This is a study about man who is a part of the world of physical events, including actions. As a bunch of actions which are conditioned by beliefs and other attitudes, man co-creates communities which emerge and vanish along time. While generating and undergoing changes man is potentially a dynamic and flexible creature who at least partially manages relations with the world, including other men. This study is of an interdisciplinary nature, where the author merges philosophy and cultural anthropology with (...) insight into sociology and communication studies. At the same time, the author takes an anti-essentialist position, where the study is a hypothetical construct. While doing this, the author assembles a particular vocabulary, where action, belief and community are addressed by communication, culture, thickness and the like concepts. (shrink)

Author: Zaporowski Andrzej Title: CULTURE AND CAUSALITY (Kultura a przyczynowość) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.12, number: 2011/1, pages: 279-289 Keywords: CULTURE, CAUSALITY, ACTION, EVENT, SYMBOLIC RELATIONSHIP Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The essay addresses the problem of how to link culture and causality. The starting point is an appeal to J. Kmita’s socio-regulative conception of culture where culture is given in terms of the propositional attitudes communally defined. Since human actions (...) are physical events, one can ask if they can enter into the causal relationship with other physical events. The problem is that this relationship is given to an agent through the cultural mediation. The mediation in question is possible due to the symbolic relationship embedded in the so-called symbolic sphere presupposed by Kmita’s conception. The causal relationship is therefore derived from the symbolic relationship. It is also the communal language which expresses the attitudes in question that is of a symbolic nature. Kmita’s conception then allows one to understand not only the communal nature of culture. It also shows how the human beings culturally defined live in a world of causality. (shrink)