Mental imagery, a fascinating yet contentious phenomenon, has a rich research history. Kant, for instance, believed mental imagery was necessary for perception. However, since the early 20th centur...

According to the mainstream position in the bioethical definition of death debate, death is to be equated with the cessation of an organism. Given such a perspective, some bioethicists uphold the position that brain-dead patients are dead, while others claim that they are alive. Regardless of the specific opinion on the status of brain-dead patients, the mere bioethical concept of death, according to many bioethicists, has the merit of being unanimous and univocal, as well as grounded in biology. In the (...) present article, we challenge such a thesis. We provide evidence that theoretical biology operates with a plurality of equally valid organismic concepts, which imply different conclusions regarding the organismal status of a brain-dead patient. Moreover, the theoretical biology concepts of an organism are very distant from the view on an organism that appears by way of bioethicists theorizing on death. We conclude that if death is to be understood as the cessation of an organism, there is no single correct answer to the question of whether a brain-dead patient is alive or dead. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some of the biological views on death, if applied in the context of bedside decisions, might imply unacceptable consequences. I argue the moral concept of death—one similar to that of Robert Veatch—overcomes such difficulties. The moral view identifies (...) death with the irreversible cessation of a patient’s moral status, that is, a state when she can no longer be harmed or wronged. The death of a patient takes place when she is no longer capable of regaining her consciousness. In this regard, the proposal elaborated herein resembles that of Veatch yet differs from Veatch’s original project since it is universal. In essence, it is applicable in the case of other living beings such as animals and plants, provided that they have some moral status. (shrink)

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)

In their insightful article, Brent Kious and Margaret Battin (2019) correctly identify an inconsistency between an involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid in dying (PAD). They declare that it may be possible to resolve the problem by articulating “objective standards for evaluating the severity of others’ suffering,” but ultimately they admit that this task is beyond the scope of their article since the solution depends on “a deep and difficult” question about comparing the worseness of two possible (...) scenarios: letting someone die (who could have been helped) with not letting someone die (whose suffering could only be alleviated by death). In our commentary, we argue that creating such standards is more difficult than the authors assume because of the many types of deep uncertainties we have to deal with: (1) diagnostic, (2) motivational, and (3) existential. (shrink)

While agreeing with the main conclusion of Dominic Wilkinson and colleagues (Wilkinson, Butcherine, and Savulescu 2019), namely, that there is no moral difference between treatment withholding and withdrawal as such, we wish to criticize their approach on the basis that it treats the widespread acceptance of withdrawal aversion (WA) as a cognitive bias. Wilkinson and colleagues understand WA as “a nonrational preference for withholding (WH) treatment over withdrawal (WD) of treatment” (22). They treat WA as a manifestation of loss aversion (...) and refer to Kahneman and colleagues (1991), which defined this effect as follows: “the disutility of giving up an object is greater that the utility associated with acquiring it” (194). In a previous work, Wilkinson and Savulescu understood nonequivalence between treatment withholding and withdrawal as a reflection of slightly different, although related, phenomena: status quo bias or omission bias (Wilkinson and Savulescu 2012, 130–131). In neither of these two papers do they describe precisely the relation between these well-known psychological effects and WA, nor do they explain why they treat these effects as examples of nonrational preferences, despite the fact that these issues have been the subject of wide-ranging discussions on the intersection of psychology, economy, and philosophy. (shrink)

Singer claims that there are two ways of challenging the fact that brain-dead patients, from whom organs are usually retrieved, are in fact biologically alive. By means of the first, the so called dead donor rule may be abandoned, opening the way to lethal organ donation. In the second, it might be posited that terms such as “life” and “death” do not have any primary biological meaning and are applicable to persons instead of organisms. This second possibility permits one to (...) acknowledge that brain-dead patients are deceased because they are irreversibly unconscious. In the commentary which follows, I will argue that Singer’s second option is preferable since it provides a higher amount of organs available for transplant, and is better suited to the meaning of “death” which occurs in ordinary language. I will also defend such a concept of death against the objections raised by Michael Nair-Collins in the article Can the brain-dead be harmed or wronged? On the moral status of brain death and its implications for organ transplantation. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

Two eight-century Jaina contemporaries, a Śvetāmbara philosopher Siddhasena Mahāmati and a Digambara Akalaṅka Bhaṭṭa revolutionised Jaina epistemology, by radically transforming basic epistemological concepts, which had been based on canonical tradition. The paper presents a brief historical outline of the developments of basic epistemological concepts in Jaina philolosophy such as the cognitive criterion and logical faculties as well as their fourteen typological models which serve as the backdrop of important innovations in epistemology introduced by Siddhasena, Pātrasvāmin and Akalaṅka. An important contribution (...) of these Jaina thinkers was to economize Indian logic and the rules of inference, first, by devising only one kind of logical reason called ‘inexplicability otherwise’, based on the single inseparable connection of the proving property with the inferable property, and, second, by limiting the necessary number of the members of the proof formula merely to two. These two innovations were related to the thinkers’ intention to devise a logic which would not primarily be based on empirical verification but its structural patterns would be valid irrespective of external observation. Further, the paper focuses on the nature of the epistemological shifts which Siddhasena and Akalaṅka introduced independently of each other and on the question how Siddhasena’s and Akalaṅka’s ideas were partly anchored in Buddhist concepts of the pramāṇa school of Diṅnāga and Dharmakīrti. With the Buddhist background, Siddhasena sought to define the criteria essential to distinguish true from false cognitions and to provide a novel classification of the pramāṇas. He can further be accredited with formulating the first Jaina descriptive definition of the cognitive criterion. The final section of the paper explains how Akalaṅka applies novel epistemological ideas, first, to construct realistic ontology and objectivity of both the external world and the cognising subject, and, secondly, to combat fundamental Buddhist concepts such as idealism and momentariness. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the interpretation of the method of deconstruction in David J. Gunkel’s Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). I focus on the relationship between deconstruction and truth. I hold that the concept of truth is indispensable for deconstruction since truth introduces correctness conditions for the deconstructive method. However, I claim that truth, being essential and primitive for deconstruction, is fundamentally inaccessible for being analyzed by the latter. ------------------------- Received: 19/10/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 20/12/2022.

This article focuses on Bob Zajonc’s views on unconscious emotion, especially in the context of the debates about the independence of affect and cognition. Historically, Bob was always interested in the “mere”—basic, fundamental processes. His empirical demonstrations of precognitive and preconscious emotional processes, combined with his elegant expositions of them, sharply contrasted with cold and complex cognitive models. Interestingly, Bob tended to believe that whereas the causes of emotion can be unconscious, the emotional state itself tends to be conscious. However, (...) he reconsidered this assumption and in his later work showed that subjects in affective priming experiments do not experience conscious affect, but instead act on basic preferences. Today, Bob’s insights continue to inspire research on “unconscious emotion.”. (shrink)

We examine Paul Halmos’ comments on category theory, Dedekind cuts, devil worship, logic, and Robinson’s infinitesimals. Halmos’ scepticism about category theory derives from his philosophical position of naive set-theoretic realism. In the words of an MAA biography, Halmos thought that mathematics is “certainty” and “architecture” yet 20th century logic teaches us is that mathematics is full of uncertainty or more precisely incompleteness. If the term architecture meant to imply that mathematics is one great solid castle, then modern logic tends to (...) teach us the opposite lesson, namely that the castle is floating in midair. Halmos’ realism tends to color his judgment of purely scientific aspects of logic and the way it is practiced and applied. He often expressed distaste for nonstandard models, and made a sustained effort to eliminate first-order logic, the logicians’ concept of interpretation, and the syntactic vs semantic distinction. He felt that these were vague, and sought to replace them all by his polyadic algebra. Halmos claimed that Robinson’s framework is “unnecessary” but Henson and Keisler argue that Robinson’s framework allows one to dig deeper into set-theoretic resources than is common in Archimedean mathematics. This can potentially prove theorems not accessible by standard methods, undermining Halmos’ criticisms. (shrink)

In his 1887's Mitteilungen zur Lehre von Transfiniten, Cantor seeks to prove inconsistency of infinitesimals. We provide a detailed analysis of his argument from both historical and mathematical perspective. We show that while his historical analysis are questionable, the mathematical part of the argument is false.

Aristotle in Analytica Posteriora presented a notion of proof as a special case of syllogism. In the present paper the remarks of Aristotle on the subject are used as an inspiration for developing formal systems of demonstrative syllogistic, which are supposed to formalize syllogisms that are proofs. We build our systems in the style of J. Łukasiewicz as theories based on classical propositional logic. The difference between our systems and systems of syllogistic known from the literature lays in the interpretation (...) of general positive sentences in which the same name occurs twice (of the form SaS). As a basic assumption of demonstrative syllogistic we accept a negation of such a sentence. We present three systems which differ in the interpretation of specific positive sentences in which the same name occurs twice (of the form SiS). The theories are defined as axiomatic systems. For all of them rejected axiomatizations are also supplied. For two of them a set theoretical model is also defined. (shrink)

This paper analyzes selected issues related to the philosophy of the Krakow physicist Andrzej Fuliński. Since the 1970s, Fuliński has been strongly associated with the interdisciplinary milieu gathered around Heller and Życiński. His activity can therefore be considered within the context of the broader phenomenon known as the Krakow School of Philosophy in Science, which was founded by Heller and Życiński. This paper proposes the thesis that Fuliński’s style of philosophy is connected with the concept of philosophy in science and (...) tries to justify the thesis that Fuliński, due to his cooperation with the interdisciplinary milieu in Krakow and the specificity of his philosophical works, deserves to be regarded as a representative of the Krakow School of Philosophy in Science. (shrink)

This paper depicts my conception of the philosophy of religion. I think that there nothing like religion in general. The world of what is customarily called religion is a very different and analogous reality. I make Catholic Christianity the starting point of this philosophy of religion. I treat it as the main analogy to the world of religion. The objective aim of the philosophy of religion is threefold: 1) description of religion, 2) justification of religion, 3) epistemology of religious beliefs. (...) In the philosophy of religion understood in this manner I use methods proper to general metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, and theory of knowledge. (shrink)

We present a dynamical model of interaction between recognition memory and affect, focusing on the phenomenon of “warm glow of familiarity.” In our model, both familiarity and affect reflect quick monitoring of coherence in an attractor neural network. This model parsimoniously explains a variety of empirical phenomena, including mere-exposure and beauty-in-averages effects, and the speed of familiarity and affect judgments.

In the article I justify the acceptability of ex vivo transplantation and I provide the ethical evaluation of trafficking in human organs from the Kantian perspective. Firstly, I refer to passages of Kant's works, where he explicitly states that depriving oneself of one’s body parts for other purposes than self-preservation is not permitted. I explain that the negative ethical evaluation of the disposal of the body parts was given various justifications by Kant. Subsequently, I provide partial criticism of this justification, (...) resulting in the recognition of the admissibility of ex vivo transplantation. Secondly, I analyse the Kantian slippery-slope argument which, as some philosophers believe, supports banning trade in human organs. It turns out, however, that this argument has wider application, namely it applies to all forms of the instrumental treatment of the human body. Using a previously introduced distinction between organs of the first and the second order, I show that the slippery-slope argument is inconclusive. However, I propose a reinterpretation of this reasoning, which results in using this argument as an additional reason to support prohibiting trade in human organs. (shrink)

THE PROBLEM OF BEING IN PLATONISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THOMAS AQUINAS. A META-SYSTEMATIC ESSAY In spite of the apparent opposition to Plato, Aristotle accepted a lot from the thought of his master. The intuition, which plays the key role in the system of Plato, was understood by Aristotle in terms of how we grasp the middle term of syllogism. It is not, therefore, the intuition of being, but the reasoning, departing from the experience (nature’s “intention”), which is the way (...) of the cognition of the ultimate. The teleology of being, which Plato was so keen on finding, was found by Aristotle in the physical world as a counterpart of motion. Alas, Aristotle lost sight of what is most valuable in Plato: the sense of being that transgresses the categories. According to Thomas, being is what is the most perfect in things; so, consequently, what is the proper effect of the Ultimate Cause, and what is Its primary aim. It is better to be, i.e. to exist. Each thing craves for being. Being, however, is, in the Dionysius’ sense, a problem; it might guide us to God, but veil Him before us as well. It is a perfection, but not the Perfection itself, Plato was right at this point. Keywords: BEING, PLATO, ARISTOTLE, THOMAS AQUINAS. (shrink)

The paper explores possible influences that recent developments in the field of a branch of AI called Automated Discovery Systems might have upon some aspects of the old debate between Francis Bacon’s inductivism and Karl Popper’s falsificationism. Francis Bacon advocates mechanical induction as the legitimate, infallible method of science, and Karl Popper proposes his famous falsificationist view, according to which science proceeds by subsequent conjectures and refutations, and the question about where scientific hypotheses come from neither needs, nor is capable (...) of, logical analysis. The traditional method of discussing such methodological debates relies on the analysis of various historical examples of discoveries in order to see how well the two models of scientific method account for them. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the Trump Administration, analysts of American foreign policy have observed several changes in the style substance and style of Washington’s international behavior with regard to both foes and friends. President Trump in his rhetoric (including social media communication) and style represent a disturbing discontinuity, especially for allies that undermines the stability of American international commitments. American allies are forced to develop new strategies for managing this new risk in relations with Washington. This paper examines the tactics (...) employed by the government in Warsaw in that regard. (shrink)

The subject of the paper is an attempt to apply the category of “negative certainty” to cognition of man according to Jean-Luc Marion and a discussion of his project. Marion developed this concept inspired mainly by Kant’s philosophy. It is about the certainty of something negative, something that cannot be captured as an object. Negative certainty is not the certainty of negativity, but the certainty of that, which positivity cannot be reduced to objectivity. Marion offers criticism the Cartesian ideal, which (...) privileges the object and, following Heidegger, emphasizes the event-based nature of the phenomenon. Negative certainty is a re-elaboration of a saturated phenomenon, but from the point of view of its recipient. The category of “negative certainty” is then applied to human, who is not an ordinary phenomenon, but a set of saturated phenomena. The analysis of the views of Descartes and Kant leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to approach man objectively and define his quidditas. There is no answer to the question “who is a man?”, because it itself is a question (St. Augustine), not an answer. Marion points to three aporias of the objective understanding of human: epistemological, alienation and otherness. As a result, the metaphysics of man is not possible, and his negative knowledge is grounded in the field of theology. Although Marion’s thought is interesting, several objections can be leveled against it, which are formulated in the last part of the paper. Despite them, the project of negative certainty in relation to human defends itself and shows the convergence of egology and dialogics. (shrink)

The paper discusses the unique relationship that exists between the ego and one’s own body. There are two fundamental possibilities to grasp it – using the verb “to be” or “to have,” which results in two known formulas: “to be the body” or “to have the body.” However, after careful examination, it turns out that they are one-sided and entangle us in numerous aporias. A more complete picture of the relationships with one’s own body is made possible by a phenomenological (...) description, which is a first-person and direct approach. The body, given in numerous experiences, turns out to be paradoxical and ambiguous. This is also my relation with it – it is feeling myself and others, getting to know myself and the world; an internal and at the same time external bond, at most my own experience along with the need to transcend the body. Finally, we consider whether the category of “relationship” resp. “relation” matches the experience of one’s own body. Perhaps a better solution is to give up this term and describe the body as a character of human being. (shrink)

Każdy człowiek funkcjonuje w jakimś systemie - rodzina, polityka, religia, to tylko niektóre z nich. Trudno określić, na ile pozostajemy niewolnikami systemów, do czasu, w którym zadamy sobie pytanie o prawdę. Jest to jednocześnie pytanie o istoty człowieczeństwa, stanowiące punkt zwrotny w pojmowaniu własnego miejsca na ziemi, w przestrzeni i w czasie, w świecie materii i poza nim. Jesteśmy współtwórcami sieci interakcji i wzajemnych zależności. Aby mimo to określić proporcje naszej wolności do konieczności, jak im podlegamy, musimy poznać prawdy o (...) osobie ludzkiej. Pytanie to przenosi nas w obszary wartości podstawowych - obok prawdy znajdujemy piękno i dobro, stanowiące o treści i jakości życia. Istnieje przy tym duży problem z hierarchizacją wartości, jeszcze większy zaś ze stworzeniem systemu, w którym czerpiąc z pojmowanych prawd nasycalibyśmy egzystencję głębią autentycznego istnienia. Max Scheler - gdyż to jego spojrzenie nas tu interesuje, ukazał nową i odmienną perspektywę widzenia wartości, a mianowicie jako obiektywnej, samodzielnej i nieredukowalnej jakości. To także Scheler wprowadził kategorię iluzji aksjologicznej, będącej poniekąd antytezą ukształtowanego przez pozytywizm przekonania o identyczności wyobrażeń o wartościach z samymi wartościami. (shrink)