We propose to model spacetime by a differential space rather than by a differential manifold. A differential space is the pair (M, C), where M is any set, and C a family of real functions on M, satisfying certain axioms; C is called a differential structure of a corresponding differential space. This concept suitably generalizes the manifold concept. We show that C can be chosen in such a way that it contains all information about the causal structure of spacetime. This (...) information can be read out of C with the help of only one postulate, namely that physical signals travel along piecewise smooth curves in (M, C). We effectively construct the Minkowski spacetime, with its cone structure, in this way. Some comments are made. (shrink)

The present paper outlines John Lachs’s idea of stoic pragmatism and develops its important part that is the relation between the individual and the community. In his project, Lachs reduces the whole tradition of Stoic philosophy to its later, Roman version and tries to link it with the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism (especially William James, John Dewey, and George Santayana, who is close to pragmatism at some points) hoping that it is possible for these two to "enrich and complete (...) each other" so that to provide "a better attitude to life than either of the two views alone." Stoic pragmatism pursues factual improvement in the quality of life for individuals living in given social circumstances, rather than a new theory about such improvement. Interestingly, stoic pragmatism overlaps at many points with the so-called modern stoicism, a movement that uses Stoic ethics in contemporary contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The following text is a large fragment of the lectures on heresy that Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) gave between November 1982 and February 1983 on the Polish radio station Radio Free Europe. These lectures have never been published in English. They were only published under the title ‘Herezja’ in Poland after the author’s death in 2010 by the publishing company Znak. Kołakowski raises the universal and timeless issues of tolerance, ideological struggles, protection of doctrine by religious institutions and the changing (...) attitude of the Catholic Church towards heretical challenges (tackling them and attempting to annex and colonize certain ideas). The concept of heresy is an opportunity to describe the history of ideological conflicts, show how they arise and how they can be resolved. The story of struggle between dogmatists and heretics is an endless story of changing social order and giving new shapes to the reality created by people and their ideas. Kołakowski points out that any doctrinal, political or ideological system must allow for criticism and otherness. Nearly 40 years after these lectures were given, they retain a special freshness in the context of the political, ideological and social crisis that Europe is experiencing in the early twenty-first century. (shrink)

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.

The article focuses on the anti-naturalism of Menger and Mises. It presents a methodological approach formulated by both scholars as stemming from epistemological anti-naturalism and demonstrating similarities to social phenomenology. The article also discusses the development of the anti-naturalistic perspective on the basis of Hayek’s conception of sensory order. The latter allowed addressing the problem of validity of methodological dualism and established a sound foundation for the methodological approach of the Austrian School of Economics.

In my paper I present a critique of Dorota Brylla’s interpretation of the dialogue by Nicholas of Cusa - De Deo abscondito, and a critique of her stance on apophatic theology. I consider Brylla’s position an exemplification of a more widespread philosophical point of view in terms of both the interpretation of Nicholas thought and the apophatic tradition as such. I also present an alternative reading of both his dialogue and apophatic theology. Finally, I point out some implications of adopting (...) my position for philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The paper discusses a relatively underexamined element of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics associated with his critique of set theory. I outline Wittgenstein’s objections to the theories of Dedekind and Cantor, including the confounding of extension and intension, the faulty definition of the infinite set as infinite extension and the critique of Cantor’s diagonal proof. One of Wittgenstein’s major objections to set theory was that the concept of the size of infinite sets, which Cantor expressed by means of symbols אₒ and (...) c, had no application, i.e. that there was no grammatical technique that could show how such expressions were to be used. Notions of set theory are, so to speak, exterior – they find themselves outdoors, outside of what we usually do. They form a discourse that takes us beyond the horizon of everydayness and commonality. They are like an engine idling of the language of mathematics. (shrink)

This paper develops a proof theory for logical forms of proofs in the case of monadic languages. Among the consequences are different kinds of generalization of proofs in various schematic proof systems. The results use suitable relations between logical properties of partial proof data and algebraic properties of corresponding sets of linear diophantine equations.

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.

This article compares Luther’s understanding of the unity of Christ’s person with that of his theological successors, focusing on Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard. It argues that Luther’s more apophatic approach to the communicatio idiomatum and his heirs’ elaborate doctrine of the three genera of the communication do not stand in a straightforward relationship of continuity. To be sure, both are historically found in the context of Eucharistic polemics. Yet Luther’s perspective on the communicatio is driven by a desire to (...) give expression to Christ-for-me specifically as the subject and agent of his promise; it has its driving force in the ontology of the promise as the essence of the gospel. By contrast, Luther’s successors are preoccupied with the ability of Christ’s assumed human nature to receive divine properties in the hope of shoring up the presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper. In the end, it is Luther who succeeds in presenting a more successful account of a co-extensive and internally congruent understanding of Christ’s divine and human agency, whereas his successors’ account of the unity of Christ remains undermined by intractable and ever-threatening divergence. (shrink)

Artykuł ma na celu przeanalizowanie zmian zachodzących w percepcji obiektów militarnych wraz z ich rozwojem w ujęciu historycznym, a także poszukiwanie odpowiedzi na pytanie o możliwości analizy takich obiektów w kontekście piękna architektury. Pretekstem do zadania takich pytań były przeprowadzone przez autora prace wykopaliskowe na terenie jednej z pierwszych w Europie fortyfikacji nowożytnych, czyli wrocławskiego bastionu Kleszczowego. Aby na nie odpowiedzieć, przeanalizowano – pod kątem piękna i symboliki – średniowieczne budowle obronne, uwzględniając zmianę ich roli w czasie. Następnie podobnej analizie (...) poddano bastion Kleszczowy jako przykład fortyfikacji nowożytnej. Efektem tych działań było wykazanie, że rozpatrywanie nowożytnych obiektów militarnych w kontekście piękna architektury jest możliwe, jednak zdecydowanie trudniejsze i wymagające zastosowania innych koncepcji piękna. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Hugh Burling’s inspiring proposal that the reference of ‘God’ is determined by the description: ‘the being worthy of our worship’. I argue that a more detailed analysis of the notion of being worthy of our worship leads to the conclusion that the proposed description is paradoxical, and cannot fulfill the role Burling would like it to play in determining the reference of the term ‘God’. Subsequently, I provide several examples implying that being worthy of our (...) worship is a necessary condition for any candidate to be the referent of the term ‘God’, but the semantics of ‘God’ is considerably more complicated than Burling takes it to be. Finally, I show that religious people who use the word ‘God’ are either idolatrous or trapped in an apophatic paradox of the reference of ‘God’. (shrink)

The human influence on the earth’s ecosystem has become so destructive that we need a new vision of the world that will offer hope. The article is an attempt to create a new interdisciplinary way that takes into account the role of symbiosis in the functioning of life on Earth. Australian scholar Glenn Albrecht postulates the conceptual framework for the new epoch and calls it the Symbiocene. which will be characterized by replicating symbiotic life processes in human activities. At the (...) same time, science clearly states that the relationships among organisms are predominantly cooperative and symbiotic in nature. The article focuses on three selected phenomena in which close multilateral cooperation plays a significant role. These are: the life of lichens, the functioning of mycelium with plants, especially the role of Mother Trees over young stands, and permaculture as an example of symbiotic agriculture. We take these examples as a training in collective imagination in good interspecies living and draw on selected literary texts. We believe that the idea of the Symbiocene, an inclusive and integrative philosophy of life, has great potential to become a new direction not only in the natural sciences, but also in the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

The articles in this collection focus on philosophical approaches to proper names. The issues discussed include abstract names, empty names, naming and name-using practices, definite descriptions, individuals, reference, designation, sense and semantics. The contributions show the importance and lasting influence of theories proposed by John Stuart Mill, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Individual chapters assess traditional analyses and modern controversies, and contribute to the debate on proper names in contemporary philosophy of language.

The high point of the falsification of physical theories in a standard view of the philosophy of science is the so-called crucial experiment. This experiment is a kind of manipulated empirical test, which provides the criterion for distinguishing between two rival hypotheses, where one is an acceptable theory due to passing the test, and the other turns out to be an unacceptable theory as it does not pass the test. The crucial experiment was supposed to play a significant role because, (...) in virtue of an empirical disconfirmation of one theory, the experiment was assumed to confirm the other as true. However, in 1906, in La théorie physique, son object et la structure (hereafter quoted in English translation as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906/1954)), Pierre Duhem famously argued against this view and stated that crucial experiments in physics are impossible as they are necessarily ambiguous and logically incomplete. His contention rested on the claim that, “[a] physical theory is not an explanation [of true reality in itself in virtue of some broad metaphysical ramification of physics]. It is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply, as completely, and as accurately as possible a set of experimental laws” (ibid., p. 19). Furthermore, different theories could be equally suitable to represent a given group of experimental laws. And, assuming holism, no hypothesis could be tested in isolation, but merely as a part of a set of an entire scientific theory. The problem which Duhem identified in 1906 was slightly overshadowed and neglected in mainstream philosophy of science until the appearance of a challenging paper by Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951 and entitled “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Quine’s paper caused a revival of interest in Duhem’s original formulation and gave a new impulse towards the problem in the form of the so-called Duhem-Quine thesis. The aim of this paper is to reconsider whether Duhem was right to argue that there are no crucial experiments in physics. In order to assess the validity of the thesis, first, this paper makes an exposition of Duhem’s arguments in their favour, and analyses the major criticisms of this position offered in the subject-literature of Adolf Grünbaum, who explicitly attacked the arguments for the thesis as inconclusive and false. Then, this paper presents possible modes of defence of the Duhem-Quine thesis and argues that the original formulation of the thesis is well qualified and plausible. Finally, this paper offers a pragmatic interpretation of the theory choice. (shrink)

In this paper I present my thesis stated numerous times at APA and NACAP meetings, that the current shortage of online programs in philosophy presents adanger to the profession. I also show how this danger could be averted. I give a snapshot of what teaching philosophy online, and doing it well, looks like. I am a very partial spectator in this debate since the example I am referring to is the program at UIS which I designed and, with my colleagues, (...) led to successful implementation. Finally, I draw a broad brush picture of what an inter-campus, international online program in philosophy may look like (as well as some implications for online learning in Poland). (shrink)

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.

Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of intertopic correlations, we (...) group the content‐based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine‐grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century. (shrink)

This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in favour (...) of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)

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...

If two stimuli need different times to be processed, this difference should in principle be reflected both by response times (RT) and by judgments of their temporal order (TOJ). However, several dissociations have been reported between RT and TOJ, e.g., RT is more affected than TOJ when stimulus intensity decreases. One account for these dissociations is to assume differences in the allocation of attention induced by the two tasks. To test this hypothesis, different distributions of attention were induced in the (...) present study between two stimulus positions (above and below fixation). Only bright stimuli appeared in one position and either bright or dim stimuli in the other. In the two RT experiments, participants had to respond to every stimulus appearing in one of the two positions. Reaction times to bright stimuli were faster when they appeared in the position where dim stimuli were likely to occur. This finding suggests that the allocation of attention was adapted to the asymmetrical arrangement of stimuli, not suggested by explicit instruction. In the two TOJ experiments, the temporal order of stimuli appearing in the two positions had to be judged. Although bright stimuli appearing at the bright-and-dim location were judged to be earlier, this effect was small and insignificant. Further, the intensity dissociation between RT and TOJ was insensitive to random vs blockwise presentations of intensities, therefore was not modified by attentional preferences. Thus, asymmetrical arrangement of stimuli has an impact on the allocation of attention, but only in the RT task. Therefore dissociations between TOJ and response times cannot be accounted for by an attentional bias in the TOJ task but probably by different use of temporal information in the two tasks. (shrink)

The truly philosophical issue in machine conscioiusness is whether machines can have 'hard consciounsess'. Criteria for hard consciousness are higher than for phenomenal consciousness, since the latter incorporates first-person functional consciousness.

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

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)

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.

The article presents a thought experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the (...) task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. (shrink)

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

Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...) principles, we observe systematic equivocations in PP‐based models, or outright contradictions with its avowed principles. To make matters worse, PP‐based models are seldom empirically validated, and they are frequently offered as mere just‐so stories. The large number of PP‐based models is thus not evidence of theoretical progress in unifying perception, action, and cognition. On the contrary, we maintain that the gap between theory and its biological and computational bases contributes to the arrested development of PP as a unificatory theory. Thus, we urge the defenders of PP to focus on its critical problems instead of offering mere re‐descriptions of known phenomena, and to validate their models against possible alternative explanations that stem from different theoretical assumptions. Otherwise, PP will ultimately fail as a unified theory of cognition. (shrink)

Affective knowledge of God is a kind of knowledge which follows human affectivity. This knowledge takes place on two levels: the level of the natural inclination of man towards God and the level of the religious bias of man towards God. What is the nature of affective knowledge of God? It seems there are three problems in question. First of all, as there is a natural inclination towards God in man, one will be restless unless one recognizes or finds God. (...) Secondly, one who loves God has a new deeper knowledge of the divine things through connaturality and inclination. Thirdly, as the result of one's encounter with God and of uniting with Him, man experiences certain subjective states which cannot be expressed by words. (shrink)