Polskie Towarzystwo Przyrodników im. Kopernika, Kraków.

Towarzystwo Filozoficzne w Krakowie, Kraków.

Polskie Towarzystwo Politechniczne, Lwów.

The aim of tis article is to present the selected Marian Smoluchowski's manuscripts to be published in this volume. At the beginning, a history and current state of research of his manusript legacy was showed. Next there were characterized a philosophical significance of his unpublished manuscripts and a short analysis of the manuscripts published in this volume. At the end of the article the details about the current edition of Smoluchowski's manuscripts were described.

The main goal of this paper is to present the Marian Smoluchowski’s work on thermal and primordial fluctuations which are the main cause of Brownian motion and one of the first empirical evidences for molecular structure of matter.

Marian Smoluchowski solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. It was the explanation of the phenomenon of the Brownian motion. In the article, I show that Smoluchowski in fact in this explanation used an ontological interpretation of the causality principle, although in his writings he applied it also in the epistemological interpretation. This is understandable because in the scientific practice some kinds of ontological commitment are required.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate and reconstruct the philosophical thoughts in Marian Smoluchowski’s papers. He was an outstanding Polish physicist, who lived at the turn of the XIX and XX century. Smoluchowski was particularly interested in theoretical physics. His achievements in this discipline, some even very significant, have caused him to be perceived mainly as a physicist. His work in the theory of fluctuations and kinetic theory of gases, especially in the theory of (...) Brownian motions, is well known to physicists. My attention in this paper is focused on the metascientific problems which dominated his philosophical reflections. His analysis in the fields on philosophy of science ought to be perceived in light of physics. Philosophical reflections were at the margins of science which he practiced – physics was always the background to his deliberations. An important limit to our deliberations was set by concentrating on issues typical of the philosophy of science. In Smoluchowski’s case, however, it is difficult to say that his branch of philosophy is characterized by systematic reflection. It is difficult to classify his reflection in the framework of any given philosophical trend. (shrink)

The paper presents philosophical views which have been propagated in the first decade of the 20 th -century by Austrian experimental physicist Franz-Serafin Exner. According to Exner all apparently deterministic laws are only a kind of the macroscopic limit of the indeterministic random events and processes in nature. The paper attempts to show whether Exner’s ideas have influenced the views on randomness and probability developed by renowned Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski who belonged to informal circle of Exner’s students (...) and assistants. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper provides an introduction to three translations of articles by Soviet philosopher Boris Hessen: “Mechanical Materialism and Modern Physics,” “On Comrade Timiryazev’s Attitude towards Contemporary Science” and “Marian Smoluchowski (On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death)”. It begins by presenting a central tension in Hessen’s work; namely, how even though he is better known for the externalism of his 1931 Newton paper, much of his work has been considered exemplary of an internalist approach. I then show that (...) for Hessen, the history of modern science was defined by the discovery of the dialectical unity in opposition between dynamic and statistical regularity. This not only sheds important light on Hessen’s understanding of causation, but also reconciles the aforementioned tension by showing his approach to the relationship between individuals and collectives in the study of physical phenomena, along with the relationship between individual scientists and socioeconomic conditions. (shrink)

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological founda­ tions of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social sciences - all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added (...) the great school of analytic and methodological studies in Warsaw and Lw6w. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwig Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. (From our preface to Wiatr [1979p. Other movements also have been distinctive in Poland. Phenomenology was developed in the impressive school of Roman Ingarden at Cracow, semiotics from the early work of the philosopher and psychologist Kazimierz Twardowski at Lw6w in the 1890's, with masterful develop­ ment by his disciples Kotarbinski and Ajdukiewicz onward, conceptual foundations of physics in the incisive methodological reflections of Marian Smoluchowski, and mathematical logic from Jan I:.ukasiewicz and Stanislaw Lesniewski to Tarski, Mostowski, and many others. (shrink)

They reject the correspondence theory, insist truth is anemic, and advance an "anti-theory" of truth that is essentially a collection of platitudes: "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white; "Grass is green" is true if and only if grass is green. According to disquotationalists, the only profound insight about truth is that it lacks profundity. David contrasts the correspondence theory with disquotationalism and then develops the latter position in rich detail - more than has been (...) available in previous literature - to show its faults. (shrink)

Truthmakers have come to play a central role in David Armstrong's metaphysics. They are the things that stand in the relation of truthmaking to truthbearers. This chapter focuses on the relation. More specifically, it discusses a thesis Armstrong holds about truthmaking that is of special importance to him; namely, the thesis that truthmaking is an internal relation. It explores what work this thesis is supposed to do for Armstrong, especially for this doctrine of the ontological free lunch, raising questions and (...) pointing out difficulties along the way. At the end of the chapter, it is shown that Armstrong's preferred truthbearers generate a serious difficulty for his thesis that the truthmaking relation is internal. (shrink)

This article draws on two studies that have used an ethic of care analysis to explore lay, nursing and social work care for people with dementia. It discusses the political as well as the practice application of ethic of care principles and highlights the necessity to understand both what people do and the meanings with which such practices are imbued in order to identify `good care' and the relationship between this and social justice. Examples of care for people with dementia (...) are discussed by reference to core principles of an ethic of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust. These illustrate the potential for the development of a shared language within which different disciplines, lay carers and people with dementia can communicate about how needs could best be met in complex and difficult circumstances. (shrink)

What is animal welfare? Why has it proved so difficult to find a definition that everyone can agree on? This concise and accessible guide is for anyone who is interested in animals and who has wondered how we can assess their welfare scientifically. It defines animal welfare as 'health and animals having what they want', a definition that can be easily understood by scientists and non-scientists alike, expresses in simple words what underlies many existing definitions, and shows what evidence we (...) need to collect to improve animal welfare in practice. Above all, it puts the animal's own point of view at the heart of an assessment of its welfare. But, can we really understand what animals want? A consistent theme running through the book is that not only is it possible to establish what animals want, but that this information is vital in helping us to make sense of the long and often confusing list of welfare measures that are now in use such as 'stress' and 'feel good hormones', expressive sounds and gestures, natural behaviour, cognitive bias, and stereotypies. Defining welfare as 'health and what animals want' allows us to distinguish between measures that are simply what an animal does when it is alert, aroused, or active and those measures that genuinely allow us to distinguish between situations the animals themselves see as positive or negative. Sentience (conscious feelings of pleasure, pain, and suffering) is for many people the essence of what is meant by welfare, but studying consciousness is notoriously difficult, particularly in non-human species. These difficulties are discussed in the context of our current - and as yet incomplete - knowledge of human and animal consciousness. Finally, the book highlights some key ideas in the relationship between animal welfare science and animal ethics and shows how closely the well-being of humans is linked to that of other animals. The Science of Animal Welfare is an ideal companion for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in animal behaviour and welfare, as well as for professional researchers, practitioners and animal welfare consultants. At the same time, it is easily understandable to non-scientists and anyone without prior knowledge but with an interest in animals and the rapidly evolving science of animal welfare. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that contextualism cannot explain (dis)agreements concerning matters of personal taste because it treats sentences involving predicates of taste as indexical. I aim to weaken this charge. Given the idea that people sometimes use indexical sentences to express (dis)agreements about taste, two kinds of (dis)agreement are distinguished, namely doxastic and non-doxastic. Taste (dis)agreements are better explained in terms of the later kind, in which case they become amenable to contextualist treatment. It is argued that if something instantiates (...) a taste property (like being tasty for A), it has to instantiate a corresponding attitudinal property (like being liked by A). Based on this, utterances of taste sentences express propositions that concern tastiness of something (e.g., that X is tasty for A) and these propositions entail other propositions that concern non-doxastic attitudes the speakers bear toward something (e.g., that X is liked by A). One speaker is claimed to (dis)agree with another speaker provided their respective entailed propositions feature (in)compatible non-doxastic attitudes. Although this explanation is similar to hybrid accounts that are currently growing in popularity, it departs from them in some notable respects. (shrink)

It is usually claimed that taste utterances have judge-dependent semantic content. Jeremy Wyatt recently proposed a semantic theory that rejects this claim. According to him, the semantic content of taste sentences is judge-independent, but the content of our assertions made by uttering taste sentences is judge-dependent. He showed that this account explains faultless disagreements about tastes. My paper aims to raise some challenges to his proposal. First, a judge-independent taste proposition semantically expressed by a taste sentence seems unrelated to a (...) judge-dependent taste proposition asserted by the speaker. It means that the latter proposition is not systematically obtained from the former. Second, the theory assumes that there are judge-independent taste properties. The existence of such properties can be questioned because it is problematic to state instantiation conditions for them. The paper ends with a sketch of an alternative explanation; it shares Wyatt’s account of faultless disagreements but does not suffer from its drawbacks. (shrink)

Contra Lewis, it is argued that the correspondence theory is a genuine rival theory of truth: it goes beyond the redundancy theory; it competes with other theories of truth; it is aptly summarized by the slogan 'truth is correspondence to fact'; and it really is a theory of truth.

This paper enquires into the possibility of establishing a causal link between social performance (SP) and financial performance (FP) in corporate social responsibility (CSR). It shows that this endeavour is limited by several biasing factors (such as time horizons, sample choices and the tools chosen to measure SP and FP) and faces the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this), which indicates that a sequence of events does not necessarily establish a causal link. The (...) paper contributes to the methodological literature in CSR currently focused on empirical tests aiming to discern the linkages between SP and FP, both by emphasising the interest in interpreting and justifying SP and by suggesting a redirection of empirical efforts towards the understanding of entrepreneurial preference for a specific type of SP. (shrink)

David Wallace has recently argued that the eigenstate–eigenvalue (E–E) link has no place in serious discussions of quantum mechanics on the grounds that, as he claims, the E–E link is an invention of philosophers rather than the community of practicing physicists. This raises an historical question regarding the origin of the link. This paper aims to answer this question by tracing the historical development of the link through six key textbooks of quantum mechanics. In light of the historical evidence from (...) these textbooks, it is argued that Wallace provides insufficient grounds for dismissing the E–E link from discussions of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

To study animal welfare empirically we need an objective basis for deciding when an animal is suffering. Suffering includes a wide range ofunpleasant emotional states such as fear, boredom, pain, and hunger. Suffering has evolved as a mechanism for avoiding sources ofdanger and threats to fitness. Captive animals often suffer in situations in which they are prevented from doing something that they are highly motivated to do. The an animal is prepared to pay to attain or to escape a situation (...) is an index ofhow the animal about that situation. Withholding conditions or commodities for which an animal shows (i.e., for which it continues to work despite increasing costs) is very likely to cause suffering. In designing environments for animals in zoos, farms, and laboratories, priority should be given to features for which animals show inelastic demand. The care ofanimals can thereby be based on an objective, animal-centered assessment of their needs. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a popular view about the nature of propositions, commonly known as the Russellian view of propositions. Alvin Plantinga has dubbed it, or more precisely, a crucial consequence of it, Existentialism, and in his paper “On Existentialism” (1983) he has presented a forceful argument intended as a reductio of this view. In what follows, I describe the main relevant ingredients of the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. I present a relatively simple response Russellians (...) might want to make to Plantinga’s anti-existentialist argument. I then explore one aspect of this response—one that leads to some rather curious consequences for the Russellian view of propositions and states of affairs. (shrink)

This book disassembles the moral assessment of business practices into its constituent parts to identify and clarify the four key concepts that form the basis of important moral disagreements in business: ‘personhood,’ ‘ownership,’ ‘harm,’ and ‘consent.’ ‘Moral bottom lines’ are those fundamental concepts in business ethics that ultimately account for our most resilient moral claims and unsurpassable convictions, and exploring them provides essential insights into the grounds on which we disagree in business ethics. This analysis is useful for students in (...) business school looking to understand fundamental moral disagreements in business and for practitioners interested in connecting practice with their own moral intuitions. The book also challenges scholars of business ethics by arguing that we can reduce business ethics disagreements to these four issues. "This is the most refreshing book on business ethics to appear in a long time. By focusing on 'personhood,' 'ownership,' 'harm,' and 'consent,' Eabrasu brings a new level of clarity and insight into disagreements on business ethic issues. Rather than reaching for an artificial utopian resolution, he embraces the challenge of explaining why we disagree. This is a must-read for serious business ethic scholars."Nicolas CapaldiLoyola University New OrleansLegendre-Soulé Distinguished Chair in Business Ethics. (shrink)

According to S. Kripke, an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which the object exists. On the other hand, H. Putnam claims that an expression is rigid provided it refers to the same object in all possible worlds in which it refers to anything at all. The paper shows that the two notions of rigidity are not equivalent because Putnam's rigidity is much broader than Kripke's; unlike Putnam's rigidity, Kripke's is interwoven (...) with essentialism; and identity statements between rigid designators in Putnam's sense need not be necessarily true. (shrink)

In regulatory practice, the principle of precaution is hardly linked to the ideal of sustainable development. In this article, we argue that it should be. We argue that sustainable development is the sense of an ethics of co-responsibility, while precaution is the attitude needed to realize this sense. From this perspective, we comment on some regulatory practices within the European context regarding authorization requests for deliberate releases of genetically modified crops and show some problems that are popping up there, for (...) example, the difficulties in interpreting the meaning of harm” (and of benefit”), the symptomatic gap between regulatory rule and political practice. Finally, we suggest that, in order to respond to such problems, precaution should find an appropriate translation in the fields of both research and innovation policy, of authorization policy and of economic policy. (shrink)