In September 1999 "Nature" magazine announced that atomic orbitals were di-rectly observed. Opposing it, Eric Scerri, editor-in-chief of "Foundations of Chemistry", claimed that what could be observed in the experiment was electron density, not orbitals. The main purpose of this paper is to consider philosophical and methodological aspects of the above controversy. Especially, the problems of direct observability and reality of theoretical entities are taken under detailed discussion. From the point of view of quantum mechanics there are not any reasons (...) to believe that orbitals exist. However, realistically treated orbitals are very effective tools in the laboratory practice of chemistry. (shrink)

The paper is focused on some aspects of experimental realism of Ian Hacking, and especially on his manipulability criterion of existence. The problem is here related to chemical molecules, the objects of interest in chemical research. The authors consider whether and to what extent this criterion has been applied in experimental practice of chemistry. They argue that experimentation on is a fundamental criterion of existence of entities in chemistry rather than experimentation with. Some examples regarding studies of structures of complex (...) compounds, taken from organic chemistry, are presented to support the authors' considerations. Chemists' laboratory practice depends strongly on the way that representations of entities on (or with) the experiments are used. The authors show that this point has not been given sufficient attention by the new experimentalists. (shrink)

The paper is focused on the role of philosophy of chemistry in the philosophy of natural sciences. The author claims that chemistry is a paradigmatic example of laboratory science in Ian Hacking’s sense. Therefore a philosophical and methodological analysis of chemistry can change or modify several theses of the philosophy of natural sciences. Some of them are as follows: the stability of laboratory science; the primacy of experimental practice over the theoretical one in chemistry; the problem of the reduction of (...) chemistry to physics; the influence of scientific instruments on the growth of chemical knowledge; the problem of the empirical criteria of the existence of theoretical entities; the role of theoretical models and theoretical modelling in laboratory sciences; the problem of using the principle of inter- subjective testability in chemistry; the semiotic peculiarities of chemistry. (shrink)

Wśród filozofów nauki panuje rozpowszechnione przekonanie, że spór o realizm nie wpływa w sposób istotny na praktykę badawczą nauk przyrodniczych, a postawa realistyczna jest naturalnym stanowiskiem epistemologicznym przyjmowanym przez przyrodników. W artykule podana jest argumentacja na rzecz tezy, że w naukach przyrodniczych są formułowane koncepcje teoretyczne, które wywołują wśród uczonych istotne kontrowersje poznawcze, które nie pozostają bez wpływu na ich praktykę badawczą. Rozważona zostanie teza Gastona Bachelarda, że przezwyciężenie przez daną dziedzinę nauki realistycznego ‘obciążenia’ jej aparatu konceptualnego ma istotny wpływ (...) na jej rozwój. Prowadzone rozważania będą opierały się na analizie przykładów wziętych z praktyki badawczej chemii XIX i początku XX wieku, w której dyskutowano problem statusu poznawczego przekonań, dotyczących istnienia odniesień przedmiotowych takich pojęć, jak: atom, wzór strukturalny czy wiązanie chemiczne. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to present the motivation of the thesis that theoretical models con not fulfill the function of representation. The author analyses examples of such models used in molecular quantum mechanics.

In the paper entitled “Scientific Explanation and Metaphor” Jerzy Kmita divided all metaphors on reporting and explicative ones. He assumed that the explicative metaphors could play a cognitive function in science, and also characterized them according to Max Black’s interactive theory of metaphor. The main purpose of my paper is to analyse Kmita’s explicative conception of metaphor in the view of Lakoff & Johnson’s cognitive theory of metaphor. I attempt to show that metaphors play an important role in a process (...) of making knowledge, especially in a conceptualization of domain being studied. In spite of an interactive account of metaphor I claim that making use of a metaphor is a process, which proceeds only in the one direction. In the last section of the paper I briefly analyse a few examples of metaphors used in natural sciences. (shrink)

Die spekulative Frage, wie das Denken sich und somit ein Selbst denken kann, ist die prinzipientheoretische Grundfrage der Philosophie. In ihr ist auch die transzendentale Frage nach den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des Denkens eines Gegenstandes überhaupt enthalten. Wie sie darin enthalten ist und inwiefern die transzendentale Fragestellung auf die spekulative verweist und ihrer bedarf, wird im Anschluß an Kant zu zeigen sein, denn die spekulative Frage ist nicht die Ausgangsfrage Kantens. Kant geht aus von der Antinomie von empiristischem Skeptizismus und (...) ontologischem Dogmatismus und spielt sie an der Differenz von Ding und Denken durch, die dieser Antinomie zugrundeliegt. Die Ontologie wird darum von ihm belehrt, daß sie das Gedankending nicht mit dem Gegenstand der Erfahrung und das Denken nicht mit dem Erkennen verwechseln dürfe. Der Empirismus wird hingegen belehrt, daß die Gegen-stände der Erfahrung und ihre Zusammensetzungen kein Gegebenes, sondern ein vom Denken mit Bezug auf das Anschauungsmaterial Gemachtes sind. Die Differenz von Ding und Denken bleibt solcherart in Kants transzendentaler Frage nach den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit des Denkens eines Gegenstandes überhaupt aufbewahrt. Sie macht sich in Kants Antworten auf diese Frage aber auch geltend und bleibt als bloße Differenz von Verstandesspontaneität und rezeptiver Sinnlichkeit der blinde Fleck, um den seine Argumentationen kreisen. Die ersten vier Kapitel des vorliegenden Buches folgen diesem Kreisgang der Kantischen Beweisführung. Das Beweisziel: die transzendentallogische Entdeckung der Formen des Denkens eines Gegenstandes überhaupt, versuchen die Kapitel 5 und 6 einzulösen, indem - im Gegensatz zur ‚exoterischen‘ Lehre Kantens und zur nach-idealistischen Standardinterpretation des Kritizismus - die Vereinbarung von transzendentalem Idealismus und empirischem Realismus nicht in einem Apriori gesucht wird, das schlechterdings mit dem ‚Verstande‘ zu identifizieren wäre, sondern das gegenstandskonstitutive Verstandesapriori vielmehr aus ursprünglichen - die Differenz von Verstand und Sinnlichkeit allererst ermöglichenden - Weisen der Synthesis entwickelt wird. Diese genetische Grundlegung des Apriori ist anhand der Prinzipien der klassischen Logik und einer Analyse des Seinssinnes der Kopula “ist” als transzendentallogische Differenzierung der Urteilssynthesis durchzuführen und mit Bezug auf die Gegebenheitsweisen Raum und Zeit durch eine korrespondierende transzendental-phänomenologische Analyse zu vervollständigen. Da das genetische Apriori aber nicht unmittelbar, sondern nur vermittels der reflexiv-synthetischen Bewußtseinsstruktur auf die Kantischen Gegenstandskategorien bezogen werden kann, bleibt in Fortführung des Nachweises der Vollständigkeit der Kantischen Kategorientafel die spekulative Frage zu beantworten, wie Synthesis (Vermittlung) und damit das Denken selbst zu denken ist. Dieser Aufgabe und den damit untrennbar verbundenen Problemen der Verhältnisbestimmung von transzendentaler und formaler Logik, sowie von regulativer und konstitutiver Apriorität, sind die letzten vier Kapitel gewidmet, wobei in diesem Problemzusammenhang der Begriff der Transzendentalphilosophie in Auseinandersetzung mit einigen ihrer vor- und nach-kantischen Positionen noch näher zu klären sein wird. Wollte man das Ergebnis dieser Klärung vorweg zusammenfassen, dann ließe sich in Abwandlung eines oft zitierten Kantischen Satzes sagen, daß die transzendentale Logik seit Platon keinen Schritt rückwärts und mit Kant erst einen Schritt vorwärts hat tun dürfen und folglich schon von den ältesten Zeiten her nahezu vollendet sei. Vordergründig betrachtet, relativiert dieses Resultat den historischen Anspruch, den Kant an seine ‚Revolution der Denkungsart‘ geknüpft hat, es bekräftigt dafür jedoch um so mehr den systematischen Anspruch, den die Transzendentalphilosophie als Prinzipientheorie erheben und auch einlösen muß. (shrink)

This paper centers around the notion that internal, mental representations are grounded in structural similarity, i.e., that they are so-called S-representations. We show how S-representations may be causally relevant and argue that they are distinct from mere detectors. First, using the neomechanist theory of explanation and the interventionist account of causal relevance, we provide a precise interpretation of the claim that in S-representations, structural similarity serves as a “fuel of success”, i.e., a relation that is exploitable for the representation using (...) system. Then, we discuss crucial differences between S-representations and indicators or detectors, showing that—contrary to claims made in the literature—there is an important theoretical distinction to be drawn between the two. (shrink)

Debunking arguments aim to undermine common sense beliefs by showing that they are not explanatorily or causally linked to the entities they are purportedly about. Rarely are facts about the aetiology of common sense beliefs invoked for the opposite aim, that is, to support the reality of entities that furnish our manifest image of the world. Here I undertake this sort of un-debunking project. My focus is on the metaphysics of ordinary physical objects. I use the view of perception as (...) approximate Bayesian inference to show how representations of ordinary objects can be extracted from sensory input in a rational and truth-tracking manner. Drawing an analogy between perception construed as Bayesian hypothesis testing and scientific inquiry, I sketch out how some of the intuitions that traditionally inspired arguments for scientific realism also find application with regards to proverbial tables and chairs. (shrink)

Recent developments in virtual reality technology raise a question about the experience of presence and immersion in virtual environments. What is immersion and what are the conditions for inducing the experience of virtual presence? In this paper, we argue that crucial determinants of presence are perception of affordances and sense of embodiment. In the first section of this paper, we define key concepts and introduce important distinctions such as immersion and presence. In the second and third sections, we respectively discuss (...) presence, immersion and their determinants in detail. In the fourth and fifth sections, we argue for the importance of perception of affordances and sense of embodiment in increasing the degree of presence. Finally, we show the consequences of our view and discuss possible future implications. (shrink)

Die Beiträge dieses Buches untersuchen die Vielfalt der Herangehensweisen an die diversen Erscheinungsformen von Sprache, an das Wort und die Wortsemantik sowie an den Gebrauch von Sprache. Der Band enthält Arbeiten, die linguistische Fragestellungen zu sprachsystematischen Aspekten der Wort-, Satz-, Text- und Diskursebene behandeln sowie Perspektiven eröffnen, um diverse Aspekte von Sprache in einem über diese Domänen hinausgehenden Rahmen zu betrachten. Die Beiträger diskutieren Fragen der lexikalischen Semantik, Pragmalinguistik, Morphologie und der Lexikographie. Das Buch setzt seine Schwerpunkte neben der Wortsemantik (...) auf die Eingebundenheit lexikalischer Bedeutungen in registerspezifische Diskursmuster, öffentliche, interpersonelle und geschäftlich-beruflich orientierte Diskurse. (shrink)

Due to the rapid advances in medical technology, medical students are now being faced with increasingly complex and unparalleled ethical and practical dilemmas during their training. The new and future challenges of high-tech medicine demand improvements in current medical education, not only by meeting the needs of students through humanized training programs, but also by involving them in finding solutions to the ethical and legal quandaries they encounter. Today’s students of medical universities must acquire knowledge and understanding of the ethical (...) and legal issues relevant to the practice of medicine, and we have to do everything possible to introduce these students to the current discussions on more or less controversial ethical and legal topics. Although final answers may not be found, the very discussion, argumentation, and awakening of students’ interest should become an essential part of the core curriculum of every doctor. (shrink)

REVERE Award Finalist, PreK-12 Learning Group, Association of American Publishers! " Functional scientific literacy requires an understanding of the nature of science and the skills necessary to think both scientifically and ethically about everyday issues." -- from the introduction to It's Debatable! This book encourages scientific literacy by showing you how to teach the understanding and thinking skills your students need to explore real-world questions like these: - Should schools charge a "tax" to discourage kids from eating unhealthy foods? - (...) Should local governments lower speed limits to reduce traffic fatalities? - Should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers? At the core of the exploration is the Socioscientific Issues Framework. The framework gives students practice in the research, analysis, and argumentation necessary to grapple with difficult questions and build scientific literacy. After introducing the concept of the framework and explaining how it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards, the book shows you how to implement it through seven units targeted to the elementary, middle, and high school levels. You even find out how to develop your own socioscientific issues curriculum. Both practical and content-rich, It's Debatable! doesn't shy away from controversy. Instead, the authors encourage you and your students to confront just how messy the questions raised by science (and pseudoscience) can be. After all, as the authors note, " The only way for our students to be prepared for participation in societal discourse is to have practice in their school years, and what better place than the science classroom?". (shrink)

Genetischer Naturalismus und Idealismus : Überlegungen zum genetischen Naturalismus von Günter Dux -- Natur und Freiheit, mit Blick auf Cassirer und Heidegger -- Die Wesentlichkeit einer subjektiven Deduktion -- Hat Platons Höhle einen Ausgang? -- Unerledigte Probleme der Vernunftkritik -- Syllogismus est principium Idealismi -- Die Antinomien in der "Kritik der Urteilskraft" -- Die Logik der Gottesbeweise und die Logik der (Post-)Moderne -- Der logische Ort der Freiheit -- Platons Antizipation und Überwindung des Universalienstreites -- Elementarlehre oder Transzendentale Phänomenologie -- (...) Letztbegründung als transzendentale Theorie konstitutiver Relationalität -- Monade und System oder Perspektivismus versus System? -- Bestimmung und Begründung : zu Kants Deduktion der Ideen der reinen Vernunft. (shrink)

In this paper, I use the predictive processing theory of perception to tackle the question of how perceptual states can be rationally involved in cognition by justifying other mental states. I put forward two claims regarding the epistemological implications of PP. First, perceptual states can confer justification on other mental states because the perceptual states are themselves rationally acquired. Second, despite being inferentially justified rather than epistemically basic, perceptual states can still be epistemically responsive to the mind-independent world. My main (...) goal is to elucidate the epistemology of perception already implicit in PP. But I also hope to show how it is possible to peacefully combine central tenets of foundationalist and coherentist accounts of the rational powers of perception while avoiding the well-recognized pitfalls of either. (shrink)

Author: Bytniewski Paweł Title: “WHAT IS AN AUTHOR?” ON FOUCAULT’S CONSCIOUSNESS OF AN AUTHORSHIP („Kim jest Autor?” O krytycznej świadomości autorstwa) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2010, vol:.10, number: 2010/1, pages: 73-106 Keywords: FOUCAULT, AUTHOR, LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, EXPERIENCE Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:One of the major obstacles to reconstructing Foucault’s attitude towards an authorship issue is multiplicity of his own roles which as an author he fulfilled. An Authorship as a (...) theme of his texts, as a prefiguration of nonexistent “Man” and his own authorship as a problem, as a way of “detaching myself from myself” – all these are the forms of Foucauldian ideas about an authorship and, at the same time, forms of his consciousness of his own authorship. Foucault historicizes and dissipates an authorship: an author is a function rather than the originator of texts. Writing, in this perspective, is a kind of conversion, decomposition of subjectivity into something else and even explosion. To say “I” doesn’t prove to be an ego. Additionally, Foucault notoriously suggests that his books are fiction. To be an author in this way is a way of being within the discourse and, as a consequence of it, to be trapped in its power. Foucault’s own rewriting of his theoretical biography includes turns and returns: as he repeatedly claims, he wrote in order to transform himself. He uses the processes of writing to simulate production of his subjective identity and, at the same time, to summarize, recapitulate his own oeuvre from current position. To cope with this suggestive and bizarre claims one should employ Roland Barthes distinction: écrivains (authors) et écrivants (writers). When Foucault-écrivain decomposes his ego, his own mode of existence by the use of writing, Foucault-écrivant, in an act of writing, writes himself, as an author. When Foucault-écrivain “writes fictions”, Foucault écrivant, in an act of “self-writing” (l’écriture de soi), establishes the object of a critique – Foucault. (shrink)

This paper is the first part of an exploration into the logical properties of relative identity. After providing the semantic grounds for various monadic logics of relative identity, I define the minimal system and its nine extensions. It is suggested that despite their purely formal origin at least some of them may contain nontrivial philosophical insights. All logics are axiomatized by means of sound and complete sequent calculi. I show their affinities with existing formalizations.

According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...) the sense that it postulates that our cognitive contact with the world is mediated by internal representations. However, the exact sense in which PCT is representational remains unclear; neither is it clear that it deserves such status—that is, whether it really invokes structures that are truly and nontrivially representational in nature. In the present article, I argue that the representational pretensions of PCT are completely justified. This is because the theory postulates cognitive structures—namely action-guiding, detachable, structural models that afford representational error detection—that play genuinely representational functions within the cognitive system. (shrink)

The article presents the results of a study investigating the links between emotion regulation and identity. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the two variables. On the basis of neo-eriksonian theories, an attempt to specify the role of emotion regulation in the process of identity formation was made. The study involved 849 people aged 14-25. The participants attended six types of schools: lower secondary school, basic vocational school, technical upper secondary school, general upper secondary school, (...) post-secondary school, and university. The research was conducted with the use of two questionnaires: Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Dimensions of Identity Development Scale. The analysis of the results points to a partial confirmation of the assumed hypotheses about the differences between people with different identity statuses in respect of the six investigated dimensions of emotion regulation. Also, the hypotheses about the links between the dimensions of emotion regulation and dimensions of identity in the subgroups with different identity statuses were partially confirmed. (shrink)

This paper presents Michael Heller’s notion of “philosophy in science” and re-introduces Michael Heller’s classical text that first presented this concept of philosophy entitled How is “philosophy in science” possible?. The paper discusses the historical context of Heller’s idea as it emerged from the discussions and works of the Krakow philosophical scene and discusses the basic tenants of this philosophy, its analytic character, the role of intellectual tradition in the development of this philosophy, and the critical role played by an (...) interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, science, and theology. Despite the idea of philosophy in science having emerged about 40 years ago, this concept still inspires and fuels innovative research. The notion of “philosophy in science” lies at the foundations of the philosophy published in two journals: Philosophical Problems in Science and Philosophy in Science. (shrink)

Paweł Gładziejewski, Is empathy is mental simulation? Remarks on the representative approach based on the concept of mirror neurons., Diametros 27 This paper draws on the theoretical achievements of analytic philosophy of mind and the empirical results of psychology and cognitive neuroscience in order to understand the nature of empathy and the sub-personal mechanisms upon which it is based. The paper distinguishes two types of empathy, which are often not sufficiently clearly distinguished in the literature, empathy as a kind (...) of social perception and empathy as compassion. The argument attempts show to that neither of these can be identified with a mental simulation process understood as a sub-personal process. Nevertheless mental simulation may play a limited explanatory role with respect to these two types of empathy. (shrink)

The paper discusses the problem of diachronic criteria of identity for historic localities. We argue that such criteria are needed not just for the sake of ontological clarity but also are indispensable for database management and maintenance. Our survey of the current research in database management and engineering ontology literature found no satisfactory candidates thereof. Therefore we attempt to search for such criteria in the historic-geographical scholarship by exposing the ontological assumptions the researchers made there and by stating them explicitly. (...) This attempt consisted of us presenting a number of brief scenarios taken from the historical studies whereby localities are claimed to maintain their identity through certain types of change or to be destroyed due to other types of change. Generalising these cases we provide a tentative formulation of the criterion and discuss its limitations. (shrink)

This note discusses P. Oppenheimer and E. Zalta's ?A Computationally-Discovered Simplification of the Ontological Argument? [this journal, 2011]. I try to explain why the simplification presented there was successful and comment on the technical aspects of the method they applied.

Empathy of pain as a multi-dimensional process includes sharing and understanding the pain of others in relation to oneself. Subjects in such studies are typically members of western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic societies. In the literature review that we conducted, we observed that little is known about the empathy for pain in people who are not members of societies with these cultural characteristics. We often understand those who are “similar” to us more easily - ones who belong to “our” (...) cultural circle. However, contact with another culture could help prevent such bias. Group characteristics, such as focus on others, hierarchy preference, or cultural differences in self-constructs, can change the activity of brain regions associated with empathy and compassion. Increasing the diversity of the research participants connected with education level, poverty, industrialization, and respect for basic citizen freedoms seem to be necessary to fully understand the mechanisms that influence the development and operation of empathy. (shrink)

No more than a few years ago could open an article concerning neurophenomenology with a statement describing recent rediscovery of the problem of consciousness by the cognitive sciences and pointing to the fact that right now, explaining conscious experience in neuroscientific or computational terms poses the greatest challenge for those sciences. Today however, constatations of this sort start to sound like trivial descriptions of a universally recognized state of affairs. The question of “how the water of the physical brain is (...) turned into a wine of consciousness” is now among the mainstream problems of cognitive science. (shrink)

Bilinear Logic of Lambek amounts to Noncommutative MALL of Abrusci. Lambek proves the cut–elimination theorem for a one-sided sequent system for this logic. Here we prove an analogous result for the nonassociative version of this logic. Like Lambek, we consider a left-sided system, but the result also holds for its right-sided version, by a natural symmetry. The treatment of nonassociative sequent systems involves some subtleties, not appearing in associative logics. We also prove the PTime complexity of the multiplicative fragment of (...) NBL. (shrink)

This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning, which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time. The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new (...) solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse. Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries. Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read. (shrink)

Philosophy in technology is a research program that studies the philosophical roots of engineering and technology. Technologists, by virtue of their education, believe that the limits, goals, possibilities, and effects of technology on society and humankind are exclusively technological problems, hence their solutions must lie exclusively in technology. In contrast, philosophy in technology asserts that the resolutions to these problems need to be rooted in an understanding of their philosophical origins. This program paper defines the objectives of philosophy in technology, (...) the kinds of questions it explores, the methods it uses, and how it differs from the philosophy of technology. (shrink)