According to the No-Luck-Thesis knowledge possession is incompatible with luck – one cannot know that p if the truth of one’s belief that p is a matter of luck. Recently, this widespread opinion was challenged by Peter Baumann, who argues that in certain situations agents do possess knowledge even though their beliefs are true by luck. This paper aims at providing empirical data for evaluating Baumann’s hypothesis. The experiment was designed to compare non-philosophers’ judgments concerning knowledge and luck in one (...) case that Baumann takes to be in favor of his claim and other cases where, according to him, absence of knowledge coincides with luck. The results show that the cases do not differ in a significant way between each other with respect to verdicts regarding knowledge and luck. In all cases subjects were more reluctant to judge that the ‘Gettierized’ belief is knowledge and more likely to judge that it is true by luck in comparison to a belief that is an uncontroversial instance of knowledge. However, the negative relationship between knowledge and luck ascriptions predicted by the No-Luck-Thesis was almost absent. The data raise some doubts about the No-Luck-Thesis, but the reasons for doubt are different than what Baumann expected. (shrink)

In this paper, I report new empirical data on folk semantic intuitions concerning color adjectives in so-called context-shifting experiments. Contextualists present such experiments — that is, they describe different conversational contexts in which a given sentence is uttered — in order to argue that context can shape meaning and truth conditions to such a degree that competent speakers would give opposite truth evaluations of the same sentence in different contexts. The initial findings of Hansen and Chemla (2013) suggest that laypersons’ (...) semantic judgments are sensitive to context in the same way that is predicted by contextualists. In this paper, I focus on context-shifting experiments that involve color adjectives; also, I present experiments that are a partial replication and methodological extension of Hansen and Chemla’s study. One aim of my study was to corroborate these authors’ findings using a bigger sample (total N = 1128), but the main goal was to test the stability of results in different methodological variants of empirical adaptations of context-shifting experiments. This part of the study addresses the issues pointed out in my earlier paper (Ziółkowski 2017), where I argued that certain experimental settings (within-subjects) might bring data that is more favorable to contextualism than other settings (between-subjects). My study compares three different experimental settings: within-subjects (with randomized order of context presentation), between-subjects (where participants evaluating different contexts aredistinct groups), and “contrastive design” (where both contexts are presented side by side on the same screen). My results are highly consistent across the methodological variants I employed, but while they show some of the effects expected by contextualists, it is disputable whether they bring strong support to contextualism with respect to color adjectives. (shrink)

A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that folk knowledge attribution practices regarding some epistemological thought experiments differ significantly from the consensus found in the philosophical literature. More specifically, laypersons are likely to ascribe knowledge in the so-called Authentic Evidence Gettier-style cases, while most philosophers deny knowledge in these cases. The intuitions shared by philosophers are often used as evidence in favor (or against) certain philosophical analyses of the notion of knowledge. However, the fact that these intuitions are not universal, (...) as non-philosophers do not sympathize with verdicts made by philosophers, is problematic and requires some explanation. Recently, a promising theoretical approach emerged that could be used to explain away unexpected folk knowledge attributions. According to the protagonist projection hypothesis, when subjects answer questions about some hypothetical scenario, their judgments might result from adopting the cognitive perspective of the protagonist in the given scenario. Previous experimental findings suggest protagonist projection might be responsible for problematic knowledge attributions in Gettier-style cases. This paper reports data collected in an experiment which focused on five different Authentic Evidence Gettier-style scenarios and investigated the impact of protagonist projection on folk knowledge ascriptions in such cases. The results bring some support to the protagonist projection hypothesis, but do not allow to explain away a substantial number of problematic folk knowledge attributions. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the results of three high-powered replication studies in experimental philosophy, which bear on an alleged instability of folk philosophical intuitions: the purported susceptibility of epistemic intuitions about the Truetemp case (Lehrer, Theory of knowledge. Westview Press, Boulder, 1990) to order effects. Evidence for this susceptibility was first reported by Swain et al. (Philos Phenomenol Res 76(1):138–155, 2008); further evidence was then found in two studies by Wright (Cognition 115(3):491–503, 2010) and Weinberg et al. (Monist 95(2):200–222, (...) 2012). These empirical results have been quite influential in the recent metaphilosophical debate about the method of cases. However, none of Swain et al.’s ( 2008 ) predictions concerning order effects with Truetemp cases could be consistently and robustly replicated in our three experiments, and it is thus at best unclear whether Truetemp intuitions are in fact unstable. So, if proponents of the negative program in experimental philosophy still want to use order effects to challenge the reliability of philosophical case judgments, they would be well advised to look elsewhere instead. In any case, given the more robust empirical evidence that we present in this paper, the metaphilosophical flurry created by Swain et al. ( 2008 ) and Wright’s ( 2010 ) influential studies looks like mere alarmism in hindsight. (shrink)

In _Roman Ingarden’s Philosophy of Literature_ Wojciech Chojna makes Ingarden’s philosophy of literature more consistent with Husserl’s phenomenology and more immune to both absolutism and relativism. The latter is overcome not through falling back on essentialism but from within itself.

Artykuł ten wykorzystuje okazję, jaką jest bezprecedensowe wydanie w Polsce Nowej Justyny – jednego z najbardziej niesławnych i skandalicznych dzieł Markiza de Sade (Kraków: Eperons, 2022, przeł. Krzysztof Matuszewski, tom 1-6) – aby zarysować szczególną historię towarzyszącą publikacji tego dzieła, a także by przypomnieć ewentualnym czytelnikom o jego znaczeniu literackim i filozoficznym w opozycji do popularnych aczkolwiek trywialnych twierdzeń, że twórczość Sade’a to nic więcej jak pornografia. Konsekwentny rozwój myśli sadycznej ukazuje filozoficzną odyseję ludzkiego poszukiwania suwerenności. Ma ona swój początek (...) w oświeceniowej negacji Boga, lecz nie zatrzymuje się na niej. W pełni zautonomizowany rozum wchodzi w sojusz z Naturą, lecz jego również musi zakwestionować, tak jak musi zanegować Innego oraz samo Ego, by ostatecznie osiągnąć stanowisko nihilistycznego immoralizmu przejawiającego się apatycznym ponawianiem zbrodni. (shrink)

The article focuses on the issue of access to experimental therapy under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and more specifically in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. To date, this issue has been the subject of three cases decided by the Court. In none of these cases the Court has recognized a right to experimental therapy. The article has two main research objectives. The first is to reconstruct the arguments for (...) the validity of the right to experimental therapy provided by the applicants in the cases considered by the Court. The second objective is to assess these arguments, as well as their criticism that might be found in Court’s decisions. (shrink)

Polnische und sowjetische Zwangsarbeiter, die in der nationalsozialistischen Ideologie als „Untermenschen“ galten, waren die am stärksten diskriminierten Nationalitäten unter den ausländischen Beschäftigten in der Kriegswirtschaft des „Dritten Reiches“. Ihre gesamten Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen waren der Rassenideologie untergeordnet. Diese Ideologie vertrug sich in hervorragender Weise mit der systematischen Ausbeutung ihrer Arbeitskraft. Das Ergebnis des Zwangsarbeitersystems war ein völlig repressives, sogar unmenschliches System mit miserablen Lebensbedingungen und minderwertiger medizinischer Versorgung. Sowohl die Lebensbedingungen als auch die medizinische Behandlung zeigen wie in einem Brennglas (...) die Hauptziele des NS-Staates und seinen rassistischen und entmenschlichten Charakter. Die im Nordosten Westfalens gelegene Stadt und der Landkreis Bielefeld sind aufgrund ihres gemischt industriellen und landwirtschaftlichen Charakters ein repräsentatives Beispiel für das brutale und repressive System der Zwangsarbeitsindustrie und spiegelt so das gesamte Spektrum der mit der Zwangsarbeit verbundenen Probleme wider. Die Analyse der medizinischen Versorgung im Raum Bielefeld ermöglicht die Unterscheidung zweier Gruppen polnischer Zwangsarbeiter. Die erste Gruppe besteht aus Personen, die in der Industrie beschäftigt sind, während die andere Gruppe eine gemischte Kategorie ist, die Arbeitnehmer aus den Bereichen Landwirtschaft, Dienstleistungssektor und Haushaltshilfe in Privathaushalten umfasst. In der ersten Gruppe war der Status der Arbeitnehmer in der Regel standardisiert. Die meisten von ihnen wurden in den Lagern untergebracht und einer brutalen und systematischen Ausbeutung unterzogen, die darauf ausgerichtet war, die Produktionseffekte zu maximieren und gleichzeitig Personen infolge widriger Arbeits- und Unterbringungsbedingungen und minimaler medizinischer Versorgung zu vernichten. Diese unmenschliche Behandlung war ein Derivat der rassistischen Ideologie. Status, Beschäftigungsbedingungen und medizinische Versorgung in der zweiten Gruppe waren viel uneinheitlicher und stärker von ganz unterschiedlichen Bedingungen abhängig. Wir haben es hier mit einer breiten Palette von Problemen zu tun, oft verbunden mit extrem unterschiedlichen Erfahrungen von Zwangsarbeitern mit dem medizinischen Personal und unterschiedlichen Einstellungen der Arbeitgeber zu den Zwangsarbeitern. Begrenzt wird die Aussagekraft unserer Darstellung durch die oft beschränkte Quellenlage. Insbesondere betrifft das den begrenzten Fundus an schriftlich festgehaltenen Erinnerungen der Zwangsarbeiter. Heute ist es praktisch unmöglich, das Quellenreservoir zu erweitern, da die Zeugen dieser Ereignisse nicht mehr zur Verfügung stehen. (shrink)

From Clouds to Corsair: Kierkegaard, Aristophanes, and Socrates -- The pure fool and the knight of faith: Wolfram's Parzival and the stages of existence -- From romantic aesthete to Christian analogue: Don Quixote's sallies in Kierkegaard's authorship -- Saying not quite "everything just as it is": Shakespeare on life's way -- "Sorrow's changeling": irony, humor, and laughter in Kierkegaard and Carlyle.

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from (...) both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

The Limits of Cognition and the Shape of Being Based on the Thought of Karl Jaspers The article points out the elements of Karl Jaspers’ epistemological conception that cross out the possibility of a comprehensive account of being. The key issue here is the limits of cognition, which take the form of object cognition. The theme of limits points to the inadequacies of human thinking in the context of quantifiable and absolutist representations of reality. The impossibility of adequately grasping the (...) totality of reality will be illustrated here by means of the criticism Jaspers levelled at absolutising metaphysics. In connection with the description of the structure of cognition proposed by Jaspers, the article points out the conceptual proximity of the issue of worldview and metaphysics in the light of the thought of the cited author. (shrink)

Artykuł dotyczy doświadczenia moralnego podmiotu pozostającego poza siecią bliskich relacji. Analizuję dwie reguły niezależności moralnej, które mogłyby świadczyć o uprzywilejowaniu podmiotu w tego rodzaju sytuacjach. Zgodnie z pierwszą podmiot pozostający poza siecią relacji unika zagrożeń związanych z utożsamieniem z rolą społeczną. Zgodnie z drugą działania podejmowane przez podmiot charakteryzują się wyższym stopniem bezinteresowności, a co za tym idzie – większą wartością moralną. Argumentuję, że reguły te mogą mieć jedynie charakter prima facie i są ograniczone wieloma czynnikami. Wskazuję również, że uprzywilejowanie (...) podmiotu moralnego w sytuacji cudzoziemca jest równoważone przez trudności w działaniu moralnym w obszarze obietnic, praktyki obwiniania oraz współodpowiedzialności i troski. (shrink)

The paper characterizes axiomatically a class of temptation-driven preferences. The key (but not the only) novelty of the paper is the idea that the alternative which tempts when an item x is consumed may not be the same as the alternative which tempts when another item y is consumed. For any single item to be ultimately consumed, the other items can be ranked by how much they tempt. An individual contemplates, as an alternative consumption, only the item that tempts most. (...) The utility of a menu is then equal to the utility of the item that is consumed less a (psychological) cost of resisting temptation; this cost depends on both: the item to be consumed and the item that tempts. Unlike most of the existing literature, the axioms are imposed on deterministic menus, not on menus of lotteries. (shrink)

The most‐critical point of reproductive development in all sexually reproducing species is the transition from mitotic to meiotic cell cycle. Studies in unicellular fungi have indicated that the decision to enter meiosis must be made before the beginning of the premeiotic S phase. Recent data from the mouse1 suggest that this timing of meiosis initiation is a universal feature shared also by multicellular eukaryotes. In contrast, the signaling cascade that leads to meiosis initiation shows great diversity among species. BioEssays 29:511–514, (...) 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Technical and pharmacological revolution in contemporary medicine has not resolved the ethical problems that seem to be more relevant today than ever before. Most of the papers that concern medical ethics focus on `great' problems, such as human genome sequencing, organizms cloning and quantitative or qualitative interference with life creation. This article, however, describes practical ethical problems that the doctors face in every-day practice. First of all, the problem of how thestandards of prophilaxis and treatment should be established when the (...) costs exceed financial possibilities of a health system. Secondly, how to face the problem of rare diseases when the cost of a single patient treatment may be equal to the whole medical department budget. Thirdly, how to procede with elderly patients with multiple diseases qualified for invasive procedures. All of these examples share the common base: in these cases the technical equipment is at our disposal, yet we cannot or we do not want to use it. (shrink)

The Weimar Nietzsche-Bibliographie, which is available online along with an exhaustive index, contains hundreds of entries, ranging from "absolute Musik" to "Zynismus." But despite references to his treatment in film and to the names of several novelists, it provides no rubric for Friedrich Nietzsche in novels or otherwise as a fictional figure.Yet the twenty-first century alone has already produced at least four such works, in addition to two others over the preceding eighty years—not to mention films in Italian and French. (...) Liliana Cavani's controversial 1977 Italian film Al di là del bene e del male was widely criticized for its focus on violent sex, including... (shrink)

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = (...) 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries. (shrink)

This book challenges the widespread view of Kierkegaard’s idiosyncratic and predominantly religious position on mimesis. -/- Taking mimesis as a crucial conceptual point of reference in reading Kierkegaard, this book offers a nuanced understanding of the relation between aesthetics and religion in his thought. Kaftanski shows how Kierkegaard's dialectical-existential reading of mimesis interlaces aesthetic and religious themes, including the familiar core concepts of imitation, repetition, and admiration as well as the newly arisen notions of affectivity, contagion, and crowd behavior. Kierkegaard’s (...) enduring relevance to the malaises of our own day is firmly established by his classic concern for the meaning of human life informed by reflective meditation on the mimeticorigins of the contemporary age.​ -/- Kierkegaard, Mimesis, and Modernity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Kierkegaard, Continental philosophy, the history of aesthetics, and critical and religious studies. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new account of Richard Rorty’s interpretation of Michel Foucault, which demonstrates that in the course of his career, Rorty presented several diverse (often mutually exclusive) criticisms of Foucault’s political thought. These give different interpretations of what he took to be the flaws of that thought, but also provide different explanations as to the sources of these flaws. I argue that Rorty’s specific criticisms can be divided into two overall groups. Sometimes he saw Foucault’s rejection (...) of bourgeois democracies and bourgeois utopias as a specific case of his general critique regarding the structures of social life as inherently oppressive. At other times he seemed to attribute to Foucault a view that—while not all forms of social life are inherently oppressive—bourgeois democracies certainly are, in a very specific and radical way. In conclusion I show that Rorty’s interpretation of Foucault should be understood in the context of his approach toward the ‘American Cultural Left.’. (shrink)

By spelling out the affective dimension of admiration, this paper challenges the view of admiration as a trustworthy means of detecting morally desirable qualities in exemplars. Such a view of admiration, foundational for the current debate on exemplars in moral education, holds that admiration is a self-motivating emotion essentially oriented toward the good and the excellent. I demonstrate that this view ignores the affective aspects of admiration explored widely in the history of philosophy on which the debate on moral exemplars (...) substantially draws. Focusing on Spinoza, Smith, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, I bring to light their largely skeptical views of the moral value of admiration. These thinkers indicate that admiration can be influenced by, and is often conflated with, other emotions, and can arise in us through behavioral mimicry; moreover, admiration is often oriented toward the mediocre and corrupt, is contagious, self-referential, collective, and has limited motivational power. Their remarks on the affective dimension of admiration call into question admiration’s applicability and usefulness in moral exemplarity. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argument against intentionalism about demonstrative reference. The term ‘intentionalism’ is used to denote the view saying that the referent of a demonstrative expression is determined by the speaker’s intention. My argument focuses on ‘mismatch cases’, roughly, the cases in which the speaker’s intention determines a different object from the one which appears to be the referent in the light of contextual factors. The opponents of intentionalism claim that intentionalism yields simply incorrect reference predictions in these (...) cases. Many intentionalism defenders claim to the contrary, i.e. that the relevant kind of intention fixes the referent in line with the contextual factors and thus the theory provides correct predictions. I will argue that this strategy is objectionable as the concept of the relevant referential intention is genuinely parasitic on non-intentional accounts of demonstrative reference. (shrink)

Wojciech Torzewski What Kind of ‘History’ are We? – the Historicity of Human from Ethical PerspectiveThis article presents the ethical aspect of the concept of narrative identity, especially in relation to the concept of Charles Taylor. The author makes also attemption to reconstruct the two main objections that can be drawn at this concept. Namely, firstly, the complaint relativization of the ethical and, secondly, the complaint absolutizing ethical perspective. Both objections to the concept of narrative identity shall be regarded (...) as irrelevant. Keywords: ethics, narrative identity, historicity, history. (shrink)

The three essays presented here concern natural connections between grammatical derivations and structures provided by certain standard grammar formalisms, on the one hand, and deductions in logical systems, on the other hand. In the first essay we analyse the adequacy of Polish notation for higher-order languages. The Ajdukiewicz algorithm (Ajdukiewicz 1935) is discussed in terms of generalized MP-deductions. We exhibit a failure in Ajdukiewicz’s original version of the algorithm and give a correct one; we prove that generalized MP-deductions have the (...) frontier property, which is essential for the plausibility of Polish notation. The second essay deals with logical systems corresponding to different grammar formalisms, as e.g. Finite State Acceptors, Context-Free Grammars, Categorial Grammars, and others. We show how can logical methods be used to establish certain linguistically significant properties of formal grammars. The third essay discusses the interplay between Natural Deduction proofs in grammar oriented logics and semantic structures expressible by typed lambda terms and combinators. (shrink)