko przy odwołaniu się do filozoficznych spekulacji, ale także do metod eksperymentalnych. Różnica ta jednak nie zmienia faktu, że obaj filozofowie starają się odkryć sposób działania ‘duchów aktywnych’, wahając się między umieszczeniem w cząstkach materii wielu odrębnych zasad a wskazaniem na zasadę jedną, działającą uniwersalnie i będącą niejako przedłużeniem Bożego ramienia – More nazywa ją Duchem Natury, a Newton upatruje jej ostatecznie w Chrystusie. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a person has dignity, and what explains her dignity? Linda Zagzebski argues that personal dignity entails both infinite and irreplaceable value. Initially she grounds the former claim in the power of rationality and the latter in the uniqueness of one’s subjective lived experience. Later she grounds both in the power of rationality, understood in terms of reflective consciousness. I argue that the latter account is an improvement upon the former but that needless problems (...) arise from both accounts because she conflates properties considered in the abstract with properties instantiated in concrete persons and she fails to recognize an ambiguity in the notion of incommunicability or uniqueness. I also argue that the more fundamental account of rationality should be given not in terms of reflective consciousness but in terms of the ability to understand particulars in light of universals. (shrink)

In Existence and the Existent, Jacques Maritain speaks about the difficulty of knowing persons as subjects. Typically we know persons as objects, or “from without,” and this explains why we describe people as instantiations of various qualities that can be shared in common with others. But according to Maritain, “To be known as object... is to be severed from oneself and wounded in one’s identity. It is to always be unjustly known.” In this paper, I consider the epistemological means by (...) which knowing persons as subjects is possible. I argue that we can find parallels between knowing persons and what Maritain refers to as the “intuition of being”, and that reflecting on these parallels can help us to see a solution to the problem of knowing persons—just as the act of existence is not known through a concept, but through a judgment that separates what a thing is from the act by which it exists, so too, I argue, one’s subjectivity is known not through a concept but through a judgment that separates one’s shareable qualities from the self/person underlying these qualities. (shrink)

Taking its cue from modern debates on the expressive function of punishment, this paper discusses the stigmatizing effect of penalties in classical Athens. It focuses on corporal punishment, which was discursively associated in the Athenian public discourse with slaves and other fringe groups of the citizen community, despite the fact that in reality, with only certain restrictions, it was meted out to all social tiers making up the polis-community. Unlike other penalties, those affecting the body were not only public, but (...) not infrequently spectacular. This turned them into versatile devices of stigmatization whereby the punishment itself was no longer considered a one-off event, but a permanent mark branding the person who suffered it as a social outcast. (shrink)

The seventeenth century witnessed the transition from qualitative to quantitative physics. The very process was not easy and obvious and it consisted of discussions in many fields. One of them was the question about the nature of chemistry which was at the time undergoing some changes towards the form we know now. The main argument concerned the explanatory principles one should invoke to understand properly certain outcomes of chemical experiments. The present paper is a presentation of such an argument between (...) R. Boyle, a prominent proponent of corpuscular, quantitative principles and S. Duclos, an al-chymist and a proponent of paracelsian, qualitative ones. What is interesting, Duclos knew The Sceptical Chymist, Boyle’s main work which contained a severe critique of paracelsian chemistry, and a%empted to point out some weaknesses of Boyle’s own position. Duclos scrutinized Boyle’s experiments described in his Certain Physiological Essays and other works and argued for certain shortcomings of Boyle’s laboratory skills, his failure to indicate some literature sources and, first of all, insufficiency of Boyle’s arguments for the corpuscular thesis. According to Duclos, Boyle did not follow in laboratory certain procedures recommended by himself, using unclear notions and applying the corpuscular principles without proper justification. What is more, Duclos argued also in favour of paracelsian chymistry presenting some qualitative explanations in experiments in which Boyle failed to give quantitative ones. Knowing the further development of natural philosophy, it seems interesting to realize how complex it was. The present paper shows also how much irremovable from scientific research is the theoretical component. (shrink)

W XVII wieku rozpoczął się proces przechodzenia od nauki uprawianej w aspekcie jakościowym do nauki uprawianej w aspekcie ilościowym. Był on złożony i pociągał za sobą dyskusje na wielu polach. Jedna z nich odnosiła się do natury rodzącej się nowoczesnej chemii. Główna linia sporu dotyczyła rodzaju zasad wyjaśniających, do których należy się odwołać przy wyjaśnianiu wyników eksperymentów. Obecny artykuł opisuje szczegóły dyskusji między R. Boyle’em, jednym z głównych zwolenników zasad korpuskularnych, ilościowych, i S. Duclosem, al-‘chemikiem’ i zwolennikiem teorii paracelsjańskich i (...) zasad jakościowych. Co ciekawe, Duclos znał The Sceptical Chymist, główne dzieło Boyle’a, w którym zawarł on surową krytykę ‘chemii’ paracelsjańskiej, i podjął próbę wskazania słabych punktów stanowiska Boyle’owskiego. Duclos zanalizował eksperymenty, jakie Boyle opisał w "Certain Physiological Essays" i innych dziełach i wskazał na popełnione błędy – jego zdaniem Boyle nie zna dobrze praktyki laboratoryjnej; pomija źródła, z jakich korzysta opisując niektóre eksperymenty; przede wszystkim jednak nie potrafi przekonująco argumentować na rzecz tezy korpuskularnej. Zdaniem Duclosa, Boyle nie przestrzega procedur, które sam zaleca – posługuje się niejasnym językiem i arbitralnie odwołuje się do wyjaśnień korpuskularnych. Co więcej, Duclos argumentuje na rzecz paracelsjańskiej koncepcji ‘chemii’, przedstawiając jakościowe wyjaśnienia w eksperymentach, w których Boyle nie zdołał podać wyjaśnień ilościowych. Przedstawiona krytyka poglądów Boyle’a pokazuje jak złożony był proces wyłaniania się ilościowego podejścia do filozofii naturalnej, pokazuje również istotną rolę, jaką w badaniach naukowych odgrywa składnik teoretyczny. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain and defend Karol Wojtyła’s claim that “if we wish to speak rationally about good and evil, we have to return to the philosophyof being. If we do not set out from such ‘realist’ presuppositions, we end up in a vacuum.” I begin by outlining Wojtyła’s existential understanding of the good,according to which the good for x is found in those ends that complete the being that is lacking in x, or that enhance its existence in (...) keeping with its nature. Then I explain how Wojtyła moves from an existentialunderstanding of the good to the thesis that “exemplarism is the very heart of the normative order.” Finally, using representative thinkers from both the Continentaland Analytic traditions, I defend Wojtyła’s claim that when we divorce goodness from being we end up in a moral vacuum, in a kind of nihilism wherethe good signifies nothing other than the rationalized articulation of one’s subjective needs, desires, or wishes. In such a state, the only means for resolving moraldisagreements is through the consensus of the majority or the forceful rule of the strongest will. (shrink)

The role of ethicists is to provide a genuine ethical theory to help non-ethicists interpret and solve moral dilemmas, to define what is right or wrong, and, finally, to clarify moral values. Therefore, ethicists are taught to address morality with rational procedures, to set aside their moral intuitions and emotions. Sometimes, professional ethicists are prone to falling into the archangel delusion – the belief that they are beyond the influence of their own emotions. This can lead to ousting moral intuitions (...) from the space of ethical reflection, thus making ethicists unaware of them. They may treat intuitive beliefs about morality as an expression of primal moral feelings. The main question pursued in this article, is how those feelings may influence moral theories, which should be developed by professional ethicists. Ethicists may provide an ethical theory which is merely a rationalisation and justification for their own suppressed moral emotions, rather than the effect of genuine, rational moral reasoning. To help ethicists cope with this delusion, a model of cooperation between descriptive and normative ethics is proposed. Ethicists should therefore use the research tools of descriptive ethics to determine their own intuitions, and the moral emotions in which these intuitions are grounded. --------------- Received: 09/06/2021. Reviewed: 23/07/2021. Accepted: 13/08/2021. (shrink)