We obtain several game characterizations of Baire 1 functions between Polish spaces _X_, _Y_ which extends the recent result of V. Kiss. Then we propose similar characterizations for equi-Bare 1 families of functions. Also, using related ideas, we give game characterizations of Baire measurable and Lebesgue measurable functions.

We generalize the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem on ideal convergence. We show examples of ideals with and without the Bolzano-Weierstrass property, and give characterizations of BW property in terms of submeasures and extendability to a maximal P-ideal. We show applications to Rudin-Keisler and Rudin-Blass orderings of ideals and quotient Boolean algebras. In particular we show that an ideal does not have BW property if and only if its quotient Boolean algebra has a countably splitting family.

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)

Leading authors in their fields present an interdisciplinary panorama of vital themes of the philosophy of language and track their historical origins. This book gives new life to historical ideas and additional depth to current debates.

In its attempt to come to grips with the nature of the human mind idealism employs such terms as "pure self," "transcendental apperception," "pure con sciousness" and so on.

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)

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)

Samuel J. Wheeler defends Wittgenstein's criticism of Cantor's set theory against the objections raised by Hilary Putnam. Putnam claims that Wittgenstein's dismissal of the basic tenets of this set theory concerning the noncountability of the set of real numbers was unfounded and ill‐conceived. In Wheeler's view, Putnam's charges result from his failure to grasp Wittgenstein's intention and, in particular, to consider the difference between empirical and logical impossibility. In my paper, I argue that Wheeler's defence is unsuccessful and, at the (...) same time, that Putnam's objections go too far. (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.

Citizen identification systems (known also as ‘ID card systems’, or ‘national identity management systems’, even though those definitions are not identical) are receiving a mixed acceptance, with their privacy, security and usability being criticised, specifically in the UK. This paper investigates whether it is possible to improve social acceptance of such systems in cases where they are incompatible with the perceived value of privacy, but without significantly changing their original architecture. The paper analyses requirements using four different scenarios that address (...) long-term privacy issues. Relatively small alterations to such systems are suggested that may significantly improve their adoption. (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)

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.

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)

As shown in (Łukowski, Gensler, 2013), the paradox of the stone is a failed attempt to show that “omnipotence” is a contradictory concept. An element of the argument presented there is that God, while unable to lift the stone, can nevertheless annihilate it. This work considers the amplification of the paradox of the stone to the form generated by the question: can God create a stone which He will not be able to lift, nor, once created, will He be able (...) to destroy. (shrink)

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)

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)

The paper discusses a relatively underexamined element of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics associated with his critique of set theory. I outline Wittgenstein’s objections to the theories of Dedekind and Cantor, including the confounding of extension and intension, the faulty definition of the infinite set as infinite extension and the critique of Cantor’s diagonal proof. One of Wittgenstein’s major objections to set theory was that the concept of the size of infinite sets, which Cantor expressed by means of symbols אₒ and (...) c, had no application, i.e. that there was no grammatical technique that could show how such expressions were to be used. Notions of set theory are, so to speak, exterior – they find themselves outdoors, outside of what we usually do. They form a discourse that takes us beyond the horizon of everydayness and commonality. They are like an engine idling of the language of mathematics. (shrink)

Maria Kokoszyńska-Lutmanowa (1906-1981) was a Polish philosopher and student of Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. In 1938 she went to the University of Cambridge (Newnham College) on a Sarah Smitton Fellowship. There she attended George Edward Moore’s lectures as well as one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics in 1939. In this interview which was conducted with Alois Eder she talks about her encounter with Wittgenstein. It was published in 1978 in the Polish art (...) and culture magazine Odra and is her only published memoir about Wittgenstein. The interview is republished here both in English translation and as facsimile of the original publication with the kind permission of the Odra magazine. (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.