The present experiment investigated the relations of narcissism with social value orientation under façade conditions of testing communal or agentic traits. The results indicated that narcissism predicted less willingness to share resources with others and more competitive orientation in a façade communal condition compared to the remaining two conditions: control and agentic. The results confirm narcissistic disregard for communal domain and are consistent with the extended agency model of narcissism and the “success as a drawback” effect.

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work (...) together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation. (shrink)

Przedmiotem artykułu jest paradoks fikcji. Prezentuję wybrane najważniejsze próby jego wyjaśnienia i rozwiązania. Twierdzę, że ów paradoks wynika z przyjęcia silnego założenia, że do powstania reakcji emocjonalnej niezbędne jest przekonanie o realnym istnieniu czegoś. Przekonanie to wcale nie jest jednak konieczne — można bać się, że p, a równocześnie nie mieć silnego przekonania, że p. Wystarczy posiadać określoną myśl. Bronię tezy, że nasze reakcje emocjonalne zapośredniczone są przez umysł i jego reprezentacyjno-treściowe wyposażenie. Ze względu na skromne piśmiennictwo poświęcone temu tematowi (...) w języku polskim artykuł został napisany w języku rodzimym autora. Artykuł ma zatem charakter edukacyjny i przede wszystkim popularyzacyjny. (shrink)

In the evolution of the vertebrates and probably a few other animals (Metazoa), biological values have been translated (subjectivized) into affective experience that necessarily involves the consciousness of external objects/events (as different from one’s body), which is tantamount to the origins of subjectivity. Mammals, birds and other vertebrates are experiencing subjects even though their negative and positive experience greatly vary in scope. Some mammals are capable of vicarious experience and may act as empathic agents, and some of them, at least (...) the great apes, use true reflective self-consciousness and thus perceive themselves as agents, which generates attributive feelings. The balance of positive and negative experience determines the intrinsic value of (an individual) life. Every subjective life is autotelic in striving to maximize this balance. A subjective life may also have a social value that is measured in terms of the impact on intrinsic values of other lives. The social value of life is contingent upon an agency, that is, conscious intentional actions that impact intrinsic value of other lives. The difference between the social value of a subjective life and an instrumental value of an individual comes down to the difference between agent causation and event causation. The moral agency refers to a subcategory of agent causation that involves the awareness of impact on another subject’s wellbeing (interests). The moral agency is at present known only in the hominids (including the chimpanzees) which understand causality and use reflective self-consciousness, which in turn enables them to perceive themselves as agents and attribute to themselves responsibility. The moral agency originated as a motivational mechanism of reciprocity execution , and thus as an adaptation for group life, which is why it favors ingroup members and often promotes norms that harm other groups. The human moral agency is frequently used by third parties to implement group norms that are based on ideologies (religious or secular) and may actually harm both group members and the entire groups. Any received, bioculturally evolved morality is unlikely to be good in either absolute or universal sense. Therefore, the moral capacity alone does not make a human life categorically more valuable, even if human motivation were dominated by moral agency (which is true only of some people). The life of a vertebrate has, therefore, two values, intrinsic and social. Each can be negative or positive, and may vary to a large extent independently of the other, whereby a joint value of a subjective life cannot be sensibly assessed and compared without prior assessments of the intrinsic and social component separately. In the absence of objective reasons to rate the intrinsic value of a human life as categorically higher than that of other mentally advanced mammals, and in consideration of the observed range of social values of human lives, some of which approach zero and some are highly negative (lower than any thinkable negative values of non-human lives), the doctrine of extraordinary and inalienable (innate) human „dignity” is groundless and unethical, as it leads to a depreciation of the lives of non-human subjects, and often preempts the need to impart a real social value to one’s own life. (shrink)

The paper is a review of the book Przewodnik po metafizyce (ed. S. Ko³odziej­czyk, WAM, Kraków 2011). The book consists of fourteen essays concerning key issues of metaphysics, mostly written by leading Polish experts. The review contains a number of critical and polemic comments on some of the essays.

The linguistic studies written by Anna Wierzbicka have been an occasion for the remarks on the relationship between linguistics and philosophy and for the question whether linguistic enquiries entitle us to put forward philosophical theses. In particular, whether and to what extent we indeed learn something philosophically significant about the world (of culture) and the nature man and his mind by examining language. Defining here position as interdisciplinary, Wierzbicka draws on the studies of the relationship between language and culture, language (...) and mind (language is a mirror of the mind - Leibniz). She claims that philosophy can be made a reliable science, provided it is based on linguistics, and the results of linguistic analyses can be found at the grounds of philosophical theses. Such philosophical references are A. Wierzbicka\'s attempts to combine semantics with generativism (Chomsky). Her intention to bring about a holistic description of language through defining elementary expressions (concepts, meanings), the so-called indefinibilia (\"primitives\") can also be called philosophical in character. They suffice to define all the remaining expressions, and basic universal syntactic constructs in the form of a grammar of elementary units, i.e. the ways of combining elementary units into greater wholes. We think that Wierzbicka\'s procedure, her quest after primary elements (of language) are reducing. A. Wierzbicka\'s main idea, with regard to the relationship between language and mind, may be understood as follows: this is a Janus-faced relationship - one face (empirically accessible) is language, the other one is the mind accessible through investigations on language. Both \"faces\" (spheres) are somehow functionally \"glued together\". In fact, however, Wierzbicka speaks little about the philosophically comprehended nature of man, whereas she speaks much about linguistic varieties and similarities among people. Generally speaking, while she declares herself to be a linguist, she has a philosophical temper and ambitions to generalise, i.e. she conducts linguistic studies with an intention to arrive at philosophical theses (by examining language she wants to obtain knowledge about the world and man). She issues statements which go beyond a purely linguistic knowledge and strictly linguistic data, hence they are not made legitimate by the linguistic material itself. A. Wierzbicka does not explain in more detail her way of understanding philosophy, assuming its intuitive comprehension. From some contexts it can be deduced that she takes it to mean a worldview. Should we call some parts of her reasoning a philosophy, it is then not a realistic philosophy but subject-oriented (first-person philosophising), such that touches upon the problems of the borderline between linguistics and philosophy, more concerned with the axis language-user than language-the world. Simultaneously, it is a non-demarcated and non-autonomic philosophising, exactly within the context of science, for it takes advantage of the results of empirical sciences to pose philosophical theses. The belief that philosophy can be pursued within a linguistic context coincides with the approach of analytical philosophy with its linguistic turn. Despite her declarations to make philosophy more scientific, Wierzbicka\'s arguments on behalf of the generalised (philosophical) theses are more their illustration and explication than a decisive legitimacy. Her belief that one can find some common, primitive linguistic units (simplicia) in the form of a complete set of independent concepts for all languages of the world seems Utopian. It is difficult to do it even in deductive systems, constructed by way of the axiomatic method and with a finite set of initial expressions. (shrink)

Metafizyczny kreacjonizm a paradoksy teizmu ewolucyjnego: przyczynek do dyskusji w ramach współczesnego tomizmu Autor artykułu dowodzi, że metafizyczny kreacjonizm, z którym spotykamy się w filozofii św. Tomasza z Akwinu, w odróżnieniu od kreacjonizmu amerykańskiego oraz teologiczno-‑biblijnego, jest teorią, która wyrasta z czysto filozoficznego wyjaśnianie początków świata i człowieka. Nie jest zatem ideą biblijną przeniesioną na teren filozofii. Podobnie jak teizm metafizyki Arystotelesa, a także teizm metafizyki św. Tomasza z Akwinu nie jest teizmem religijnym, lecz teizmem czysto filozoficznym, gdyż wyrasta z (...) metafizycznego wyjaśniania rzeczywistości. Kreacjonizm metafizyczny jest ostatecznym wyjaśnieniem źródła istnienia bytów, które dane są nam w doświadczeniu, jako niekonieczne w istnieniu i zmienne. Natomiast kreacjonizm amerykański, jest interpretacja biologiczno-kosmologiczną biblijnej prawdy o stworzeniu świata w określonym przedziale czasowym i w punkcie wyjścia odwołuje się do danych Objawienia, które chce naukowo potwierdzić Artykuł został podzielony na dwie części. W części pierwszej zostały przedstawione węzłowe elementy metafizycznej teorii stworzenia ex nihilo i jej rozumienie. W drugiej zaś części artykułu zostały przywołane elementy teizmu ewolucyjnego, które z punktu metafizycznego kreacjonizmu są źródłem różnych paradoksów, a niekiedy i absurdów oraz domagają się ponownego przemyślenia. (shrink)

The article aims to present the results of empirical research and theoretical analyses concerning the transfer, co-creation, and utilization of scientific knowledge by various entities, emerging at the intersection of science and practice. The research was conducted using survey techniques and in-depth interviews among scientists engaged in research collaboration with entities outside the university, and through case studies of two institutions acting as external partners. Among them were the Lublin City Office and the Lublin Culture Workshops, a municipal cultural institution. (...) The work falls within the realm of social research, which directly (Zerubavel 1997) or indirectly (Sange 1990, Douglas 2011) addresses the functioning and adaptation of various social systems (in this case, institutions and organizations) from the perspective of the communicatively mediated cognitive processes occurring within them (Luhmann 2018, Weick 1995, Lenartowicz et al. 2016a, 2016b). In this context, the subject of cognition and the user of knowledge is not an individual human, but a social system/organization with the capacity to observe itself and its environment, to learn, and to anticipate its future (Hecker 2012; Walsh 1995, Luhmann 2018; Seidl 2006, Lant, Shapira 2001). It posits the existence of a kind of supra-individual rationality, which does not require something like a system's unique self-consciousness, akin to human consciousness, but operates on the principle of L. Fleck's thought collectives, which are emergent in nature with respect to individuals (Sady 2020, Luhmann 1990, Fleck 1986). The rationality of such collectives is defined by their belonging to a functional area of society, hence they differ in the case of entities belonging to the science, economy, politics systems, etc. The research focused on situations where, due to the need for knowledge, various organizations collaborate with scientific units. This research succeeded in characterizing the main stages of establishing and implementing such collaboration, and the main requirements associated with them. The study sought to determine the impact of the interaction of different rationalities on the nature of the co-created knowledge and to identify the conditions of its usefulness, both for external entities and for the scientific system. The adopted indicator of the usefulness of knowledge for the scientific system is the publication of results in scientific journals, while for external entities, its impact on the decision-making process, such as changing operational strategies. In this case, the mechanism of translating knowledge into changes in organizational practices was also examined, paying attention to the existing mechanisms of collective learning within the organization. (shrink)

Artykuł traktuje o etycznym wymiarze filozofii Micheala Foucaulta. Jego projekt, który polega na estetyzacji etyki, próbuję powiązać z całokształtem dokonań francuskiego filozofa. Jest to po części zapis ewolucji myśli, postulatów, a po części chęć wykazania zmiany jakościowej w późnych pismach Foucaulta. Do rozważań nad estetyzacją etyki wybrałem polemikę, jaką sam filozof podjął z Kantem i oświeceniowym projektem. Osią rozważań staje się refleksja nad pytaniem o teraźniejszość. Tłem inspiracje i wpływy filozofii starożytnej Grecji, Oświecenia, dwudziestowiecznego dandyzmu, jak i sugerowanej przeze mnie (...) strategii kulturowej camp. (shrink)

Problems with animal morality: The paper aims at discussing the category of animal morality in the light of contemporary scientific findings and theories. First, the issue of moral development is reconsidered in the context of evolutionary anthropology and primatology, then the main positions in this debate are presented. The author proposes a typology which is based on a distinction between various senses of morality, namely a descriptive, neutral, and normative sense. These three aspects of morality are explained in detail and (...) used when analyzing the problems specific to animal morality. The idea of morality applied by the leading participants of ongoing debates is also discussed. The article concludes with an observation that the main problem of these debates is not the very definition of morality and, at the same time, answering the question as to whether animals are moral beings or not, but rather what is essentially problematic are the consequences to be implied from a specific understanding of morality. (shrink)

Głównym przedmiotem badań jest sens nadawany idei sprawiedliwości społecznej w katolickiej nauce społecznej. Równie ważną kwestię stanowi to, jaki wpływ wywiera jej rozumienie na koncepcję wspólnoty politycznej. Doktryna katolicka została w tej dziedzinie zestawiona z, jedynie szkicowo zarysowanymi, rozstrzygnięciami w innych tradycjach refleksji społecznej. Punktem odniesienia były propozycje zawarte w myśli liberalnej i lewicowej. Z racji rozległości tematyki konieczne stało się ograniczenie do prezentacji jedynie wybranych wątków tego zagadnienia.

Artykuł jest próbą analizy pojęcia „wstępnego rozumienia”, i stanowi próbę odtworzenia i wyjaśnienia hermeneutyki Arendt, tzn. zrozumienia, o ile to możliwe, problemu wiedzy w sensie w jakim rozumie ją Arendt, na historycznym i filozoficznym gruncie jej myśli. Dokonanie tego zwrotu w hermeneutyce polityki Arendt, a ściślej w jej epistemologicznym aspekcie związanym z pojęciem „wstępnego rozumienia” możliwe stało się na tle odkrycia przez Heideggera „prestruktury rozumienia”.

The authors of the article present the basic assumptions of the project designed to prepare and publish the documents preserved in the collection of the State Archive in Olsztyn and related to Immanuel Kant’s academic activity. The article contains a characteristic of the archive material coming from the University of Albrecht in Königsberg, the results of early German research on Kant’s academic activity and a presentation of selected documents connected with his work at university as an ordinary professor, as a (...) dean of the faculty of philosophy, and as a rector. (shrink)

W artykule podjęty zostaje problem interpretacji tzw. efektu Knobe’a, czyli pojawiającej się asymetrii w orzekaniu o intencjonalności wywołania skutku ubocznego. Występująca tendencja jest wyjaśniana „zabarwieniem moralnym” ocenianych czynów. Do tej pory dyskusje prowadzone były głównie wśród filozofów, którzy w znacznej mierze teorię moralności postrzegają jako etykę zasad. W artykule analizy rozszerzają dotychczasowe badania o nurt teleologiczny w etyce, a w szczególności o tradycję etyki tomistycznej. Dociekania filozoficzne koncentrują się na problemie porządków normatywnych, a w szczególności na dwóch typach poznania: informującego (...) o ocenie moralnej i informującego o faktach. Zbadanie tego zagadnienia okazuje się pomocne nie tylko dla poszukiwań wyjaśnienia efektu Knobe’a, ale także lepszego zrozumienia samego zagadnienia intencjonalnego działania stosowanego w filozofii działania. W rezultacie występowanie asymetrii w przypisywaniu intencjonalności działaniom autor tłumaczy mieszaniem porządków poznawczych, które można sprowadzić do zagadnienia kompetencji normatywnych. Przy analizowaniu efektu Knobe’a kompetencje normatywne odpowiadałyby za rozróżnianie zbieranych danych poznawczych oraz porządku „czysto informującego” od porządku oceniającego, odnoszącego się do norm lub wartości. (shrink)

Stanisław Kamiński (1919-1986) was a philosopher, philosopher of science and historian of science. He defended in 1949 at the Catholic University in Lublin (KUL) his PhD thesis on Frege's axiomatic system of the sentence logic in the light of the contemporary methodology of deductive science. Since 1957 he was the head of the Chair of Methodology (the first one in Poland, founded in 1952 by J. Iwanicki) at the KUL, since 1965 the associate and since 1970 the full professor of (...) KUL. He was for many years the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy KUL where he developed the methodological foundations of the »Lublin-school of philosophy«. The main interests of S. Kamiński (1919-1986) was history of science and logic, general and special methodology, methodology of philosophy and (medieval) semiotics. Himself he saw his main achievements in the domain of the theory of science and the methodology of classical philosophy, especially in the studies of the method and language of metaphysics; he gave a methodological description of general metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history and studies on religion (religiology); he investigated the beginnings of the mathematical induction in the Middle Ages and in modern times, modern history of the theory of definition (Th. Hobbes, B. Pascal, J. Locke, E. B. de Condillac, J. D. Gergonne), the theory of argumentation (reasoning), the structure and the evolution of scientific theory, the deductive method (B. Pascal, G. W. Leibniz, G. Frege), the achievements of logic and philosophy in Poland. A characteristic feature of S. Kamiński's philosophical and methodological approach was a specific historicism, consisting of referring to the heritage of the past and at the same time to the latest achievements in logic and philosophy of science. He looked to history for inspiration, for how to solve his own problems and for a partial confirmation of legitimacy of his answers. He also used history to better understand the context of the discussed problems. His methodological interests are characterized by a philosophical and historical approach. He had a broad concept of knowledge and was maximalist both in raising questions and in giving answers. He cultivated the ideal of rational knowledge. In accordance with classical philosophy he saw the substance of person as ens rationale, a being realizing himself in a disinterested search for a theoretical truth, whose highest expression is philosophy. He stressed the epistemological and methodological plurality of knowledge and distinguished (with Kant) a material and formal part of knowledge, assuming that the formal element manifests itself as the logical form in the formal procedures of the (scientific) cognitive processes, that is in the (scientific) method and the (scientific) language. Making many attempts at a methodological characterization of different types of cognition and knowledge he distinguished – besides commonsense knowledge that lies at the bottom of any other type of knowledge – the scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge. None of them can be reduced to other type of knowledge, because each of them has its own problems, goals and methods. At the top there is a kind of sapiential knowledge which is much more than a simple generalization of all particular kinds of knowledge. S. Kamiński indebted his understanding of science to contemporary philosophy and to the classical philosophy. The nature of science was determined by him from the point view of its subject matter, aims, methods, logical structure and genesis. The question of what science is concerned with, i.e. what is its subject matter, is a philosophical question, it presupposes an appropriate understanding of the nature of the world. S. Kamiński opted for a pluralistic approach to the world: the principal object of science is the objective world but so are subjective states of man and products of his mind and his language. The best diagnostic test of the scientific character of science is the scientific method. Also here – rejecting the scientism (i.e. the view, that the scientific method and knowledge is the pattern and the measure of each knowledge) – S. Kamiński takes a pluralistic attitude. Accepting that the scientific method is not simple, that there is not one uncomplicated ideal way of doing science, and that because of the multiplicity of questions and scientific aims it would be difficult to construct one universal scientific method as a uniform set of rules for every kind of science, S. Kamiński assumes that different subject matter and different goals of scientific cognition require different research strategies and types of cognitive procedures. One manifestation of S. Kamiński's methodological pluralism is his antinaturalistic position in the theory of the humanities where he supported the thesis of their methodological autonomy with regard to natural sciences. Closer to the philosophical cognition and knowledge, the humanities do not meet and can not meet the conditions imposed upon the natural sciences, as they differ from them in subject matter (the world of culture) and hence in method (understanding, interpretation) used. The publications of S. Kamiński include over 350 positions. During his life he published three books: Georgonne'a teoria definicji [Georgonne's Theory of Definition], Lublin 1958; Pojęcie nauki i klasyfikacja nauk [Concept of Science and Classification of Sciences], Lublin 1961, 19813; and [together with M. A. Krąpiec] Z teorii i metodologii metafizyki [On the Theory and Methodology of Metaphysics], Lublin 1962. After his death five volumes of Collected Papers have been published: vol. I: Jak filozofować? [How to Philosophize? Studies in Methodology of Classical Philosophy], edited by Tadeusz Szubka, Lublin 1989; vol. II: Filozofia i metoda. Studia z dziejów metod filozofowania [Philosophy and Method. Studies from the History of the Method of Philosophizing], edited by Józef Herbut, Lublin 1993; vol. III: Metoda i język. Studia z semiotyki i metodologii nauk [Method and Language. Studies in Semiotics and Philosophy of Science], edited by Urszula Żegleń, Lublin 1994; vol. IV: Nauka i metoda. Pojęcie nauki i klasyfikacja nauk [Science and Method. Concept of Science and Classification of Sciences], edited by Andrzej Bronk, Lublin 1992); vol. V: Światopogląd - Religia - Teologia [Worldview - Religion - Theology], edited by Monika Walczak and Andrzej Bronk, Lublin 1998. (shrink)