The main aim of the article is a comparison of two types of modal fictionalism (which is, to put it roughly, the antirealist view concerning the existence of possible worlds). The most popular version of modal fictionalism, proposed by Gideon Rosen, is compared with the modal fictionalism based on Stephen Yablo's ideas concerning object fictionalism. Both views aim to: (i) deliver an interpretation of existential quantifiers ranging over possible worlds, according to which quantifying over possible worlds does not imply ontological (...) commitments to possible worlds; (ii) give an analysis of modality. The distinctive feature of the former view is an account of all sentences with existential quantification ranging over possible worlds as elliptical versions of sentences of the form "According to fiction of plurality of worlds, there is a world, in which...". The modal fictionalist presupposes that the occurrence of the story prefix "According to such and such fiction" makes all quantifiers in its range uncommittal ones. The latter view consists in taking sentences quantifying over possible worlds as uttered in make-believe spirit, where the speaker pretends that there are possible worlds and hence does not commit herself to the existence of possible worlds. Important feature of this view is that its proponent presupposes that there is some kind of dependence between that what modal facts there are and what is pretended in the game of make-believe for possible worlds discourse. The first view lacks this feature. I argue that if one supposes that some of our ordinary modal statements, e.g. "This car could have had different colour than it actually has," provide information about features of objects they are about, then Rosen's version of modal fictionalism faces the problem of explaining how modal fictionalist's analysis of modality preserves this kind of information about objects. The proponent of the latter version has tools to explain how her analysis preserves those bits of information about objects. I conclude that this could be treated as a reason of preferring Yablo's version of modal fictionalism. (shrink)

In the paper I consider the prospects of interpreting late Carnap view on ontology as being in part a sort of fictionalism. More precisely, I argue that the theses he maintained in the volume of The Library of Living Philosophers devoted to his philosophy , in which he concerned with semantics in general and the confirmation of existential claims, make his account of an ontologically uncommittal acceptance of existential claims, as presented in his Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology , unsatisfying. In (...) this work, he claimed that – to put it roughly – one can accept existential claims as true relatively to rules that constitue the linguistic framework in which these claims are formulated and that from the truth relative to these rules one can’t derive any conclusion about the objective truth of these existential claims. But in the volume of The Library of Living Philosophers he adopted a new view on the nature of semantic values and took them to be extralinguistic entities. This change forced him to redefine the notion of being true relative to rules of the liguistic framework in terms of being true in admissible models of this language, where a model is an ad-missible model of a given language, if all meaning postulates of this language are satisfied in that model. This change of the view calls for an explanation of how it is possible to take some existential claims to be true in a model without accepting the existence of entities in the domain of that model. Following S. Yablo’s view ex-pressed in his Does Ontology Rest on Mistake , I suggest that one can accept the thesis that existential claims are satisfied by some extralinguistic entities in some model in a spirit of make-believe in which one makes supposition that there are such enti-ties and that they satisfy these existential claims. I also argue against propositions of interpreting Carnap as a quasi-realist on the ground that this kind of interpretation doesn’t give a justice to the distinction between internal existential claims and prag-matic external existential claims, i.e. those claims that should be treated as claims about pragmatic values of a given linguistic framework. (shrink)

In the paper I consider the prospects of interpreting late Carnap views on ontology as being in part a sort of epistemism. More precisely, I argue that the theses that he maintained in the Empirism, Semantics, and Onotology and the volume of The Library of Living Philosophers devoted to his philosophy put him close to proponents of epistemicism, according to which ontological debates over truth-values of metaphysical theses need not to be verbal disputes, but the prospects of resolving them are (...) meager, since there are no evidences that could support either given metaphysical thesis or its negation. Most likely, Carnap should be read as a proponent of a more radical version of this view, since he maintained that in principle there are no such evidences. I find this view fit well with Carnap’s argumentative strategy against substantial character of metaphysical debates, since he stresses the lack of evidences in favour of or against metaphysical claims as the main reason for his deflationism in ontology. However, what is the most worrisome in taking this route of interpreting late Carnap views on ontology is that among the presuppositions of epistemicism is the thesis that one can make sense of the talk about truth-values of metaphysical claims, whereas Carnap maintained they lack truth-values due to lack of cognitive contents. But taking the change of his view on the nature of semantic values in the volume of The Library of Living Philosophers devoted to his philosophy, where he claimed that extralinguistic entities should serve a role of semantic values and the notion of truth should be defined relatively to a given interpretation in a given model, I find his opinion on metaphysical claims unjustified, since one can define the the notion of truth for these claims relatively to models and hence make a talk about their truth values (relatively to models) sensible. It doesn’t follow from that that one can also make a sense of a claim being absolutely true, since it would require to take one model to be special one in the sense that it fits the way reality is, which is something that the proponent of epistemicism deny on the ground that there are no evidences that could be taken to show that one of the models of a given language is special in this respect. I also discuss applications of the inference to the best explanation in argumentation in favour of various sorts of realism and argue that this kind of argumentation always leaves room for some ontological dispute between parties from which one deny the existence of entities that the other argued for through application of the inference to the best explanation and hence that no metaphysical debate can be resolved by application of the inference to the best explanation under the threat of circularity. The paper is the continuation of considerations made in my paper The Later Carnap and Contemporary Metaphysical Debates. Part I, in which I’ve argued that one can treat Carnap to be also a proponent of fictionalism. In effect, Carnap’s deflationism in ontology seems to be a combination of fictionalism and epistemicism. (shrink)

In Towards Non-Being Graham Priest proposes an informative criterion of identity across possible worlds. Roughly, the criterion says that whenever two objects satisfy the very same qualitative characteristics in every possible world they are identical. But Priest also maintains that there are qualitatively indiscernible possible worlds. It is argued in the paper that for this reason he should allow the existence of two numerically different but qualitatively identical objects, and that is in tension with the criterion of transworld identity he (...) has proposed. Thus Priest should reject either his criterion of transworld identity, or the thesis of possibleexistence of qualitatively indiscernible worlds. (shrink)

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)

There is an ongoing investigation by scholars of ethics and economics into whether human decision making and the resultant acts should be guided by rules and procedures or by judgment and discretion. Although each of these modes offers advantages and disadvantages to decision makers, they are by no means neutral in their effect on professional development. The paper presents an in-depth view of discretionary decisions using an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework. This is the first of the series of papers which focus on (...) the application of realistic philosophical principles to ethical professional behaviour and decision making in daily practice. Results indicate that classical philosophical theories which use virtues and truth as indispensable components still may give rise to desirable and moral conduct among individuals who apply them. (shrink)

The article discusses problems of image development in selected professional engineering communities, as expressed in their ethical codes. Specific codified norms are presented and their likely effects discussed on two levels: personal and social. The findings show, that not all of the codes of ethics solve the development problem identically, with the differences likely to cause some variability in be-havioural patterns among members of the professional societies. The analysis suggests the need for further research and analyses as well as the (...) standardization of codified solutions to this problem among professional engineering societies. (shrink)

The paper attempts to analyse the ethical duties of engineers contained in selected engineering codes of ethics and indicates a few problems arising in teaching professional engineering ethics in technical studies. The codes of ethics under analysis, both Polish and foreign (American), show similarities and differences. The author indicates the likely causes of these similarities and differences and suggests the need for further research on the development of ethical standards as well as their implementation, application and enforcement. The author discusses (...) teaching ethics based on his own experience and compares a few American textbooks used for engineering ethics teaching. The author indicates a lack of necessary teaching materials in Polish and the existence of no Polish forum for discussing ethical problems of engineering in Poland both in the areas of teaching and research. (shrink)

Integrity is a common and well established concept in the ethical vocabulary. It is also being used in various codes of ethics, and investigated by means of various methods. However a review of the contemporary reference literature reveals various meanings associated with this term, which is followed by its variable applicability. It is mentioned among the desirable virtues possessed by the professionals. In various Polish codes of engineering ethics there is an absence of the integrity concept, at least comprehended as (...) fully as it is in the ethics literature. The paper contains an analysis of the meaning of integrity in English and its translations into Polish in selected codes of engineering ethics. The scopes of the used terms are compared and in result it is postulated that some initiatives be undertaken in order to clarify the discrepancies existing in various engineering codes of ethics around the professional integrity concept. (shrink)

The article presents a thought experiment aimed at indicating a possibility for thinking education beyond the logic of progress. In its first part, the argument reconstructs the entanglement of the modern idea of progress (as found in Francis Bacon and Comenius) and education, while tracking down the specific coupling of obedience and conquest at work. Through such an analysis a link between the ideas of progress and of emancipation is determined, which leads to the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the (...) task of imagining education outside of the logic of progress. In the second part an attempt is made to match this task by suggesting that when studying with a teacher, the logic of progress is deactivated. A phenomenological analysis of the practices involved in studying with a teacher points to a specific way of living together that such a collective study involves. This way of living together is formed by continual exercises in the humble equality realized through shared attention to something worthy of study: this stems from attentiveness to what exists, and it develops an attitude of care and respect for being as such. (shrink)

Rozprawa Doktora Piotra Domerackiego zatytułowana Horyzonty i perspektywy monoseologii. Filozoficzne studium samotności stanowi ciekawą i oryginalną propozycję intelektualną. Jako oczywiste plusy przedstawionego opracowania wskazać należy oryginalność tematyki, rozległość studiów oraz dojrzały charakter refleksji autora. Samotność stanowi temat ciągle aktualny i powracający, a jednocześnie zaskakujący złożonością i wielowymiarowością. Jest to przy tym temat, który prowokuje do pytań o naszą własną tożsamość, stanowi punkt wyjścia dla autoanalizy i pytania o relacje z innymi. Odpowiedzi na pytanie o mechanizm rozprzęgania się tych więzi i (...) konsekwencje tych procesów dla człowieka ukazują paradoksy i sprzeczności myślenia o tym zagadnieniu. […] W przedstawionym opracowaniu dr Piotr Domeracki podejmuje ogromny wysiłek przedstawienia całej tej złożoności i wewnętrznych napięć organizujących badania i refleksję nad samotnością. Realizując podjęte zadanie, Autor odnosi wiele sukcesów. Z recenzji wydawniczej dr hab. Heleny Ciążeli, prof. APS, Warszawa Wszelki system wiedzy o samotności, jeśli aspiruje do zupełności oraz jeśli ma być wiarygodny, miarodajny i funkcjonalny, powinien być komplementarny, to znaczy powinien umiejętnie łączyć minimalistyczną oraz maksymalistyczną (w sensie Walzerowskim) perspektywę oglądu i deskrypcji. Zasadniczą trudnością w precyzyjnym i kompleksowym opisie samotności jest jej wysoce ograniczona komunikowalność na poziomie doznaniowości. Samotność jest bowiem niezwykle oporna wobec możliwości empatycznego jej współprzeżywania. Z tego powodu jawi się ona jako agregat takich negatywnie percypowanych własności i określeń, jak monadyczność, solipsystyczność, apatyczność, autystyczność czy outsiderstwo. Zasadniczym celem niniejszej monografii – oprócz intencji wyłożenia i popularyzacji standardów wiedzy monoseologicznej – jest dążenie do przedstawienia jak najszerszego spektrum problemowego oraz siatki pojęciowej filozofii samotności. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the relationship between adult attachment styles and generalized negativistic social beliefs. Two general dimensions of attachment styles, avoidance and anxiety, are considered to be manifestations of an individual’s image of other people and of the self, respectively. We suggest that both dimensions may be a substantial basis for formulating negative beliefs about the social world. Firstly, we believe that a high level of negativistic social beliefs can be positively predicted by the growth of avoidance and (...) anxiety. Secondly, we formulate an expected interaction effect. Although the nature of such an interaction is ambiguous, it may be argued as having a synergistic as well as antagonistic pattern. These hypotheses were tested and supported on a representative sample of adult Poles. (shrink)

This paper discusses differences between two major schools in philosophy of criminal law, retributivism and consequentialism, with regard to the risk of punishing the innocent. As it is argued, the main point of departure between these two camps in this respect lies in their attitude towards the high evidentiary threshold in a criminal trial: while retributivism seems to strongly support setting this standard high, consequentialists may find it desirable to relax it in some cases. This discussion is set in the (...) context of proxy criminalization, i.e. a situation, in which some suspicious behaviour is criminalized. Since proxy criminalization may be understood as an effective lowering of the evidentiary threshold, its employment is justifiable from the consequentialist perspective, while being highly problematic for the retributivists. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

Why is there something rather than nothing? This question, formulated by Leibniz, constitutes the basis of modern European ontology. In many ways this can be termed the main question of philosophy; but if so, a similar but less attended to question comes to mind, which I shall call the second best question of philosophy. The second best question of philosophy: Why is it better that there is something rather than nothing? seems to constitute a natural basis for moral theory. The (...) latter question often appears in philosophy of religion, in arguments leading to the thesis that God the Creator is good. Yet, modern moral philosophy tended to shy away from such a direct grounding in metaphysics. Not anymore. Luciano Floridi’s ethics based on anti-entropy is still a new and somewhat understated theory; having originated from information ethics it seems to have a hard time establishing itself as a general moral theory. But the potential of becoming a major alternative to the main positions in moral theory is there. It is my goal in this paper to highlight the promise, as well as certain difficulties, of Floridi’s theory. I will also undertake to move the work on anti-entropy ethics one step further, towards becoming a general moral theory. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 1, January 2022.

This theoretical paper is offered in the spirit of advancing the debate on the socioemotional wealth construct and its impact on how family firms conceptualize and practise corporate social responsibility. The study builds on Kellermanns et al.’s :1175–1182, 2012) claim that the SEW dimensions can be positively and negatively valenced as well as makes a distinction between the selective and instrumental approach to CSR and the holistic and normative one. Drawing on these considerations, it provides a theoretical underpinning in favour (...) of the view that SEW has ambivalent nature and therefore can produce detrimental outcomes for stakeholders of family companies. In this way, the study challenges the implicit assumption prevalent in the literature that SEW is “a prosocial and positive stimulus”. Crucially, it expands on the SEW construct by arguing that, given its ambivalent nature, SEW, as such, is at odds with the “strategic, whole-business view of responsibility”. Consequently, it posits that family firms—because of their concern with SEW—may be more likely to adopt the instrumental and selective rather than strategic and normative approach. Hence, it also makes the case for regarding the latter as a reference point to investigate the family company’s attitude towards social responsibility. It concludes by summarising the argument and offering future research avenues. (shrink)

The article presents the question of understanding divine causality and its analogical character in the context of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on Divine Providence. Analyzing Aquinas’s texts concerning the relation of God’s action towards nature and its activities it is necessary to emphasize the proper understanding of mutual relations between secondary causes and the primary cause which are not on the same level. Influenced by the reflection of M. Dodds and I Silva, the author of the article refers to Aquinas’s biblical (...) commentaries which have not been discussed so far from the perspective of the character of God’s action. In the final part of the article, metaphors used by Thomas in reference to the relation of God towards the world will be presented. (shrink)

The truly philosophical issue in machine conscioiusness is whether machines can have 'hard consciounsess'. Criteria for hard consciousness are higher than for phenomenal consciousness, since the latter incorporates first-person functional consciousness.

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)

Predictive processing models of psychopathologies are not explanatorily consistent with the present account of abstract thought. These models are based on latent variables probabilistically mapping the structure of the world. As such, they cannot be informed by representational ontology based on mental objects and states. What actually is the case is merely some terminological affinity between subjective and informational uncertainty.