This chapter contains section titled: “We're in the Middle of a War, and You're Taking Orders from a Schoolteacher?” “While the Chain of Command is Strict, It is Not Heartless. And Neither Am I” Helo's Halo: Can Genocide Ever be Justified? “It's Not Enough to Survive. One Has to be Worthy of Surviving” Notes.

An important contemporary version of Boltzmannian statistical mechanics explains the approach to equilibrium in terms of typicality. The problem with this approach is that it comes in different versions, which are, however, not recognized as such and not clearly distinguished. This article identifies three different versions of typicality‐based explanations of thermodynamic‐like behavior and evaluates their respective successes. The conclusion is that the first two are unsuccessful because they fail to take the system's dynamics into account. The third, however, is promising. (...) I give a precise formulation of the proposal and present an argument in support of its central contention. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, England; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

It is now part and parcel of the official philosophical wisdom that models are essential to the acquisition and organisation of scientific knowledge. It is also generally accepted that most models represent their target systems in one way or another. But what does it mean for a model to represent its target system? I begin by introducing three conundrums that a theory of scientific representation has to come to terms with and then address the question of whether the semantic view (...) of theories, which is the currently most widely accepted account of theories and models, provides us with adequate answers to these questions. After having argued in some detail that it does not, I conclude by pointing out in what direction a tenable account of scientific representation might be sought. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl's closest students and friends, ranks among the most eminent of the first generation of phenomenologists. His magisterial <I>Controversy over the Existence of the World, written during the years of World War II in occupied Poland, consists of a fundamental defense of realism in phenomenology. Volume I, which receives here its first complete and critical translation into English, initiates the grand project of refuting transcendental idealism, and begins by setting the foundations for an elaborate and (...) precise ontological system. This is Ingarden's greatest accomplishment, who is rather known as a theoretician of literature than an ontologist outside of Poland. The most important achievement of Ingarden's ontology is an analysis of the modes of being of various types of objects - things, processes, events, purely intentional objects and ideas. The three-volume <I>Controversy is perhaps the last great systematic work in the history of philosophy, and undoubtedly one of the most important works in 20th century philosophical literature. (shrink)

On an influential account, chaos is explained in terms of random behaviour; and random behaviour in turn is explained in terms of having positive Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy (KSE). Though intuitively plausible, the association of the KSE with random behaviour needs justification since the definition of the KSE does not make reference to any notion that is connected to randomness. I provide this justification for the case of Hamiltonian systems by proving that the KSE is equivalent to a generalized version of Shannon's (...) communication-theoretic entropy under certain plausible assumptions. I then discuss consequences of this equivalence for randomness in chaotic dynamical systems. Introduction Elements of dynamical systems theory Entropy in communication theory Entropy in dynamical systems theory Comparison with other accounts Product versus process randomness. (shrink)

Plagiarism and other transgressions of the norms of academic integrity appear to be a persistent problem among upper secondary students. Numerous surveys have revealed high levels of infringement of what appear to be clearly stated rules. Less attention has been given to students’ understanding of academic integrity, and to the potential misconceptions and false beliefs that may make it difficult for them to comply with existing rules and handle complex real-life situations.In this paper we report findings from a survey of (...) European upper secondary students’ views on issues relating to academic integrity. We relate these findings to the students’ training about academic integrity, self-reported level of questionable behavior and country of study.A total of 1654 students at 51 institutions located in 6 European countries participated in the study. The participants generally believed they had a good understanding of the rules applying to them and knew how to behave in compliance with norms of academic integrity. The results indicate, however, that often, in practice, this belief was mistaken. Many students had an inadequate understanding of core elements of academic integrity. They were uncertain about how to act, and they struggled in the handling of complex situations that require context-sensitive judgement. While some differences between countries were identified, they were modest and exhibited no clear pattern. Our results also suggest that reducing students’ level of uncertainty and, to a lesser degree, improving their level of knowledge could lead them to engage less in certain types of questionable behaviours. Surprisingly, the effect of academic training is modest and ambiguous. The study also confirms that perception of peer behaviour has the strongest association with student engagement in questionable behaviours. Thus, academic integrity at the upper secondary level cannot be explained simply in terms of individual ethics or knowledge. (shrink)

In 1990, Bas C. van Fraassen defined the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics as a consideration of it as „a pure theory of the possible, with testable, empirical implications for what actually happens”. This is a narrow, traditional understanding of modality, as possibility (usually denoted in logic by the C.I. Lewis's symbol Î) and necessity >>, defined by means of Î. In modern logic, however, modality is understood in a much wider sense as any intensional functor (i.e. nonextensional functor: determined (...) not only by the truth value of a sentence). In his recent publication (1997) the author made an attempt to apply this wider understand-ing of modality to certain interpretation of classical and quantum physics. In the present text, these problems are discussed against the background of a brief review of the logical approach to quantum mechanics in the recent seven decades. In this discussion, the new concepts of sub-modality and super-modality of many orders are used. (shrink)

In two recent papers Barry Loewer (2001, 2004) has suggested to interpret probabilities in statistical mechanics as Humean chances in David Lewis’ (1994) sense. I first give a precise formulation of this proposal, then raise two fundamental objections, and finally conclude that these can be overcome only at the price of interpreting these probabilities epistemically.

Le Pere Paul Siwek SJ est un des plus eminents philosophes et psychologues polonais. II a travaille dans differents pays et s'est acquis une estime et une celebrite internationales. Pour familiariser le lecteur avec la personne de Siwek, on presente ici, de facon succincte, sa biographie, la liste de ses livres principaux publies en plusieurs langues, la caracteristique de son activite et la bibliographie des publications principales qui contiennent des donnees sur lui.

Author: Godlewski Roman P. Title: SOURCES OF DUALISM OF CONTENT AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEME I.E. ON SOME FAULTS OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY (Źródła dualizmu schematu pojęciowego i treści, czyli o kilku błędach filozofii zachodniej. Uwagi z zakresu filozofii analitycznej) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2005, vol:.5, number: 2005/1, pages: 243-258 Keywords: DUALISM OF CONTENT AND CONCEPTUAL SCHEME, RORTY, KMITA, WHORF Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The aim in the article is to explain why (...) we fall in dualism of content and conceptual scheme. The dualism says that there is a relation between languages and the world (meant as an object). The first cause is mechanistic way of thinking which characterizes Indoeuropean mind. The way on thinking is to treat every object as if it had formal properties of physical objects. The term is taken from Whorf’s works. Concequences of mechanistic thinking for research in abstract sciences is considered. It is demonstrated how mechanistic thinking lets to pass from belief that there are some relations between expressions of a language and elements of the world to belief that there is a relation between the language as a whole and the whole world. The fallowing causes of the dualism are also considered: 1. literal understanding of metaphores used in philosophy of language, 2. wrong understanding of suppositions, 4. attempts to explain language in natural terms, e.g. causal theory of meaning. (shrink)

In two recent papers Barry Loewer (2001, 2004) has suggested to interpret probabilities in statistical mechanics as Humean chances in David Lewis’ (1994) sense. I first give a precise formulation of this proposal, then raise two fundamental objections, and finally conclude that these can be overcome only at the price of interpreting these probabilities epistemically.

This long-awaited translation of Das literarische Kunstwerk makes available for the first time in English Roman Ingarden's influential study. Though it is inter-disciplinary in scope, situated as it is on the borderlines of ontology and logic, philosophy of literature and theory of language, Ingarden's work has a deliberately narrow focus: the literary work, its structure and mode of existence. The Literary Word of Art establishes the groundwork for a philosophy of literature, i.e., an ontology in terms of which the (...) basic general structure of all lliterary works can be determined. This "essential anatomy" makes basic tools and concepts available for rigorous and subtle aesthetic analysis. (shrink)

Praca nie zawiera żadnej proponowanej prz∈z autora d∈finicji ekst∈nsji i intensji wyrażeń w systemach semantycznych. Rozpatruje się dwie relacje równoważności ekstensjonalnej i intensjonalnej, które zachodzą między wyraż∈niami (zdaniami, termami) oraz funkcje gdzie e jest wyrażeniem, spelniające warunki. Każda para takich funkcji jest pewną reprezentacją ekstens ji i intensji wyrażeń.W pracy rozważa się ogólne własności reprezentacji ekstensji i intensji oraz podaje się przykłady takich reprezentacji. Wyróżnia się tzw. obiektywną reprezentację ekstensji i wprowadza się pojęcie tzw. semantycznego domknięcia modelu.Pokazuje się, że ekstensje (...) i intensje termów można zredukować do ekst∈nsji i intensji zdań.Rozważa się relacje strukturalnej równoważności ekstensjonalnej i int∈nsjonalnej wyrażeń. Relacje te redukują się w przypadku tzw. normalnych systemów semantycznych do syntaktycznej równoważności wyrażeń. Istnieje pewien związek tych relacji z pojęciem kodenotacji wprowadzonym przez K. Ajdukiewicza. (shrink)

The author analyses the problematic of historical necessity and ethical regularity of socialism, taking the marxist philosophy as a point of departure. He criticizes opinions represented in philosophical and ideological discussions of this problem in the period of the Second International and argues that the above problematic, which results from a confrontation of marxism with a new historical situation and with the current of the neo-Kantian philosophy, was an axis which has brought into focus the theoretical decisions both of revisionists (...) and critics of marxism on one hand and of orthodox marxists on the other hand. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION I have often asked myself why Husserl, really, headed in the direction of transcendental idealism from the time of his ...

Praca poświęcona jest prezentacji i krytycznej ocenie poglądów filozoficznych Jana Franciszka Drewnowskiego na matematykę i logikę. Podstawą rozważań są cztery źródła. Podstawowym źródłem jest Drewnowskiego "Zarys programu filozoficznego", dalej dwa artykuły, a mianowicie "Stosowanie logiki symbolicznej w filozofii" oraz "Uwagi o stosowaniu logiki symbolicznej", w końcu fragmenty dziennika. Pokazuje się w niej, jak Drewnowski rozumiał matematykę i teorie matematyczne, jak widział logikę i jej rolę w nauce oraz na ile był zaznajomiony ze współczesnymi osiągnięciami w zakresie logiki matematycznej i podstaw (...) matematyki oraz z ich konsekwencjami dla filozofii matematyki. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Adam Adamandy Kochański. Studium z dziejów filozofii i nauki w Polsce w XVII wieku, by Bogdan Lisiak.

The paper is devoted to the presentation and analysis of the philosophical views concerning logic and mathematics of the leading members of Cracow Circle, i.e., of Jan Salamucha, Jan Franciszek Drewnowski and Józef Maria Bocheński. Their views on the problem of possible applicability of logical tools in metaphysical and theological researches is also discussed.

The aim of this article is twofold. Recently, Lewis has presented an argument, now known as the "counting anomaly", that the spontaneous localization approach to quantum mechanics, suggested by Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber, implies that arithmetic does not apply to ordinary macroscopic objects. I will take this argument as the starting point for a discussion of the property structure of realist collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics in general. At the end of this I present a proof of the fact that (...) the composition principle, which holds true in standard quantum mechanics, fails in all realist collapse interpretations. On the basis of this result I reconsider the counting anomaly and show that what lies at the heart of the anomaly is the failure to appreciate the peculiarities of the property structure of such interpretations. Once this flaw is uncovered, the anomaly vanishes. (shrink)

Jusqu'a nos jours, il n'existait dans la litterature qu'un nombre restreint de mentions et de brefs articles sur Ortiz. Dans cette etude, mon propos est de presenter d'abord les etapes de la vie d'Ortiz, en me basant avant tout sur les sources manuscrites de son epoque, puisees dans les Archives Centrales des Jesuites a Rome. Je donnerai ensuite une description de son oeuvre philosophique et j'exposerai ses conceptions philosophiques principales. Ortiz fut egalement un theologien; son activite dans ce domaine depasse (...) evidemment les limites du present article. (shrink)