This paper is obituary of Leszek Nowak, one of the greatest Polish philosophers of the XX century.

The aim of this article is to outline the theory of a historical process developed within the framework of the Poznań School of Methodology, mainly by Leszek Nowak and a team of his co-workers. In the first part of the paper, the meta-philosophical and meta-theoretical assumptions of Poznań school are reconstructed and juxtaposed with the relevant assumptions of Western analytical Marxism. In the central part of the paper, the main ideas of adaptive reconstruction of historical materialism and non-Marxian historical (...) materialism are presented. In its final part, some problems of reception of Leszek Nowak’s theory of historical process in Polish People’s Republic and the Third Republic are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is discuss an application of non-Marxian historical materalism to explanation of non-European societies. Until now this theory has been limited to interpretation of European societies. In order to grasp development of non-European societies (e.gr. Mexico) the extension of typology of societies is proposed which constitutes a new scientific programme based on this theory of historical development.

The first part of this book contains a selection of Leszek Nowak’s (1943-2009) works on non-Marxian historical materialism, which are published here in English for the first time. In these papers, Nowak constructs a dynamic model of religious community, reconstructs historiosophical assumptions of liberalism and considers the methodological status of prognosis of totalitarization of capitalist society. In the second part of the book, new contributions to non-Marxian historical materialism are presented. Their authors analyze mechanisms of the oligarchization of (...) liberal democracy, the democratization of real socialism, and the development of early modern Ottoman and post-war Chinese societies. The volume will be of interest to graduate and undergraduate students, as well as specialists who deal with the development of capitalist society, philosophy of history, the philosophy of social sciences and the political philosophy of liberalism. (shrink)

The authors of this book reconstruct the philosophical, methodological and theoretical assumptions of non-Marxian historical materialism, a theory of historical process authored by Leszek Nowak (1943-2009), a co-founder of the Poznań School of Methodology. In the first part of the book, philosophical assumptions of this theory are compared with the concepts of Robert Nozick, Immanuel Wallerstein, André Gunder Frank and analytical Marxism. In the second part, non-Marxian historical materialism is compared with the concepts of Eva Etzioni-Halevy, Andrzej Falkiewicz, Robert (...) Michels, Vilfredo Pareto, Theda Skocpol and Karl August Wittfogel. (shrink)

The paper defends the view that that a significant part of metaphysics should be understood as conceptual engineering, and explores its epistemological advantages and metaphysical implications. It discusses the challenge raised by moderate modal skepticism, which points out the lack of reliable methods for verifying modal statements through thought experiments. As I argue, a normative stance on metaphysical methodology, understanding it as engaging in conceptual engineering project, justifies the use of this method. By adopting an approach where the method of (...) cases offers reasons for adopting specific normative constraints on concept usage, the method becomes justifiable. Consequently, it can be employed to justify the revision of conceptual schemes and, in turn, validate certain modal claims about entities falling under the scrutinized concepts. The paper explores how this approach can methodologically enrich conceptual engineering-focused perspectives in metaphysics and examines its metaphysical consequences. In particular, it demonstrates that despite the mind-dependency of the method of cases results, it still leaves room for a metaphysically realistic viewpoint. (shrink)

The papers in this special issue make important contributions to a longstanding debate about how we should conceive of and explain mental phenomena. In other words, they make a case about the best philosophical paradigm for cognitive science. The two main competing approaches, hotly debated for several decades, are representationalism and enactivism. However, recent developments in disciplines such as machine learning and computational neuroscience have fostered a proliferation of intermediate approaches, leading to the emergence of completely new positions, in particular (...) the Predictive Processing approach. Here, we will consider the different approaches discussed in this volume. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the ‘social meanings’ associated with sociolinguistic variation put pressure on the standard philosophical conception of language, according to which the foremost thing we do with words is exchange information. Drawing on parallels with the explanatory challenge posed by slurs and pejoratives, I argue that the best way to understand social meanings is to think of them in speech act theoretic terms. I develop a distinctive form of pluralism about the performances realized by means of (...) sociolinguistic variants, and I claim that engagement with such performances is an utterly pervasive feature of our linguistic activity. (shrink)

Most philosophers recognize that applying the standard semantics for complex demonstratives to non-deictic instances results in truth conditions that are anomalous, at best. This fact has generated little concern, however, since most philosophers treat non-deictic demonstratives as marginal cases, and believe that they should be analyzed using a distinct semantic mechanism. In this paper, I argue that non-deictic demonstratives cannot be written off; they are widespread in English and foreign languages, and must be treated using the same semantic machinery that (...) is applied to deictic instances. (shrink)

Seeing of emptiness and mystical experience — the case of Madhyamaka: The problem of Buddhist religiosity is one of the most classic problems of Buddhist studies. A particular version of this issue is the search for mystical experience in Buddhism. This is due to the conviction that mystical experience is the essence of religious experience itself. The discovery of such an alleged experience fuels comparative speculations between Buddhism and the philosophical and religious traditions of the Mediterranean area. Madhyamaka is the (...) Buddhist tradition which many researchers saw as the fulfillment of such mystical aspirations in Buddhism. In this paper I specify the standard parameters of mystical experience (non‑conceptuality, ineffability, paradoxicality, silence, oneness, fullness) and I conclude that they either cannot be applied to Madhyamaka or that the application is only illusory. (shrink)

Standard semantic theories predict that non-deictic readings for complex demonstratives should be much more widely available than they in fact are. If such readings are the result of a lexical ambiguity, as Kaplan (in: Almog, Perry, Wettstein (eds) Themes from Kaplan, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977) and others suggest, we should expect them to be available wherever a definite description can be used. The same prediction follows from ‘hidden argument’ theories like the ones described by King (Complex Demonstratives: a Quantificational (...) Account, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2001) and Elbourne (Situations and Individuals, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2005). Wolter (That’s That; the Semantics and Pragmatics of Demonstrative Noun Phrases. Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Santa Cruz, 2006), however, has shown that complex demonstratives admit non-deictic interpretations only when a precise set of structural constrains are met. In this paper, I argue that Wolter’s results, properly understood, upend the philosophical status quo. They fatally undermine the ambiguity theory and demand a fundamental rethinking of the hidden argument approach. (shrink)

In The World as Will and Representation (Vol. I, Book 3, § 52) by Arthur Schopenhauer we find the following, striking words: It is just this universality that belongs uniquely to music, together with the most precise distinctness, that gives it that high value as the panacea of all our sorrows. (p. 262) Accordingly, music ... is in the highest degree a universal language ... Yet its universality is by no means that empty universality of abstraction, but is of quite (...) a different kind; it is united with thorough and unmistakable distinctness. (p. 262) ... music expresses in an exceedingly universal language, in a material, that is, in mere tones, and with the greatest distinctness and truth, the inner being, the in-itself, of the world, which we think of under the concept of will (p. 264). These quotations contain an outright paradox: the meanings of music should be at the same time universal in the highest degree and characterised by the greatest distinctness. As it turns out this paradox does not follow merely from Schopenhauer's liking for brilliant, rethorical formulations. For it occurs in many contexts concerned with the expressive meaning of art, and especially music. Other occurrences of the dilemma are to be found in the writings of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and in the aesthetic theory of Susanne Langer formulated in chapter VIII, >On the Significance in Music of her book Philosophy in a New Key and it would be possible to quote many other sources. The persistently recurring nature of this paradox confirms that the issue will be central to any attempt at a complete theory of musical meaning. Furthermore, it may be essential for it to be resolved first if one aims to make sense of the relationship between musical and linguistic forms of meaning and, consequent upon this, to address the much debated question of whether music itself can be considered to be a language of the emotions. An attempt at a solution to the paradox in question constitutes the subject of this paper. For this purpose the framework and some notions of Langer's theory are used. The solution which I propose takes the form of distinguishing between two distinct notions of generality (which I will term 'generality' and 'abstractness'), as well as two distinct notions of particularity (which I will term 'specificity' and 'concreteness'), and involves assigning technically precise meanings to these with a view to constructing two relatively independent oppositions: on the one hand the concrete versus the abstract and, on the other, the specific versus the general. (Hints at such a solution are to be found both in Schopenhauer and in Langer). With the help of these notions it is, I believe, then possible to show that the arguments often quoted to the effect that musical meanings possess a certain generality in fact justify no more than their abstractness, while arguments usually thought to demonstrate that they possess a certain particularity in fact show only their specificity (but not concreteness). Consequently, musical meanings are shown to be abstract but specific, which does not entail any contradiction since these notions are independent and not opposed to each other. At the same time, musical meanings may then be contrasted with linguistic meanings, which themselves are abstract and general. If, however, each of the notions of abstractness and generality is understood as also permitting gradations, it will be the case that whereas linguistic meanings may be said to be more general (i.e. less specific) than musical ones, the latter are without any doubt more abstract than the former. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have offered compelling reasons to think that demonstratives are best represented as variables, sensitive not to the context of utterance, but to a variable assignment. Variablists typically explain familiar intuitions about demonstratives—intuitions that suggest that what is said by way of a demonstrative sentence varies systematically over contexts—by claiming that contexts initialize a particular assignment of values to variables. I argue that we do not need to link context and the assignment parameter in this way, and that we (...) would do better not to. (shrink)

Stojnić et al. (2013, 2017) argue that the reference of demonstratives is fixed without any contribution from the extra-linguistic context. On their `prominence/coherence' theory, the reference of a demonstrative expression depends only on its context-independent linguistic meaning. Here, we argue that Stojnić et al.’s striking claims can be maintained in only the thinnest technical sense. Instead of eliminating appeals to the extra-linguistic context, we show how the prominence/coherence theory merely suppresses them. Then we ask why one might be tempted to (...) try and offer such a view. Since we are rather sympathetic to the motivations we find, we close by sketching a more plausible alternative. (shrink)

Nick Zangwill (2004, 2007) appears to be acquiring the status of repudiator-in-chief of emotion in music. He is invoked in this role by such authors as Kraut (2007, p. 67), Bonds (2014, p. 5), Robinson (2014), Young (2014, pp. vii, 1, 3–4, 151), Davies (2017) and Kania (2017). His ‘manifesto’ paper (2004) was recently reprinted in Lamarque and Olsen (2018, pp. 574–582). This development is unfortunate, because Zangwill, for all his radical-sounding theses, actually argues against views that hardly anyone holds. (...) What is more, some of his arguments in favour of the obvious seem confused and defective. But as for his really radical thesis that ‘Music, in itself, has nothing to do with emotion’, he provides hardly any justification. What is more, contrary to what Zangwill believes, such justification is not to be found in Hanslick, who in fact sees emotional content as a relatively important element of music. (shrink)

The twenty-first century will witness an unprecedented decline in the diversity of the world’s languages. While most philosophers will likely agree that this decline is lamentable, the question of what exactly is lost with a language has not been systematically explored in the philosophical literature. In this paper, I address this lacuna by arguing that language loss constitutes a problematic form of illocutionary silencing. When a language disappears, past and present speakers lose the ability to realize a range of speech (...) acts that can only be realized in that language. With that ability, speakers lose something in which they have a fundamental interest: their standing as fully empowered members of a linguistic community. (shrink)

It is increasingly common for philosophers to rely on the notion of an idealised listener when explaining how the semantic values of context-sensitive expressions are determined. Some have identified the semantic values of such expressions, as used on particular occasions, with whatever an appropriately idealised listener would take them to be. Others have argued that, for something to count as the semantic value, an appropriately idealised listener should be able to recover it. Our aim here is to explore the range (...) of ways that such idealisation might be worked out, and then to argue that none of these results in a very plausible theory. We conclude by reflecting on what this negative result reveals about the nature of meaning and responsibility. (shrink)

According to a prevailing view, conceptual engineering introduces a revolutionary philosophical methodology, challenging traditional conceptual analysis. However, in our paper, we argue that closer scrutiny reveals not only the falsity but also the inherent ambiguity of this narrative. We explore four interpretations of the "Anti-Novelty Claim", the claim that conceptual engineering is not a new way of doing philosophy. Discussing the Anti-Novelty Claim from the perspective of a text’s producer, the text’s consumers, and the exegetical potential of the text, we (...) examine each perspective’s metaphilosophical implications and demonstrate that taking each perspective requires different methods. Adopting these different methods, we argue that the different interpretations of the Anti-Novelty Claim range from nearly trivially true to unlikely but untested. Importantly, we emphasize that each interpretation offers unique philosophical insights, yet addressing them requires diverse types of evidence, preventing a singular, straightforward answer to whether conceptual engineering is new. (shrink)

The article analyses the history of the Einfühlung concept. Theories of ‘feeling into’ Nature, works of art or feelings and behaviours of other persons by German philosophers of the second half of the nineteenth century Robert and Friedrich Vischer and Theodor Lipps are evoked, as well as similar theory of understanding (Verstehen) by Wilhelm Dilthey and Friedrich Schleiermacher, to which Dilthey refers. The meaning of the term Einfühlung within Edith Stein’s thought is also analysed. Both Einfühlung and Verstehen were criticized (...) as non-objective and naive methods consisting only in the identification of the subject with the object or the projection of feelings onto the object. The article refers to criticism by Georg Gadamer and Bertolt Brecht and proposes ways to restitute the concept of Einfühlung after this criticism, recalling the theory of empathy by Dominick Lacapra, in terms of its advantages for the historical enquiry, or the myth of Narcissus analyzed in the spirit of psychoanalysis by Julia Kristeva. The article proposes a reformulation of the concept of mimesis, connected to the Einfühlung, understood as the identification, analogy, imitation of feelings (as it was described by Lipss and Vischer). Mimesis does not necessarily mean a passive repetition and reconstruction of the feelings of the object, but serves only as a starting point for the interest of the subject for the outside world or for experiences of historical protagonists. Then there is no identification or projection of feelings, but the creative, active and critical reformulation of knowledge. It is stated that empathy is not a passive, uncritical process, but that it deals with the critical choice of the object of empathy and with an active approach to the perceived feelings and appearances. In addition to this cognitive aspect, empathy may also contribute to the analytical and valuable introspection. Furthermore empathy allows us to connect the analysis of the facts with a personal narrative and understanding of individual identity in historical knowledge. (shrink)

What determines the meaning of a context-sensitive expression in a context? It is standardly assumed that, for a given expression type, there will be a unitary answer to this question; most of the literature on the subject involves arguments designed to show that one particular metasemantic proposal is superior to a specific set of alternatives. The task of the present essay will be to explore whether this is a warranted assumption, or whether the quest for the one true metasemantics might (...) be a Quixotic one. We argue that there are good reasons—much better than are commonly appreciated—for thinking the latter, but that there nevertheless remains significant scope for metasemantic theorizing. We conclude by outlining our preferred option, metasemantic pluralism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze methodological problems of cross-cultural research in experimental philosophy. By studying five research projects, representing two distinct approaches to the examination of cross-cultural differences in philosophical intuitions, I point out the difficulties related to the content validity that appear in the choice of some cultural affiliation indicators. I criticize various indicators of cultural affiliation that are used in experimental philosophy (selfidentification, language) and suggest which indicators, and how, should be chosen in that kind (...) of research. I also argue that some problems related to bilingualism, translation, and the possible influence of language on the owned or reported philosophical intuitions may be impossible to transcend in cross-cultural research in experimental philosophy. It may be impossible to assess the differences between cultural philosophical intuitions. (shrink)

I have two aims for the present paper, one narrow and one broad. The narrow aim is to show that a class of data originally described by Lynsey Wolter empirically undermine the leading treatments of complex demonstratives that have been described in the literature. The broader aim of the paper is to show that Wolter demonstratives, as I will call the constructions I focus on, are a threat not just to existing treatments, but to any possible theory that retains the (...) uncontroversial assumptions that relative clauses always form a constituent with the nouns they modify, and that semantic composition proceeds sequentially and locally, with the inputs to interpretation having the structure syntax tells us they do. (shrink)

While agreeing with the main conclusion of Dominic Wilkinson and colleagues (Wilkinson, Butcherine, and Savulescu 2019), namely, that there is no moral difference between treatment withholding and withdrawal as such, we wish to criticize their approach on the basis that it treats the widespread acceptance of withdrawal aversion (WA) as a cognitive bias. Wilkinson and colleagues understand WA as “a nonrational preference for withholding (WH) treatment over withdrawal (WD) of treatment” (22). They treat WA as a manifestation of loss aversion (...) and refer to Kahneman and colleagues (1991), which defined this effect as follows: “the disutility of giving up an object is greater that the utility associated with acquiring it” (194). In a previous work, Wilkinson and Savulescu understood nonequivalence between treatment withholding and withdrawal as a reflection of slightly different, although related, phenomena: status quo bias or omission bias (Wilkinson and Savulescu 2012, 130–131). In neither of these two papers do they describe precisely the relation between these well-known psychological effects and WA, nor do they explain why they treat these effects as examples of nonrational preferences, despite the fact that these issues have been the subject of wide-ranging discussions on the intersection of psychology, economy, and philosophy. (shrink)

Although the concept of intuition has a central place in experimental philosophy, it is still far from being clear. Moreover, critics of that movement often argue that the concept of intuition in experimental philosophy does not correspond to the concept of intuition used in traditional, armchair philosophy. However, such a claim is problematic, because most attempts to define this concept are made with regard to the armchair philosophy’s point of view and not that of experimental philosophy. In the article I (...) analyse the concept of intuition in experimental philosophy by taking into account its theoretical assumptions, and the research practice of its representatives. By analysing the most influential experimental philosophers’ views, I formulate its core characteristics. According to them, intuition is a mental state that is a reaction to the described case, which is revealed in the readiness to express a judgment about this case. Then, I investigate step by step the frequently postulated methodological, phenomenological, and etiological conditions that could narrow down the initial definition. I show that the only condition coherent with experimental philosophy’s assumptions and its practice is an etiological one, as the mental state that could be classified as intuition has to be shaped by pragmatic, and not only semantic factors. In the last parts of the text, I draw out some of the consequences of the position that I have presented, regarding the methodology of experimental philosophy and philosophy in general. (shrink)

The introspective devices framework proposed by Kammerer and Frankish (this issue) offers an attractive conceptual tool for evaluating and developing accounts of introspection. However, the framework assumes that different views about the nature of introspection can be easily evaluated against a set of common criteria. In this paper, I set out to test this assumption by analysing two formal models of introspection using the introspective device framework. The question I aim to answer is not only whether models developed outside of (...) philosophy can be successfully evaluated against the set of conceptual criteria proposed by Kammerer and Frankish, but also whether this kind of evaluation can reveal some limitations inherent to the framework. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman’s theory of symbol systems expounded in his Languages of Art has been frequently criticized on many counts (cf. list of secondary literature in the entry “Goodman’s Aesthetics” of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Sect. 3 below). Yet it exerts a strong influence and is treated as one of the major twentieth-century theories on the subject. While many of Goodman’s controversial theses are criticized, the technical notions he used to formulate them seem to have been treated as neutral tools. (...) One such technical notion is that of the density of symbol systems. This serves to distinguish linguistic symbols from pictorial representations (after Goodman entirely rejected resemblance in that role) and is a crucial part of Goodman’s explanation of what constitutes aesthetic experience (and so indirectly what is art). Thus its significance for Goodman’s theory is fundamental. The aim of this paper is a detailed, logical analysis of this notion. It turns out that Goodman’s definition is highly problematic and cannot be applied to symbol systems in the way Goodman envisaged. To conclude, Goodman’s theory is problematic not just because of its controversial theses but also because of logical problems with the technical notions used at its very core. Hence the controversial claims are not simply contestable, but inaccurately expressed. (shrink)

Classic expression theory identified the emotional content of works of art with the feelings of their creators or recipients. This content thus appeared to be external to the work itself. Consequently, formalism declared it to be irrelevant to a work’s value. A solution to this dilemma — one which the Polish aesthetician Henryk Elzenberg was among the first to propose — was suggested by the idea that physical, sensual objects can themselves possess emotional qualities. Thanks to Bouwsma and Beardsley, this (...) concept — of expressiveness as a quality — became common in Anglo-American aesthetics from the fifties onwards. At the same time, these authors demanded that the term “expression” be expunged from the language of aesthetics. However, the widespread tendency to conceptualise the emotional content of art in terms of the expression of a certain subject (most often the artist) still requires some explanation — interpretation, rather than negation. One interpretation construes the expressiveness of works of art in terms of the expression of a fictive subject, the “work’s persona”, conceived by Elzenberg in 1950/1960. This paper discusses his concept and explains some of its more complex aspects, before addressing the emergence of a very similar concept within Anglo-American aesthetics. This concept was gradually elaborated in the seventies and eighties, but only in the nineties did it become more fully developed and widely discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how a novel treatment of speech acts can be combined with a well-known liberal argument for multiculturalism in a way that will justify claims about the preservation, protection, or accommodation of minority languages. The key to the paper is the claim that every language makes a distinctive range of speech acts possible, acts that cannot be realized by means of any other language. As a result, when a language disappears, so does a class of speech (...) acts. If we accept that our social identities are in large part constituted by the decisions we make about how to speak, language loss, then, will amount to a substantial infringement on our autonomy in a particularly important domain. (shrink)

In their insightful article, Brent Kious and Margaret Battin (2019) correctly identify an inconsistency between an involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid in dying (PAD). They declare that it may be possible to resolve the problem by articulating “objective standards for evaluating the severity of others’ suffering,” but ultimately they admit that this task is beyond the scope of their article since the solution depends on “a deep and difficult” question about comparing the worseness of two possible (...) scenarios: letting someone die (who could have been helped) with not letting someone die (whose suffering could only be alleviated by death). In our commentary, we argue that creating such standards is more difficult than the authors assume because of the many types of deep uncertainties we have to deal with: (1) diagnostic, (2) motivational, and (3) existential. (shrink)

Since language provides the most typical paradigm of meaning, when we ask what meanings music may communicate, it will certainly be illuminative to compare these meanings with those conveyed by language. In particular we would want to ask an even more specific question: how, in general, the respective meanings of music and words are related in a vocal composition.

The dilemma referred to in the title occurs in many contexts concerned with expressive meaning in art, and especially music, which suggests that the issue it raises will be central to any complete theory of musical expressiveness. One notable attempt to resolve the paradox of simultaneous generality and particularity in music is in Aaron Ridley’s book Music, Value and the Passions. I show why I consider his account unsatisfactory and then propose my own resolution of the paradox. It takes the (...) form of distinguishing between two distinct notions of generality (which I term ‘generality’ and ‘abstractness’) and of particularity (‘specificity’ and ‘concreteness’), and of constructing two relatively independent oppositions: the concrete versus the abstract and the specifi c versus the general. Finally, I show that a description of music’s expressive meaning as abstract, but specific, rightly captures what is usually thought about music, and does not entail any contradictions. (shrink)

How does affectivity contribute to moral judgment making? -- Normative dissonance vs. the order of argumentation -- Facing otherness as an ethical experiment -- The concepts of respect revisited -- What is universal? Between subjectivity and intersubjectivity -- Experimenting with values in legal contexts : Hegel and Radbruch -- Democracy begins in the mind. Developing democratic personality.

The purpose of this paper is an interpretation of the social and political thought of the Solidarity movement in the light of the political philosophy of communitarianism. In the first part of the paper, the controversies between liberalism and communitarianism are characterized in order to outline the communitarian response toward the authoritarian/totalitarian challenge. In the second part, the programme of a self-governing republic created by Solidarity is interpreted in the spirit of communitarianism. I reconstruct the ideal vision of human being (...) expressed in of ficial trade union’s documents and essays of Solidarity’s advisers e.g., Stefan Kurowski and Jozef Tischner, and the efforts of the movement for telling the truth about history and its vision of Polish history. Also, I interpret the programme of Self-Governing Republic adopted during the First National Convention of Delegates of Solidarity. In these programmatic documents of Solidarity, one may find ideas characteristic both of the communitarian and liberal political philosophy. However, the liberal ones—including, primarily, the guarantee of human and citizens’ rights, and of individual liberties—were subordinated to the postulate of reconstructing the national and social community. In the course of transformation after 1989, these communitarian elements of Solidarity programme, incompatible with liberal ideological agenda, have been erased. (shrink)

The main aim of the text is to show how a game of Go (Weiqi, baduk, Igo) can serve as a model representation of the ontological-metaphysical aspect of the actor–network theory (ANT). An additional objective is to demonstrate in return that this ontological-metaphys⁠ical aspect of ANT represented on Go/Weiqi game model is able to highlight the key aspect of this theory—onto-methodological praxis.

The so-called debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concentrated mainly on the latter’s political liberalism. It dealt with the many aspects of Rawls’s philosophical project. In this article, I focus only on one of them, namely the epistemic or cognitivistic nature of principles of justice. The first part provides an overview of the debate, while the second part aims to show that Habermas has not misinterpreted Rawls’s position. I argue that Habermas rightly considers Rawls’s conception of justice as a (...) moral one. In the last part, I discuss two key questions raised by Habermas. The first concerns the relation between justification and acceptance of the principles of justice. The second concerns the relation between two validity terms: truth and reasonableness. (shrink)

Most ethical discussions about diet are focused on the justification of specific kinds of products rather than an individual assessment of the moral footprint of eating products of certain animal species. This way of thinking is represented in the typical division of four dietary attitudes. There are vegans, vegetarians, welfarists and ordinary meat -eaters. However, the common “all or nothing” discussions between meat -eaters, vegans and vegetarians bypass very important factors in assessing dietary habits. I argue that if we want (...) to discover a properly assessed moral footprint of animal products, we should take into consideration not only life quality of animals during farming or violation of their rights—as is typically done—but, most of all, their body weight, life time in farms and time efficiency in animal products acquisition. Without these factors, an assessment of animal products is much too simplified. If we assume some easily accepted premises, we can justify a thesis that, regardless of the treatment of animals during farming and slaughtering, for example, eating chicken can be 163 times morally worse than eating beef, drinking milk can be 58 times morally better than eating eggs, and eating some types of fish can be even 501 times worse than eating beef. In order to justify such a thesis there is no need to reform common morality by, for example, criticizing its speciesism. The thesis that some animal products are much worse than others can be justified on common moral grounds. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explain economic dualism in the history of modern Europe. The emergence of the manorial-serf economy in the Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary in the 16th and the 17th centuries was the result of a cumulative impact of various circumstantial factors. The weakness of cities in Central Europe disturbed the social balance – so characteristic for Western-European societies – between burghers and the nobility. The political dominance of the nobility hampered the development of cities and (...) limited the influence of burghers, paving the way to the rise of serfdom and manorial farms. These processes were accompanied by increased demand for agricultural products in Western Europe. (shrink)

Krzysztof Trzciński, ‘The Concept of an Ethnic Upper Chamber in a Bicameral Parliament in an African State (Part 2).’ The article has been published in “Afryka” 35, 2011, pp. 11-26 and is a continuation of the previous paper published under the same title in “Afryka” 34. Part 2 explains a couple of cases (of the Senate of Lesotho, and two Houses of Chiefs, in Botswana and Zambia) that seem useful in the analysis of the Nigerian political thinker Claude Ake’s (...) concept of the ‘chamber of nationalities.’ According to the concept, in a multiethnic African state, a bicameral parliament should be constituted, of which the upper house should be created based on the existing ethnic divisions, allowing all ethnic groups to be represented in a balanced way and thus empowering the smaller of them. Implementation of this concept might contribute to the building of more peaceful and politically stable states in Africa. In the latter part of this article, a study of the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina is discussed in short, with a particular focus on the case of the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina that resembles Ake’s concept very closely. In the final part of the article, some drawbacks of Ake’s concept are brought up and discussed critically. (shrink)

Krzysztof Trzciński, ‘Some Remarks on the Idea of Rotational Presidency in an African State.’ The article has been published in “Afryka” 31-32, 2010, pp. 29-44. The main aim of this article is to explain and analyze in a critical way the concept of the rotational presidency, proposed for a multiethnic African state by a Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye. In his opinion, the presidency in an African state should be rotated between all ethnic groups. According to Gyekye, this system would (...) allow the sharing of power between ethnic groups, create trust in their relations and, as a consequence, improve the coherence of a multiethnic state. However, Gyekye’s concept lacks some essential details and seems very difficult to be implemented. Wielu afrykańskich badaczy polityki i innych intelektualistów niezadowolonych z realiów sprawowania, czy wręcz zawłaszczania władzy przez rządzących we współczesnym afrykańskim państwie, szuka rozwiązań ustrojowych alternatywnych wobec obecnie istniejących. Pragną oni ustanowienia w afrykańskim państwie porządku demokratycznego, ale skrojonego na potrzeby jego wieloetnicznej specyfiki. Jedną z wysuwanych propozycji jest osłabienie pozycji prezydenta, który w Afryce zwykle wywodzi się z najliczniejszej lub najsilniejszej grupy etnicznej i posiada bardzo ważne oraz rozbudowane prerogatywy. Sposobem umniejszenia roli urzędu prezydenckiego może być rotacja przywództwa, która stosowana jest w niektórych porządkach ustrojowych (zwłaszcza w Szwajcarii, Bośni i Hercegowinie, na Komorach), a jej współczesnych korzeni należy szukać w ustroju dyrektoriatu z czasów Rewolucji Francuskiej. (shrink)

My paper is a reaction to polemic of Tomasz Sieczkowski "Discrimination nonetheless. A reply to Krzysztof Saja” [ICF "Diametros" (36) 2013] that he wrote against my paper "Discrimination against same-sex couples" [ICF “Diametros" (34) 2012]. The purpose of the paper is to refute Sieczkowski’s objections that rely on wrong interpretation of the structure of my main argument. I will describe the proper course of the reasoning that I have expressed in the first article and undermine the Sieczkowski’s proposal to (...) justify gay marriages by referring to values such as dignity, freedom and equality. (shrink)

Nowadays, healthcare and medical education is qualified by test scores and competitiveness. This article considers its quality in terms of improving the moral competence of future healthcare providers. Objectives. Examining the relevance of moral competence in medico-clinical decision-making despite the paradigm shift and discussing the up-to-date findings on healthcare students. Design and method. N=115 participants were surveyed with a standard Moral Competence Test to examine how their moral competence development was affected by the learning environment and further important factors. Results. (...) The sample allowed the identification of a regress in moral competence during students’ pre-clinical curriculum, and progress during their clinical curriculum. A gender-related bias, a segmentation effect, and a pronunciation effect were noticed. Explanations. Scholarly literature usually reports a linear decrease of medical students’ C-scores resulting from, e.g., competitive trends in education. We identified such trends in terms of gender-specific competitive tactics. Religious and ethical affiliations were discussed to explain the unexpected gender bias and the related segmentation and pronunciation effects. The findings can be regarded as predictive for similar developments in educational institutions regardless of cultural contexts as the sample examined in this article represents medical education in a country facing a transition from a non-competitive to competitive tertiary education model, and between presecular and monocultural to secular and pluralist social ethics. (shrink)

The reprinted paper refers to Georg Lind and his colleagues’ MCT-based FORM study conducted at several European universities in 1977-1983, including Polish ones. After a short phase of democratization, in 1981 Polish society suddenly faced martial law. That experience had an impact on Polish students moral-, discursiveand democratic competences, as measured by MCT. When Ewa Nowak started her Alexander von Humboldt Foundation supported research stay under the supervision of Professor Georg Lind, they were inspired to revisit and discuss the (...) puzzling Polish research findings of 1981/3. According to their main hypothesis, martial law restricted free speech at universities, and free speech is a key facilitator of the development of moral and democratic competence. In 2018, after a decade of collaborative research on moral and democratic competence, Lind, Nowak and colleagues started a new international MCT study in several Central- and East European countries to examine the impact of the contemporary constitutional crisis in Poland on students’ moral and democratic competencies. In 2018/9 the 40th anniversary of the Moral Competence Test and Konstanz Method of Dilemma Discussion will be celebrated. We would like to provide you with the most recent research findings soon. (shrink)

THE CONGRESS The infrastructure of the colonial territories obeyed the logic of economic exploitation, territorial domain and commercial dynamics among others that left deep marks in the constructed landscape. The rationales applied to the decisions behind the construction of infrastructures varied according to the historical period, the political model of colonial administration and the international conjuncture. This congress seeks to bring to the knowledge of the scientific community the dynamics of occupation and transformation of colonial territory, especially related to and (...) resulting from the war effort, which involved not only the agency of architecture and urbanism but also of military apparatus, and its repercussions in the same territories as independent countries. Colonial infrastructures will be addressed to question, for instance, how housing production during armed conflict has conditioned future spatial models of the independent countries or what options taken by colonial administrations were abandoned or otherwise strengthened after independence. The congress is part of the ongoing research project entitled “ARCHWAR - Dominance and massviolence through Housing and Architecture during colonial wars. The Portuguese case (GuineaBissau, Angola, Mozambique): colonial documentation and post independence critical assessment” funded by ‘Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia’ (FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology), ref. PTDC/ART-DAQ/0592/2020, in which Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) is a partner. The general goal of the congress is to debate on the repercussions of the decisions taken by the colonial states in the area of territorial infrastructures – in particular through the disciplines of architecture and urbanism – in post-independence spatial and urban models and the formation of independent countries with a colonial past. (shrink)

There are various ways of reducing conflicts and of stabilizing the political situation in states where society is made up of many different ethnic groups and religious communities, and where relations between these segments – or between them and the central government – are tense. A particularly important way is the establishment in those states of a political system based on power-sharing (PS), which allows members of various ethnic and religious segments to take part in the exercise of power. The (...) literature on the subject usually discusses two models of PS: consociationalism and centripetalism. A third model is encountered in practice, however, that of hybrid power-sharing (HPS), which combines the institutions of the first two. The main objective of this article is to explain the nature and origins of HPS. (shrink)

Demokratyzacja, rozumiana jako proces zmierzający do przekształcenia rządów autorytarnych w ustrój demokratyczny, przebiega od początku lat 90. XX wieku w państwach Afryki Subsaharyjskiej w sposób niezwykle skomplikowany, a niekiedy wręcz dramatyczny. Źródła problemów procesu demokratyzacji w Afryce Subsaharyjskiej mogą przynajmniej po części leżeć w niewłaściwej organizacji politycznej wieloetnicznych społeczeństw państw afrykańskich. Organizacja ta zwykle nie zapewnia reprezentantom części grup etnicznych udziału w podejmowaniu decyzji politycznych, zwłaszcza na szczeblu władzy centralnej, i w konsekwencji często nie daje tym grupom możliwości obrony swoich (...) interesów. Wielu współczesnych afrykańskich myślicieli politycznych uważa, że podziały etniczne istniejące w państwach Afryki powinny znaleźć swoje odzwierciedlenie w konstrukcji ich systemów politycznych, co z kolei mogłoby usprawnić proces implementacji demokracji. Ważnych, ogólnych wskazówek przydatnych dla projektowania modeli demokracji odpowiednich dla państw afrykańskich można szukać w rozwiązaniach istniejących w wieloetnicznych Indiach, choć, co warto podkreślić, ani indyjska myśl polityczna ani indyjskie rozwiązania ustrojowe nie wydają się stanowić inspiracji dla współczesnych intelektualistów afrykańskich. Edukacyjny dla państw Afryki Subsaharyjskiej walor kazusu indyjskiego systemu politycznego sugerują jednak rozważania wybitnego politologa Arenda Lijpharta na temat elementów współrządzenia (power-sharing) w systemie politycznym niepodległych Indii. (shrink)