This article is a critical discussion of the book Setting Health-Care Priorities by Torbjörn Tännsjö. This critique targets mainly Tännsjö’s method, but also several unjustified conclusions and some implicit assumptions.

Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of intertopic correlations, we (...) group the content‐based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine‐grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century. (shrink)

Predictive processing (PP) has been repeatedly presented as a unificatory account of perception, action, and cognition. In this paper, we argue that this is premature: As a unifying theory, PP fails to deliver general, simple, homogeneous, and systematic explanations. By examining its current trajectory of development, we conclude that PP remains only loosely connected both to its computational framework and to its hypothetical biological underpinnings, which makes its fundamentals unclear. Instead of offering explanations that refer to the same set of (...) principles, we observe systematic equivocations in PP‐based models, or outright contradictions with its avowed principles. To make matters worse, PP‐based models are seldom empirically validated, and they are frequently offered as mere just‐so stories. The large number of PP‐based models is thus not evidence of theoretical progress in unifying perception, action, and cognition. On the contrary, we maintain that the gap between theory and its biological and computational bases contributes to the arrested development of PP as a unificatory theory. Thus, we urge the defenders of PP to focus on its critical problems instead of offering mere re‐descriptions of known phenomena, and to validate their models against possible alternative explanations that stem from different theoretical assumptions. Otherwise, PP will ultimately fail as a unified theory of cognition. (shrink)

In recent years there has been growing interest in adapting virtue ethics to the ethics of technology. However, it has most typically been invoked to address some particular issue of moral importance, and there is only a limited range of works dealing with the methodological question of how virtue ethics may contribute to this field. My approach in this paper is threefold. I start with a brief discussion of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with a view to constructing a framework in which (...) to then address at least some of the aspects of the growing technicization of life that call for scrutiny. I subsequently proceed further by outlining three possible models of virtue-theoretical analysis within the ethics of technology, giving special attention to those changes in human agency where technicization can be seen to exert a significant influence. Finally, I focus on the third such possibility, the extended virtue model, as a basis for calling for a more inclusive account of moral agency. (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)

In the paper we examine the method of axiomatic rejection used to describe the set of nonvalid formulae of Aristotle's syllogistic. First we show that the condition which the system of syllogistic has to fulfil to be ompletely axiomatised, is identical to the condition for any first order theory to be used as a logic program. Than we study the connection between models used or refutation in a first order theory and rejected axioms for that theory. We show that any (...) formula of syllogistic enriched with classical connectives is decidable using models in the domain with three members. (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)

The article presents the key problems relevant to the issue of “transcendent Action,” as Peirce calls it. The author focuses on the relation between “belief” and the “transcendentals:” unity, truth, goodness, and beauty, in their peculiar Peirceian context. He considers firstly “belief” in the sense of “an original impulse to act consistently, to have a definite intention” and, secondly, “Normative Science, which investigates the universal and necessary laws of the relation of Phenomena to Ends, that is, perhaps, to Truth, Right, (...) and Beauty.” Finally, he considers Peirce's defense again two popular accusations: one on the part of the logicians which “confounds psychical truths with psychological truths,” and the second one regarding hedonism. (shrink)

Planning organizes our actions and conditions our effective-ness. To understand this philosophical hint better, the author investigates and juxtaposes two important accounts in action theory. He discusses the concept of a plan proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński in his praxiology (theory of efcient action), and the so called “planning theory of intention” by Michael E. Bratman. The conceptual meeting of these two proposals helps to remove aws in Kotarbiński’s action theory, it also shows the way, in which we can enrich the (...) idea of plans in the frame-work of intentions. Generally, praxiology occurs to be still an important perspective in action theory, which particularly shows how we can improve our understanding of planning when confronted with infuentialcontemporary accounts. (shrink)

The growing significance of technology in both everyday life and professionalised practices has brought important volume of philosophical works. However, it is somehow surprising that this current is barely reflected in virtue ethics. This paper highlights two aspects of the issue as seen from the MacIntyrean perspective. Firstly, the rise of technologisation in most areas of human life demands reflection on its influence on the autonomy and unity of the agent’s quest for a good life. Here, the new perspectives for (...) phronesis need to be pointed out. Secondly, a methodological question shows up concerning the way in which virtue ethics may find an adequate response to the technical augmentation of the agency. For this, I argue, resources might be found in the Extended Mind thesis. (shrink)

The paper discusses possible roles of consciousness in a semiotic activity of a cognitive agent. The discussion, we claim, is based on two related approaches to consciousness: on Chalmers’ theory of phenomenal and psychological consciousness and on Damasio’s neural theory, which draws a distinction between core and extended consciousness. Two stages of cognitive-semiotic processing are discussed: the moment of perception of a sign as a meaningful entity and the metasemiotic processes understood as the human capacity to reflect on signs and (...) their usage, analyse and control processes of recognition, interpretation of signs and to detect and correct errors in semiotic activity. In the case of the first stage, it is argued that signs as meaningful entities have a distincly experiential character. The feeling of meaningfulness is a result of phenomenal consciousness, in particular a result of the so-called valuation features of phenomenal experience. I claim that this aspect of cognitive-semiotic activity is possible owing to a special neural mechanism called a semiotic marker. It is argued that semiotic systems have to be able to use signs as signs, i.e. they should display some metacognitive capacities, in particular an ability to analyse semiosis at a metalevel. It is argued that such metasemiosis is dependent on psychological consciousness and is realized at the neural level in the form of extended consciousness. The paper is based on a particular understanding of cognitive semiotics as a discipline involving analyses of cognitive processes as semiotic processes, i.e. processes requiring usage of signs. (shrink)

Aristotle in Analytica Posteriora presented a notion of proof as a special case of syllogism. In the present paper the remarks of Aristotle on the subject are used as an inspiration for developing formal systems of demonstrative syllogistic, which are supposed to formalize syllogisms that are proofs. We build our systems in the style of J. Łukasiewicz as theories based on classical propositional logic. The difference between our systems and systems of syllogistic known from the literature lays in the interpretation (...) of general positive sentences in which the same name occurs twice (of the form SaS). As a basic assumption of demonstrative syllogistic we accept a negation of such a sentence. We present three systems which differ in the interpretation of specific positive sentences in which the same name occurs twice (of the form SiS). The theories are defined as axiomatic systems. For all of them rejected axiomatizations are also supplied. For two of them a set theoretical model is also defined. (shrink)

By pure calculus of names we mean a quantifier-free theory, based on the classical propositional calculus, which defines predicates known from Aristotle’s syllogistic and Leśniewski’s Ontology. For a large fragment of the theory decision procedures, defined by a combination of simple syntactic operations and models in two-membered domains, can be used. We compare the system which employs `ε’ as the only specific term with the system enriched with functors of Syllogistic. In the former, we do not need an empty name (...) in the model, so we are able to construct a 3-valued matrix, while for the latter, for which an empty name is necessary, the respective matrices are 4-valued. (shrink)

In the paper we discuss different intuitions about the properties of obligatory actions in the framework of deontic action logic based on boolean algebra. Two notions of obligation are distinguished–abstract and processed obligation. We introduce them formally into the system of deontic logic of actions and investigate their properties and mutual relations.

The issue “Human being in the digital era” is not superfluous. Every technology, i.e. literacy, print etc., gives tools, but at the same time impacts deeply human being. The article attempts to answer the following questions: what kind of change is taking place nowadays? what are the associated challenges? Is it true what Einstein once said: “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them”?

What is the class of possible semiotic systems? What kinds of systems could count as such systems? The human mind is naturally considered the prototypical semiotic system. During years of research in semiotics the class has been broadened to include i.e. living systems like animals, or even plants. It is suggested in the literature on artificial intelligence that artificial agents are typical examples of symbol-processing entities. It also seems that semiotic processes are in fact cognitive processes. In consequence, it is (...) natural to ask the question about the relation between semiotic studies and research on artificial cognitive systems within cognitive science. Consequently, my main question concerns the problem of inclusion or exclusion from the semiotic spectrum at least some artificial systems. I would like to consider some arguments against the possibility of artificial semiotic systems and I will try to repeal them. Then I will present an existing natural-language using agent of the SNePS system and interpret it in terms of Peircean theory of signs. I would like also to show that some properties of semiotic systems in Peircean sense could be also found in a discussed artificial system. Finally, I will have some remarks on the status of semiotics in general. (shrink)

English title: Master Eckhart’s God Confronted with Nietzschean Critique of Christianity. Author tries to demonstrate that the way of thinking about Christian God developed in the late Middle Ages by Master Eckhart goes beyond the interpretation which underlies Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity as a religion of the other world. In the paper, Author first presents the said criticism, followed by the vision of God outlined by Eckhart. He demonstrates that Christianity, criticized by Nietzsche, uses a commonsense vision of God’s transcendence (...) based on spatial images. The author also demonstrates that Eckhart defines this transcendence in such a way that it does not fall under Nietzsche’s criticism, in particular it cannot lead to the depreciation of worldliness in favour of an invented other world, which Nietzsche observes. Eckhart’s thought makes room for Christianity ‘after Nietzsche.’. (shrink)

In the paper we provide an overview of issues related to the models used in the research on the logic of norms and actions. We present two models of the variability of the world: temporal (acyclic) and atemporal (cyclic). In the first one the past is always clearly defined, and the future is potentially “branched”. The second type of model allows for a return to the situation that took place. Next we describe different approaches towards agency modeling. We present the (...) most important paradigms, including the logic of actions, where actions are interpreted as transitions between the situations and STIT logic, which states only the responsibility of the agent for particular states of affairs. We discuss questions of determinism and indeterminism of actions, identification of basic actions and operations and the issue of identity. The final part of the paper is devoted to deontic categories. In particular, the applicability of the concepts of strong and weak permission and prohibition in different situational contexts, and their relationship to the two concepts of obligation: abstract and derived. (shrink)

The main goal of the paper is to present a putative role of consciousness in language capacity. The paper contrasts the two approaches characteristic for cognitive semiotics and cognitive science. Language is treated as a mental phenomenon and a cognitive faculty. The analysis of language activity is based on the Chalmers’ distinction between the two forms of consciousness: phenomenal and psychological. The approach is seen as an alternative to phenomenological analyses typical for cognitive semiotics. Further, a cognitive model of the (...) language faculty is described. The model is implemented in SNePS/GLAIR architecture and based on GATN grammar and semantic networks as a representation formalism. The model - reflecting traditionally distinguished linguistic structures - consists of phonological, syntactic, and semantic modules. I claim that the most important role in the phenomenon of language is played by psychological consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness accompanies various stages of language functioning, but is not indispensable in explanations of the language faculty. (shrink)

The book is addressed to all readers interested in cognitive science, and especially in research combining a logical analysis with psychological, linguistic and neurobiological approaches. The publication is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Cognitive Science at University of Lodz and the Department of Cognitive Science at Lund University. It is intended to provide a comprehensive presentation of the key research issues undertaken in both Departments, including considerations on meaning, natural language and reasoning, linguistic as well as (...) numerical competence, the theory of decision making, modelling of conceptual representations, cognitive and game theoretic approach to social interactions. (shrink)

Praca poświęcona jest naturze dobrego życia. Zastosowanie odnowionej w połowie XX wieku myśli Arystotelesa pozwala tu uchwycić i przezwyciężyć zarówno miałkość propozycji „przemysłu szczęścia”, jak i akademickiej filozofii. Autor interpretuje koncepcję starożytnego filozofa przy użyciu współczesnych narzędzi filozoficznych wskazując jak ich zastosowanie pozwala uchwycić węzłowe problemy życia (jak pytanie o szczęście i sens) oraz wskazać te metody myślenia, które umożliwiają krytyczny namysł nad rzeczywistością społeczną. Pytanie o dobro jest zatem zarówno o to, jak kształtować własne życie, ale też jak myśleć (...) o relacjach z ludźmi, z innymi istotami oraz jak współdziałać w dążeniu do dóbr wspólnych. Te ostatnie okazują się przy tym nie tylko dobrami publicznymi, infrastrukturalnymi, ale przede wszystkim formami kooperacji i współżycia. (shrink)

Blumenthal-Barby and her colleagues (2022) situate their discussion of philosophy and bioethics in the context of (reportedly) widely held assumption that, when compared to the early days of bioethics, the role of philosophy is now diminished across the field – the assumption we call the Disconnection Thesis. This assumption can be summarized, to use the authors’ own words, by the phrase “philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over“. While in no place of the article they explicitly endorse the Disconnection Thesis, (...) at least some of the authors had previously endorsed it in print (Savulescu 2015). Such expressions of collective expert wisdom might be a valuable source of information on the discipline's history, but they should not be accepted uncritically. Given the explosion in the size and scope of bioethical research in recent decades, any scholar’s familiarity with the area is necessarily based on selective reading and might be biased. Hence, in this commentary, we examine what kind of more rigorous evidence could corroborate the Disconnection Thesis. In other words, if the role of philosophy in bioethics has been indeed diminishing, what kind of observable patterns should we expect to see? Drawing on our previous research (Bystranowski, Dranseika, Żuradzki 2022), here we focus on two useful perspectives: citation analysis and topic modeling. While the first approach allows us to indirectly measure the level of engagement of bioethicists with philosophical literature (by measuring the proportion of references from articles published in journals in bioethics that cite philosophy journals), the latter provides a window into the content and argumentative style of bioethical texts. (shrink)

In this article, I examine Michael Bratman’s account of stability in his planning theory of intention. Future-directed intentions should be stable, or appropriately resistant to change, over time. Bratman claims that the norm of stability governs both intentions and plans. The aim of this article is to critically enrich Bratman’s account of stability by introducing plasticity as an additional norm of planning. I construct plasticity as a kind of stability of intentions which supplements Bratman’s notion of “reasonable stability.” Unlike the (...) latter, plasticity applies mainly to cases in which plan states are abandoned without reconsideration. I focus on the intra-theoretical problems of PTI and elucidate: the distinction between future-directed intentions and plans, the conceptual difference between stability and inertia, which is only implicit in PTI, and the role of the environment of the planner, which has a vestigial role in Bratman’s work. I also defend my incorporation of pl... (shrink)

Cognitive semiotics is often characterized as the study of meaning- making. This brief statement is at best a bit unclear and requires an elaboration. First, some interpretation of the extremely ambiguous term “meaning.

Husserl’s commitment to reality is marked by the urgency to return, or rather to a repeated return each time the objective is achieved . He explains this explicitly in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, taking his cue from Descartes’ Meditations . Reduction, which is the exact name for re- turn, means change of attitude, abandonment of the natural position as naive . Jan Patočka notes in this regard, that today people who have experienced modern sci- ence no (...) longer simply live in the naive natural world . The naive natural world is in- terpreted under species of the mathematical model . So, the gap between meaning as an expectation of experience and meaning within the framework of the model is increasingly evident . If intentionality, according to Husserl and disciples, includ- ing Heidegger, cannot be other than the idea itself, then it is just a something for something . It’s like giving voice to one thing and not another . Commitment to life (Husserl’s Lebenswelt) requires a return to corporeality, as Patočka adds, following Maine de Biran’s accurate insight, that is, of something immediately given, prior to any perceptual experience . The term “matrix” in the title brings to mind the eponymous 1999 film based on the philosophical metaphor of Plato’s cave in the fashion of the digital age . The protagonist, Neo, finds himself living for a long time in the lack of support of reality, precisely because of distrust: something is wrong, and this can only be felt . However, how can the hacker mentality help you under- stand that perhaps it is but a game? (shrink)

The language of phenomenology includes terms such as intentionality, phenom- enon, insight, analysis, sense, not to mention the key term of Edmund Husserl’s manifesto, “the things themselves” to return to . But what does the “things them- selves” properly mean? How come the term is replaced by the “findings” over time? And what are the findings for? The investigation begins by looking at the tricky legacy of the modern turn, trying to clarify ties to past masters, including Francis- co Suárez (...) and Augustine of Hippo . The former, because his influence goes beyond René Descartes reaching undoubtedly Franz Brentano and his students, as well as Martin Heidegger . The latter, because Augustine gives a personal component to the Greek inheritance, marked by the “inward turn .” However, it would not be possible to review the history of thought without the help offered by Jan Patočka's analyses . Patočka discloses the “care” of the Greek philosophers, Plato and Dem- ocritus among others, “for the soul”, we would say with Patočka for “being,” whose sense “does not leave us indifferent” as the leitmotiv of Ancient Philosophy . Nev- ertheless, in his lectures on Plato and Europe, Patočka points out that you must be careful not to confuse the phenomena of things, of existens, with the phenomena of being . Finally, Patočka’s legacy is found in the efforts to reconcile the life-feeling with the modern construction of reality, which means “a radical reconstruction of the naive and natural world of common sense .” In some ways, intentionality is to be revised . (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the basis for the moral obligation to remember. As the moral relation to the past is primarily a matter of shared identity, the kind of obligation in question splits into two related issues, namely, that of political, state-oriented and state-organized memory on which the political identity rests and that of memory labour grounded in social identities based in shared, time-extended projects. Drawing upon tensions between these two, I discuss time control and the (...) accumulation of identity as central to memory labour and, referring to John Zerzan’s critique of symbolical roots of power, pinpoint the moral basis of such an accumulation. On the basis of this, I argue for nesting the duty to remember in acknowledging the agent’s recognition of the relatedness and dependency of their agency and possibilities of flourishing which can be obtained thanks to adjusting the field of the virtue of practical wisdom so that it includes members of the time-extended community. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to point out the modelling choices that lead to different systems of deontic action logic. A kind of a roadmap is presented. On the one hand it can help the reader to find the deontic logic appropriate for an intended application relying on the information considering the way in which a deontic logic represents actions and how it characterises deontic properties in relation to (the representation of) actions. On the other hand it is a (...) guideline how to build a deontic action logic which satisfies the desired properties. (shrink)

Stein’s theory of empathy lies at the intersection of the phenomenological findings of E. Husserl and M. Scheler. By presenting the issue of “empathy” in a broader framework, including intentionality, the originality of experience, the issue of personality and the individual identity, as well as the so-called world of values, namely the culture, I argue for a dynamic, process-oriented concept of dealing with feelings, namely diapathy. -/- Koncepcja Edyty Stein rozumienia drugiego człowieka jest znana z jej dysertacji O zagadnieniu wczucia. (...) Niemniej, gruntowne przebadanie struktury osobowości ludzkiej, jakie podjęła w Filozofii psychologii i humanistyki, rzuca nowe światło na tę kwestię. Stein dokonuje swoistej syntezy Husserlowskiego prymatu prawdy i Schelerowskiej koncepcji miłości, unikając przy tym idealizmu i woluntaryzmu, którym obarczone są te stanowiska. Steinowska koncepcja znajduje kontynuację w fenomenologii M. Merleau-Ponty’ego i R. Barbarasa. (shrink)

The article focuses on the anti-naturalism of Menger and Mises. It presents a methodological approach formulated by both scholars as stemming from epistemological anti-naturalism and demonstrating similarities to social phenomenology. The article also discusses the development of the anti-naturalistic perspective on the basis of Hayek’s conception of sensory order. The latter allowed addressing the problem of validity of methodological dualism and established a sound foundation for the methodological approach of the Austrian School of Economics.

To explore the extent of embeddability of Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus in first-order logic (FOL) and modern frameworks, we propose to set aside ontological issues and focus on pro- cedural questions. This would enable an account of Leibnizian procedures in a framework limited to FOL with a small number of additional ingredients such as the relation of infinite proximity. If, as we argue here, first order logic is indeed suitable for developing modern proxies for the inferential moves found in Leibnizian infinitesimal (...) calculus, then modern infinitesimal frameworks are more appropriate to interpreting Leibnizian infinitesimal calculus than modern Weierstrassian ones. (shrink)

In my paper I present a critique of Dorota Brylla’s interpretation of the dialogue by Nicholas of Cusa - De Deo abscondito, and a critique of her stance on apophatic theology. I consider Brylla’s position an exemplification of a more widespread philosophical point of view in terms of both the interpretation of Nicholas thought and the apophatic tradition as such. I also present an alternative reading of both his dialogue and apophatic theology. Finally, I point out some implications of adopting (...) my position for philosophical theology and the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

I argue that a slight shift in our understanding of the notion of existence is needed in order to cope with the problem of external world and the problem of mind and body. As a consequence of it being taught by "givenness" of the subjective mind, and despite its applicability in objective contexts, it should be considered a "tool" akin to qualia, rather than pertaining to a "true", objective reality. In plain language, one's supposed relation with their surroundings is known (...) to them only in terms of their private ontology. This conclusion is supported both by intuition and - perhaps most importantly - by ontological issues in quantum physics. (shrink)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest rozważenie znaczenia zmian, jakie dla form działania podmiotowego (duchowości) mają zmiany technologicznie. Przyjmując, że pewne punkty zaczepienia takiej refleksji dostępne są w popkulturowych formach oswajania postępu, jako osiowe wybieram pojęcie „dżihadu buteriańskiego” z powieści Diuna Franka Herberta, scalające kilka istotnych aspektów tak rozwoju technicznego, jak i refleksji nad nim. W części pierwszej, koncentrując się na drugim składniku tego wyrażenia, omawiam pogląd Samuela Butlera oraz wskazuję na znaczenie wystąpienie luddystów w początkach XIX w. W części drugiej rozwijam ten (...) wątek, omawiając krytykę społeczeństwa technologicznego formułowaną przez współczesnych anarchoprymitywistów. W części trzeciej zwracam uwagę na pierwszy element wyrażenia Herberta by wskazać na podmiotowe aspekty zmian technologicznych. W konsekwencji wskazuję kierunki analizy, dzięki którym etyka cnót może wypracować adekwatną odpowiedź na zagrożenia płynące ze strony technologii przy akceptacji korzyści zeń płynących. (shrink)

The paper is an introductory essay to the Polish translation of M.E. Bratman’s paper The Fecundity of Planning Agency. Instead of summarizing the main drifts of Bratman’s work, the author tries to show a few important parallels between his approach to action theory and the so-called praxiology (or ‘theory of efficient action’) proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbinski. It occurs that there are important similarities between their approaches both to specific problems in action theory (as: concept of an agent, the role of (...) Buridan’s Ass, or mind-infusion of actions) and to the general question how to understood agency (norms of planning). A brief presentation of these similarities gives two central results. Firstly, it allows to interpret Bratman as a kind of praxiologist, and, secondly, it shows that praxiological thinking proposed by Kotarbinski is still a vital perspective in contemporary action theory. (shrink)

What is meaning-making? How do new domains of meanings emerge in the course of child’s development? What is the role of consciousness in this process? What is the difference between making sense of pointing, pantomime and language utterances? Are great apes capable of meaning-making? What about dogs? Parrots? Can we, in any way, relate their functioning and behavior to a child’s? Are artificial systems capable of meaning-making? The above questions motivated the emergence of cognitive semiotics as a discipline devoted to (...) theoretical and empirical studies of meaning-making processes. As a transdisciplinary approach to meaning and meaning-making, cognitive semiotics necessarily draws on a different disciplines: starting with philosophy of mind, via semiotics and linguistics, cognitive science(s), neuroanthropology, developmental and evolutionary psychology, comparative studies, and ending with robotics. The book presents extensively this discipline. It is a very eclectic story: highly abstract problems of philosophy of mind are discussed and, simultaneously, results of very specific experiments on picture recognition are presented. On the one hand, intentional acts involved in semiotic activity are elaborated; on the other, a computational system capable of a limited interpretation of excerpts from Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is described. Specifically, the two roads to cognitive semiotics are explored in the book: phenomenological-enactive path developed by the so-called Lund school and author’s own proposal: a functional-cognitivist path. (shrink)

Public opinion has it that ethics should be concerned with studying and providing precise and reliable rules of conduct. This view is based in a long philosophical tradition which begins with the Stoics and continues at least to Kant; it is, however, a false view. There are good reasons to turn our attention to these aspects of moral thinking which refer to and emphasize the element of risk and uncertainty. In the article I briefly discuss two of such reasons: the (...) problem of moral luck and the problem of action based on ignorance. Consideration of these two problems leads to the conclusion that the most tricky element in moral thinking is the firm belief of the subject in the truth of the premises on which they base their actions and in the irrelevance of external factors to the assessment of their deeds. In this light I argue that the basic requirement for a moral justification of a particular action is not its conformity to a certain set of rules but the subject’s critical reflection on their course of action. Indeed, what turns an attitude into a moral attitude is an amoral, epistemological factor: criticism and openness to uncertainty. (shrink)

The paper addresses some of the aspects of the neo-Aristotelian concept of good on the basis of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. The author’s general thesis is that the idea of good organizes its normativity along two vectors pointed towards nature and emancipation, which are interlinked, that is — the normativity of the good is always organized by both of them and it is inappropriate to refer to one of them only. This fault is made, the author believes, by Nussbaum who (...) does not offer enough resources to establish a sound naturalistic evaluative standard in her theory. To address this issue the author starts by discussing the capabilities approach as a form of the concept of good and proceeds by analysing Nussbaum’s view on family as an exemplar of the inadequacies of the approach. (shrink)

From the perspective of Aquinas’ Biblical commentaries, the article develops the reflection on pignus / arra haereditatis (Eph 1:5) seeing these essential elements of Thomas’ reflection on salvation in the terminological question of which one is better: pignus or arra, namely the pledge or the earnest/deposit. Thomas develops soteriology, which indicates that human salvation starts “now” and not “later,” through the participation in the Passion of Christ and in His merits. Analyzing Aquinas’ commentary on Ps 21, on the Letter to (...) the Ephesians and on the Letter to the Galatians together with the themes of Christ’s obedience and its soteriological significance as well as His wish of voluntary death for us, the article shows the Biblical roots of Thomas’ soteriology. The author devotes particular attention to the analysis of the logic of inchoatio and consummatio in Thomas’ soteriological grammar and his understanding of faith as the beginning of eternal life and the ensuing consequences. (shrink)

The structure of this paper is as follows. My starting point is psychological flexibility (henceforth, PF) as it has been presented in psychology. Here I offer a synthetic view which embraces the most crucial aspects of flexibility, and describes its functional roles and underlying mechanisms. Secondly, I move my attention onto the field of current action theory and discuss two elementary concepts we commonly use when describing our actions: intention and desire. Of course, there are many “theories of desire” and (...) there is no point in trying (nor even the option) to discuss all of them under one heading. To show where the question of PF sneaks into the scene of action theory, I explore the idea of the resistance of desire, as proposed by Timo Airaksinen. The second concept to investigate at this stage is intention. As in the previous case, it is plain that there are plenty of accounts of intentions and there are many roles they play in the phenomenology of action. For the purposes of this paper, we need only something that can be interpreted as an approach to PF. Such an approach can be found in the idea of stability of intention or a plan, discussed famously by Michael Bratman. According to my interpretation, these two ideas, resistance of desire and stability of intention, allow to initially understand some important aspects of PF in action theory. To get a slightly more comprehensive view – and to supplement the outcomes gained on the grounds of the analyses of these two accounts – I introduce, in the third step, the concept of plasticity which comes from the so-called praxiology proposed by Tadeusz Kotarbiński (Lvov-Warsaw School). I try to show how this concept is still feasible and how it may enrich current philosophical accounts of agential flexibility. The strategy behind this stage of the paper is to enrich the Bratmanian approach to psychological stability. The last part of the paper contains some remarks on the philosophical outcome of the interdisciplinary approach to PF. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to investigate the relations between the basic moral categories, namely those of norms, ideals and supererogation. The subject of discussion is, firstly, the ways that these categories are understood; secondly, the possible approaches towards moral acting that appear due to their use; and thirdly, their relationship within the moral system. However, what is of a special importance here is the relationship between the categories of norms and ideals (or in a wider aspect — laudable (...) acts) and a thesis about their complementary character. For it seems that the omission of one of the elements that are analysed within a moral system must result in an essential limitation of both the possibilities of finding an adequate approach to a given moral problem (on a descriptive level), as well as defining the full set of normative guidelines. Therefore, as I shall argue, resigning from a two-level method of moral analysis may lead to the atrophy of the very idea of ethics itself. (shrink)

Basing itself on Edith Stein's research into philosophy of psychology and the humanities, this article focuses particularly on discussions of the theory of association. Stein's approach, rooted in Husserlian phenomenological perspective, seems to represent a significant contribution to the establish of an intellectual framework for the exploration of the philosophy of consciousness, and also seems helpful for inquiries into the issue pf practical know-how pertaining to remembering things, as well as the use of schemata in intellectual activity generally.

The fundamental differences between the suburbs and the city centre that I would like to point out concern the pace of life and the intensity of urban development. Certainly, these differences are not absolute but are rather relative, as they are defined in relation to the surrounding neighbourhood that serves as a reference for self‑determination. A suburb has some small‑town traits, but its close location to the city prevents it from becoming a local centre. The same concerns the architecture whose (...) intensity is, after all, a consequence of the increasing intensity in other aspects of life, the differentiationof sources of people’s income, the demand for services, trade contacts, etc. Its incompleteness, imperfection, slower pace and focus on anunattained and unattainable ideal can make one see in the suburb as a theoretically extremely promising area. Indeed, its promise lies in this aspect of failure, incompleteness and fragmentation — which is long lasting and relatively permanent. Many traits of suburban architecture are conservative; whereas others, such as its impermanence and improvisational qualities, are experimental and are characterised by an almost guerrilla‑like aspect. However, present‑day advanced postmodern thinking at times achieves an ability to take contradictory spatial, visual, artistic and functional characteristics and, through a theoretical analysis, make them into a complex ‘difficult whole’. Here, the combination itself is probably not so much harmonious but rather contains certain internal tensions, imbalances and longings of one opposite towards another. Anyway, this combination does take place and — in line with the direction of many diagnoses of contemporaneity — instead of creating abstract constructs, we must register the facts and try to conceptualise them. (shrink)

Artykuł poświęcony jest Mistrza Eckharta wykładni ontologicznych struktur rzeczywistości, w której to wykładni ważną rolę odgrywają pojęcia bytu, nicości, istnienia i Boskości. W artykule rozważone zostają kolejno: 1. Wykładnia bytu i nicości w prologu do łacińskiego Opus tripartitum; 2. Wykładnia istnienia i Boskości w dziełach niemieckich; 3. umiejscowienie tych rozważań w kontekście Eckhartiańskiej koncepcji abgescheidenheit. Podstawową tezą artykułu jest to, że w swojej refleksji ontologicznej Mistrz Eckhart zbliża się do myślenia o istocie rzeczywistości jako Woli, co jest wyraźną antycypacją ważnego (...) nurtu niemieckiej filozofii. (shrink)

The expression “moral experience”, along with the concomitant notion of experience itself, seems to have been understood in divergent ways. Taking as a background three views currently operative in our culture - emotivism, the ethics of duty, and the notion of an ethics “beyond good and evil” - a conception of ethical experience will be presented based on the findings of Edith Stein as elaborated in her work "Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities".

Trivalence is quite natural for deontic action logic, where actions are treated as good, neutral or bad.We present the ideas of trivalent deontic logic after J. Kalinowski and its realisation in a 3-valued logic of M. Fisher and two systems designed by the authors of the paper: a 4-valued logic inspired by N. Belnap’s logic of truth and information and a 3-valued logic based on nondeterministic matrices. Moreover, we combine Kalinowski’s idea of trivalence with deontic action logic based on boolean (...) algebra. (shrink)