We present several naturally defined σ-ideals which have Borel bases but, unlike for the classical examples, these ideals are not of bounded Borel complexity. We investigate set-theoretic properties of such σ-ideals.

George Santayana (1863-1952), a Spanish-American philosopher, is an influential personage on the cultural stage in English- and Spanish-speaking countries. His numerous books and papers on topics as varied as epistemology, ontology, aesthetics, ethics, anthropology, value theory, and American studies, along with his best-selling novel, his sophisticated poetry, and his famous autobiography, make him a vivid and profound source of reflection on the history of American and European thought, as well as a stimulus for future work. Santayana's exceptionality was appreciated by (...) William James and Josiah Royce, his most eminent colleagues in Harvard University's Department of Philosophy, and has been discussed by such respected authors as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Charles Hartshorne, Eric Voegelin, Alfred Schutz, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Arthur Danto, and Ferdinand Savater, among others. This book aims to understand Santayana by considering his often provocative views on America. Other scholars have reconstructed his thought at various times and in a variety of ways, but no one has yet considered Santayana's approach toward America in a serious and profound way (at least not in the English language). This book attempts to convince the reader that the impartiality of Santayana's philosophy, its transcendence of cultural limits and mental borders, makes it a living philosophy, and that this is the strongest aspect of Santayana's thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a specific version of theism which I would call apophatic theism. In the first part of the paper, I argue that this in the only tenableversion of theism. Due to the fact that it may seem indistinguishable from a very strong form of agnosticism (or atheism understood in the etymological sense of the word: as a-theism where ‘a’ means ‘without’), in the second part of my paper, I try to distinguish apophatic theism from agnosticism (or (...) a-theism), and from so called “Wittgensteinian” view of religion, which also may seem similar to the position I propose. (shrink)

The paper considers whether virtue ethics should be regarded as excluding duty ethics or any of its essential elements. The argument suggested here consists of two steps: (1) an argument that there are two different versions of virtue ethics (moderate and strong) and that moderate virtue ethics does not exclude the duty ethics; (2) an analysis of various difficulties with the strong version of virtue ethics, which shows that moderate virtue ethics is more plausible because of its capacity to avoid (...) these difficulties. This capacity makes moderate virtue ethics more attractive as an ethical theory because it covers the entire range of moral phenomena described both by strong versions of virtue ethics and by duty ethics without the attendant difficulties. (shrink)

We attempt to define the classical propositional logic by use of appropriate derivability conditions called Cn-definitions. The conditions characterize basic properties of propositional connectives.

In this paper we show that the field of the real numbers is an intentional object in the sense specified by Roman Ingarden in his Das literarische Kunstwer and Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt. An ontological characteristics of a classic example of an intentional object, i.e. a literary character, is developed. There are three principal elements of such an object: the author, the text and the entity in which the literary character forms the content. In the case of (...) the real numbers the triad consists of Richard Dedekind, his work Steitigkeit und irratinale Zahlen, and the intentional object determined by this work. Showing that we are indeed faced with the inten-tional object we analyse three moments: two-sidedness of the formal structure of the intentional object, the moment of its existentional derivation, and schematism of the intentional object. Since there are many constructions of the real numbers known in mathematics, we show what relation obtains between Dedekind's and Cantor's constructions of the real numbers as these are taken as intentional objects. Moreover, we show what relation obtains between Dedekind's construction and the axiomatic characteristics of the real numbers. (shrink)

The so-called Common Sense Morality (C) is any moral theory that allows, or requires, an agent to accept special, non-instrumental reasons to give advantage to certain other persons, usually the agent’s friends or kin, over the interests of others. Opponents charge C with violating the requirement of impartiality defined as independence on positional characteristics of moral agents and moral patients. Advocates of C claim that C is impartial, but only in a positional manner in which every moral agent would acquire (...) the same relational characteristics if that agent was in a certain relationship to the given moral patient. The opponents of C reply that a theory that allows for positional characteristics is self-defeating; it violates the requirement of prescriptivity due to its inability to provide moral recommendations what should happen all things considered. Advocates of C retort that a moral theory should be prescriptive by telling every agent what to do, not what should the joint outcome of those activities be. In this paper I analyze the last two moves of this debate: the objection that C is self-defeating and the reply that there is a plausible moral theory (C) that accommodates positional characteristics of special moral reasons. I argue that the last move wins. In the process I sketch out a theory able to accommodate agent-relative moral reason. (shrink)

Our everyday thinking consists of two steps: "forward" extending our beliefs, "backward" reducing them. The "forward" step is formalized by deductive logic, but existing logics formalising "rejected sentences" reasoning are unvalid for the "backward" reasoning. We need two logics: one for the set of accepted sentences, another for the set of rejected sentences. They work on the same class of sets, so the second component of the pair must be a reasoning decreasing sets of accepted sets.

The author presents the Aristotelian conception of capacity/potentiality (dunamis) – one of the most important in Aristotle’s metaphysics. A closer inspection allows to draw conclusion, that the concept of capacity is an important link between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ (metaphysics on the one side, and practical – ethical, rhetorical, political – skills, on the other). A picture of the connection between theory and practice is based on the most important parts of Metaphysics (books delta and theta), it relates metaphysical definitions to (...) an essential element of Aristotelian practical philosophy – the concept of virtue (aretê). In the practical works of Aristotle, we can find different definitions of aretê: in Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle defines aretê using the notion of disposition (hexis), but in Rhetoric he formulates a definition based on the concept of capacity. Distinctive analysis of this inconsistency shows the significance of capacity in The Stagirite’s philosophy. (shrink)

I discuss the limits of Ingarden’s phenomenology of perception from a naturalistic perspective. Ingarden did not propose any proper method of the realization of the applied theory of perception (critics of perception). This situation enables to apply empirical data from cognitive neurosciences. The applied procedure shows that basic components of the phenomenology of perception are not valid.

Celem artykułu jest ukazanie specyfiki filozoficznej refleksji nad historią. W tym kontekście istotne staje się przedstawienie pojęć, którymi określa się ten rodzaj refleksji, a także obejmowany przez nią zakres problemowy. Filozofię dziejów, historiozofię i filozofię historii, należy więc rozpatrywać z konkretnej perspektywy badawczej, chociaż w potocznym rozumieniu pojęcia te stosowane są zamiennie.

Processing of facial expressions goes beyond simple pattern recognition. To elucidate this problem, Niedenthal et al. offer a model that identifies multiple embodied and disembodied routes for expression processing, and spell out conditions triggering use of different routes. I elaborate on this model by discussing recent research on emotional recognition in individuals with autism, who can use multiple routes of emotion processing, and consequently can show atypical and typical patterns of embodied simulation and mimicry.

The paper presents the possibility of using the lifestyle concept for better recognition of the employee motivation attitude towards work leadership and managerial behaviours. That could result in better human capital management in different types of organizations. Different approaches to the lifestyle concept are presented in the paper. Also the linkage between the motivation theory, here the Douglas McGregor theory, and the lifestyle based theory VALS is examined.

In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of power to judge. For this, we rehearse Immanuel Kant’s idea of Urteilskraft as it first appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, where it is also rendered in educational terms. However, the power to apply rules works without any rule governing its operations. Similarly, Hannah Arendt, in her work on judging, points to the groundlessness of judging – or to its self-grounding. We follow (...) these insights when rehearsing Johann F. Herbart account of pedagogical tact, in order to arrive at the question of how to theorise education from within the phenomenon of pedagogical tact. We take a clue from Herbart’s idea of range of thought (Gesichtkreis), a horizon within one can build one’s own understanding of education, one’s own sensibility towards each and every singular educational situation that imposes various demands on educators. (shrink)

We consider the existence of coherent families of finite-to-one functions on countable subsets of an uncountable cardinal κ. The existence of such families for κ implies the existence of a winning 2-tactic for player TWO in the countable-finite game on κ. We prove that coherent families exist on κ = ωn, where n ∈ ω, and that they consistently exist for every cardinal κ. We also prove that iterations of Axiom A forcings with countable supports are Axiom A.

In the paper I explore the relations between a relatively new and quickly expanding branch of artificial intelligence –- the automated discovery systems –- and some new views advanced in the old debate over scientific realism. I focus my attention on one such system, GELL-MANN, designed in 1990 at Wichita State University. The program's task was to analyze elementary particle data available in 1964 and formulate an hypothesis (or hypotheses) about a `hidden', more simple structure of matter, or to put (...) it in contemporary terms –- the discovery of quarks. The central thesis of my paper is that systems like GELL-MANN not only discover (or rediscover) the hidden structure of matter, but also provide independent strong evidence in favor of scientific realism about entities involved in that structure. I make an attempt to show how an argument for scientific realism about sub-microscopic entities can be constructed that would parallel Ian Hacking's `argument from coincidence' presented with respect to microscopic objects in his famous book Representing and Intervening. (shrink)

Piotr Buczkowski/Poznari THE LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS Some remarks on sociology of knowledge /. Introduction Sociology of knowledge is a subbranch of social ...

In the paper some consequence operations generated by ukasiewicz's matrices are examined.

An interview with Charles McCarty by Piotr Urbańczyk concerning mathematical explanation.

Foundations of Science recently published a rebuttal to a portion of our essay it published 2 years ago. The author, G. Schubring, argues that our 2013 text treated unfairly his 2005 book, Conflicts between generalization, rigor, and intuition. He further argues that our attempt to show that Cauchy is part of a long infinitesimalist tradition confuses text with context and thereby misunderstands the significance of Cauchy’s use of infinitesimals. Here we defend our original analysis of various misconceptions and misinterpretations concerning (...) the history of infinitesimals and, in particular, the role of infinitesimals in Cauchy’s mathematics. We show that Schubring misinterprets Proclus, Leibniz, and Klein on non-Archimedean issues, ignores the Jesuit context of Moigno’s flawed critique of infinitesimals, and misrepresents, to the point of caricature, the pioneering Cauchy scholarship of D. Laugwitz. (shrink)