The rapid development of empirical science and theoretical grounds related with them, results in many theories on the origin, evolution and nature of the world, sometimes interpreted as contradictory to the theological conception. Consequently, under the influence of these achievements, within theology itself, an opinion about autonomy of both domains and their complementarity seems to be more and more popular. Facing this relation, it is theology that should present the possibility of such understanding of the revealed truths that they could (...) coexist with scientific discoveries. Based directly on biblical texts, the sophiological vision of origin and nature of the world seems to be very interesting among other theological conceptions regarding this topic. The present article attempts to confront the sophiology’s presumptions on the eternal creative Wisdom with scientific thesis on the world’s nature, its development and on human existence in order to demonstrate the possibility of coexistence of these discourses with no contradiction. (shrink)

Charles Taylor is currently one the most renowned and influential contemporary philosophers. He is also widely quoted and discussed both in the social sciences and humanities. Taylor earns this attention through his remarkable capacity for presenting his conceptions in the broadest possible intellectual and cultural context. His philosophical intuition is fundamentally antinaturalistic, and tends toward developing broad syntheses without a trace of systematizing thinking, or any anarchic postmodernist methodology. His thought unites the past with the present, while culture is treated (...) as a broad mosaic of discourses. Religion, art, science, philosophy, politics and ethics are all fields through which the Canadian philosopher deftly moves about in his search for their hidden structures and deepest sense. Taylor's philosophical output is prodigious. Recently, as his monumental study A Secular Age (2007) indicates, he has been concentrating much of his attention on the problem of secularization.. The selection of contributions in the current volume proffer a penetrating cross section of Taylor's thought. They are derived from a conference held in October 2008 in Lublin, Poland Although some of the articles are focused on a reconstruction of the philosopher's concepts, most either engage in a polemic with elements of his thought or find inspiration in it for their own reflections. The contributions are grouped in four parts: 1) philosophy and the modern self; 2) the problem of secularization; 3) between liberalism and communitarianism; and 4) language, literature, and culture. (shrink)

The question of bodylines of the memory in the eschatological perspective During last decades the cognitive sciences have progressed a lot in analysing the link between mind and body on the field of philosophy of mind. The results of the body-mind investigations influence largely also theology. The classical theological thought considers the will, the reason and the memory as faculties of the soul. However, contemporary neuroscience attempts, with some success, to discover physical substrates of these faculties, which impacts also philosophy (...) of the mind. In this perspective, mutability and fragility of human body that is, according to psychologists, the memory’s ground, as well as human identity taken in its theological understanding, determined by the memory but transcending the temporal life, require some re-analysis of the spiritual dimension of the memory and some connection between the spiritual and the bodily sphere in the perspective of relation of the man with God. Though, theology must respect the scientific solutions of the body-mind question. In order to undertake it, the very object of theology and neuroscience has to be analysed to ascertain whether the memory examined by both sciences constitutes the same phenomenon. Then, one should analyse the philosophical assumptions of their discourses. Only these preliminary inquiries will allow to determine the philosophical area to build an integral reflexion. In turn, only this area may constitute the basis for such an anthropological-theological system that could retain its integrity vis-à-vis the discoveries of neuroscience. (shrink)

Infertility is a serious social problem. Very often the only treatment possibility are IVF methods. This study explores the possibility of outcome prediction in the early stages of treatment. The data, collected from the previous treatment cycles, were divided into four subsets, which corresponded to the selected stages of treatment. On each such subset, sophisticated data mining analysis was carried out, with appropriate imputations and classification procedures. The obtained results indicate that there is a possibility of predicting the final outcome (...) at the beginning of treatment. (shrink)

The IVF ET method is a scientifically recognized infertility treat- ment method. The problem, however, is this method’s unsatisfactory efficiency. This calls for a more thorough analysis of the information available in the treat- ment process, in order to detect the factors that have an effect on the results, as well as to effectively predict result of treatment. Classical statistical methods have proven to be inadequate in this issue. Only the use of modern methods of data mining gives hope for (...) a more effective analysis of the collected data. This work provides an overview of the new methods used for the analysis of data on infertility treatment, and formulates a proposal for further directions for research into increasing the efficiency of the predicted result of the treatment process. (shrink)

Book review: Adam Adamandy Kochański, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Korespondencja Adama Adamandego Kochańskiego i Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibniza z lat 1670-1698, D. Sieńko, wyd. Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana III w Wilanowie, Warszawa 2019, ss. 256.

The Polish philosophy of mathematics in the 19th century is not a well-researched topic. For this period, only five philosophers are usually mentioned, namely Jan Śniadecki, Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Henryk Struve, Samuel Dickstein, and Edward Stamm. This limited and incomplete perspective does not allow us to develop a well-balanced picture of the Polish philosophy of mathematics and gauge its influence on 19th- and 20th-century Polish philosophy in general. To somewhat complete our picture of the history of the Polish philosophy of (...) mathematics in those times, we here present the profiles of some lesser-known Polish Romantic philosophers of the 19th century, namely Karol Libelt, Bronisław Trentowski, and Józef Kremer. We discuss their contributions to the philosophy of mathematics and their metaphysical perspectives, and we also show how their metaphysical ideas have found some continuity in the studies of some Catholic philosophers. (shrink)

In this review, we present the philosophical blog “Cafe Aleph”, which was founded by Witold Marciszewski in collaboration with Paweł Stacewicz. The blog contains numerous expert entries on issues from the border of philosophy, science and technology. “Cafe Aleph” is an area for developing, popularizing and discussing the idea of philosophy of computing.

Review of book: Bondecka-Krzykowska I., Brzeziński K.M., Bulińska-Stangrecka H., et al., Przedmioty wirtualne, P. Stacewicz, B. Skowron, Oficyna Wydawnicza Politechniki Warszawskiej, Warszawa 2019, pp. 135.

This review article presents an important, newly published study of Popper's critical method by Zbigniew Liana. The review emphasizes the very high level of the study, points to its originality, and explains why the book is recommended mainly to specialists of Popper's thought. It is also explained how the book manages to contain so many original and valuable analyses in a small volume.

Recenzja książki: Michał Heller, _Ważniejsze niż Wszechświat_, Copernicus Center Press, Kraków 2018, ss. 128.

Vision of the Historical role of Poland in Jan Hempel’s Sermons The article presents the vision of the role of Polish nation presented in two works written by Jan Hempel – Polish Sermons and Piast Sermons. The main purpose of the article is to provide the reader with Hempel’s reinterpretation of the role of Poles elaborated by the authors of the Romantic period who regarded Polish nation as the God’s chosen people. Hempel, being a lifelong critic of Christianity, thought of (...) Poland as the Antichrist of nations. With this view in mind he interpreted Polish history and the role of Polish nation in the history of world. Author of the article presents Hempel’s vision of the aforementioned role of Polish nation and seeks its sources in the writings of other thinkers. (shrink)

The paper contains an attempt at formulating the project of logic comprised in Jan Łukasiewicz's article „On determinism” and a construction of a logic which would realise this project. Such a logic consists of three consequence-operations build upon a four-element algebra. The values of the algebra have been defined by means of the following set of sentences: true and true today, true but not true today, false but not false today and false and false today. It turns out that only (...) one of the consequences is different from the classical consequence and all of them are logically two-valued. It is proved moreover, that the assumption that tautologies consists of sentences-forms which are „always” true today, results in the non-existence of such tautologies. (shrink)

This article is an overview of the philosophy of informatics with a special regard to some Polish philosophers. It juxtaposes the informationistic worldview with the long-prevailing mechanical conceptualization of nature before introducing the metaphysical perspective of the information revolution in sciences. The article shows also how ontic pancomputationalism – regarded as an update to structural realism – could enrich the philosophical research in some classical topics. The paper concludes with a discussion of the philosophy of Jan Salamucha, a philosopher from (...) the Cracow Circle whose ideas could be inspiring for today’s philosophy of informatics in Cracow. (shrink)

By the late 1920s in Europe new art directions were regarded as already completed phenomena, a part of “avant-garde tradition.” Such views were expressed by Jean Arp and El Lissitzky’s in their book Kuntismen, and by Amédée Ozenfant’s in Art. Bilan des arts modernes en France. Similar opinions were also voiced by Jan Brzękowski, a Polish poet and critic, who regarded this time as a period of “establishing certain values” rather than new breakthroughs. In this article I discuss Brzękowski’s strategies (...) as a spokesman of modern art, an intermediary between the Parisian artworld and Polish avant-garde, an author connected with constructivism, and also with surrealist circles in Paris. My main focus is his magazine “Sztuka Współczesna – L’Art Contemporain” and his series of articles “Mileages,” in which he summarizes the developments of modern art. Conscious of the “wearing up” of avant-garde ideas and critical about seeking “novelty” for its own sake, Brzękowski tried to establish a progressive position based on the idea of formal discipline and creative construction. While rejecting a mimetic conception of art, he argued for abstract artistic form that would be “anchored to the bottom of life,” thus emphasizing the interplay of abstract and figurative elements and their dialectic. (shrink)

The following text is a voice in the discussion around normative problems of innovative therapies. It particularly refers to legal and ethical problems related to the advertisement of experimental medicinal products and medical procedures, also discussed in this issue in the article by Paweł Lipowski "Advertisements of experimental medicinal products and medical procedures in the light of Polish law and media ethics.".

The article deals with the perception of the Pope John Paul II and Poland in the two speeches of the Presidents of the United States of America. The George W. Bush’s speech given on the occasion of the dedication of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington DC on March 22, 2001 and the Donald Trump’s speech delivered in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument on the Krasinski Square in Warsaw on July 8, 2017 were used as the (...) sources for the study. The former speech is a laudation in honor of the Pope from Poland, whose biography was considered by the 43rd President of the United States as one of the most interesting in human history. Among the most notable episodes of the pontificate, George W. Bush listed the 1979 pilgrimage to his homeland, the 1995 visit to Manila in Philippines, the unprecedented visits to a synagogue and a Muslim country, the forgiveness shown to Ali Ağca – the would-be assassin, and the visits to the United States during which the Pope from Poland reminded the people of human dignity and the virtues of a just society. The latter speech is a laudation on the spirit of the Polish nation. Donald Trump emphasized the steadfastness of the Poles in the struggle to preserve their cultural identity despite the loss of their homeland. He recalled the period of partition and extermination of the Polish nation by the German Nazis and the Soviet Communists during World War II. The 45th President of the United States reminded the world about famous Poles: Nicolaus Copernicus, Frederic Chopin, Casimir Pulaski, Thaddeus Kosciuszko and Saint John Paul II. He also spoke about the lasting ties between the Americans and the Poles and about the common values cherished on both sides of the Atlantic. On the example of social transformations in Poland and Europe initiated by John Paul II’s pilgrimage to Poland in 1979, Donald Trump emphasized the influence of faith in God on political and social transformations in the world. He also expressed hope for the survival of Western civilization based on faith in God and the preservation of family and freedom. (shrink)

Brain activity determines which relations between objects in the environment are perceived as differences and similarities in colour, smell, sound, etc. According to selectionism, brain activity does not create those relations; it only selects which of them are perceptually available to the subject on a given occasion. In effect, selectionism entails that perceptual experience is diaphanous, i.e. that sameness and difference in the phenomenal character of experience is exhausted by sameness and difference in the perceived items. It has been argued (...) that diaphaneity is undermined by phenomenological considerations and empirical evidence. This paper considers five prominent arguments of this sort and shows that none of them succeeds. (shrink)

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

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

The relevance of metamathematical researches for philosophy of math- ematics is an indubitable matter. In the paper I shall speak about impli- cations of metamathematics for general philosophy, especially for classical epistemological problems. Let us start with a historical observation con- cerning Hilbert's programme, the rst research programme in metamathe- matics as a separate study of formal systems. This programme was strongly in uence by epistemological considerations. In fact, Hilbert wanted to se- cure all classical mathematics against inconsistencies and this (...) aim had be achieved with the help of nitary consistency proof. Hilbert's claim is like the Cartesian project of reduction of all concepts to clarae et distinctae ideae. The epistemological commitment of original Hilbert's programme may be treated as a prelim- inary heuristic motivation for looking for epistemological implications of metamathematical results. It seems reasonable to examine in this respect three so-called limitative theorems: the rst Godel's incompleteness theo- rem , the second Godel's incom- pleteness theorem consistency of S, cannot be proved in S, providing that S is consistent) and Tarski's undenability theorem ; \S" stands for formal system containing elementary number theory. From the above-mentioned theorems we obtain an important, from philosophical point of view, conclusion: semantics of S cannot be expressed in S. Now, I shall present three applications of limitative theorems to the analysis of classical epistemological problems. (shrink)

In the past centuries Maṇḍana Miśra was regarded as the most prominent figure of the advaita school of philosophy, to the extent that the whole system of advaita was frequently described by his name as ‘maṇḍana-matam’ (‘the view of Maṇḍana’). Nowadays advaita is almost exclusively associated, if not identified, with the name of Maṇḍana’s contemporary Śaṅkara. Both thinkers philosophizing along advaita lines, their views on the ultimate being, the highest bliss, ignorance etc. were substantially different. The present paper is intended (...) as a bird’s eye view on the whole of Maṇḍana’s legacy, including his Sphoṭasiddhi, being his contribution to the grammatical tradi­tion of Bhartṛhari. It is also aimed at finding the reason why in the hierarchy of eminent advaita thinkers Maṇḍana was eventually supplanted by Śaṅkara and his œuvre unacknowledged. (shrink)

Stephenson (2022) has argued that Kant’s thesis that all transcendental truths are transcendentally a priori knowable leads to omniscience of all transcendental truths. His arguments depend on luminosity principles and closure principles for transcendental knowability. We will argue that one pair of a luminosity and a closure principle should not be used, because the closure principle is too strong, while the other pair of a luminosity and a closure principle should not be used, because the luminosity principle is too strong. (...) Stephenson’s argument also depends on a factivity principle for transcendental knowability, which we will argue to be false. (shrink)

Modernity and What Has Been Lost comes out of a conference held at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw̤, Poland, on June 4-5, 2009 that sought to identify Leo Strauss's intellectual background in re: the repudiation of a modern idea of homogenous, universal state (considered as an illegitimate synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, i.e., the claims of Reason and Revelation). The world we live in, molded by science and historical relativism, may be described as hostile to human dignity or perfection, or (...) abhorrent to those who love the search for wisdom. Straussian teaching consisted in the steady effort to reopen "the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns," and refers to the esoteric way of writing practiced by the most profound thinkers of the past which has been apparently forgotten in the last three centuries. Strauss binds the concept of natural right with the question of maintenance of conditions for philosophizing, and it probably seems to him that such defense of philosophy is the highest task in our times. However, one must be well aware that philosophizing always means a perilous way of life. Indeed, it may be destructive of the city (polis) itself as far as the city exists due to some crucial beliefs the philosopher might put in doubt. Reflecting on those issues, Strauss engaged in several highly important debates with his contemporaries, in an open way with, e.g., Carl Schmitt, Karl Lw̲ith and Alexandre Kojv̈e, and more tacitly with Martin Heidegger"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The title of this article refers to one of the best-known essays written by David Hume, That Politics may be reduced to a Science. Hume assumed that politics was a science because it admitted of some general truths, which could not be varied by human beings. He adopted a similar stance, albeit indirectly, in the case of economics, discovering several general truths concerning the origins of wealth, money and international trade. At times, however, he was far from being consistent and (...) this undermined these truths. Consequently, it can be argued that, from his perspective, economics was a science on a theoretical level, but it lost this character at a more practical level. Similar doubts can be raised when it comes to Hume’s role in the history of economic thought. In some respects he was an original thinker, but several of his key concepts resembled to some extent ideas that had been put forward by ‘mercantilists’, especially those ‘mercantilists’ who were active in his native Scotland in the first decade of the 18 th century. (shrink)

1. Die erste Hälfte des Kommentars, mit Ausnahme der Kapitel über die Weltseele.

We investigate a simple game paradigm for intuitionistic logic, inspired by Wajsberg’s implicit inhabitation algorithm and Beth tableaux. The principal idea is that one player, ∃ros, is trying to construct a proof in normal form while his opponent, ∀phrodite, attempts to build a counter-model. The determinacy of the game implies therefore both completeness and semantic cut-elimination.

'What is real?' has been one of the key questions of philosophy since its beginning in antiquity. But it is not just a question that philosophers ask. This Very Short Introduction discusses what reality is by looking at a variety of arguments, theories, and thought-experiments from philosophy, physics, and cognitive science.