The article reviews the book Metodologia nauk [Methodology of the Sciences], by Adam Grobler.

This book revives inductive logic by bringing out the underlying epistemology. The resulting structural reliabilist theory propounds the view that justification supervenes on syntactic and semantic properties of sentences as justification-bearers. It is claimed to set up a genuine alternative to the prevailing theories of justification. Kawalec substantiates this claim by confronting structural reliabilism with a number of epistemological problems. While the book is addressed to both professionals and students of philosophical logic, probability, epistemology, and philosophy of science, it (...) also surveys ideas central to the development of philosophy in the 20th century. It will be a valuable companion to multifarious graduate and postgraduate courses. (shrink)

Review of Paweł Kawalec, Przyczyna i wyjaśnianie. Studium z metodologii i filozofii nauki, Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.

The paper focuses on knowledge generation, a topic frequently overlooked in the traditional debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. We focus on investigation as the primary process generating knowledge and its products. Investigation is taken as a generalization of the research process that includes similar knowledge-generating practices in aboriginal communities. To characterize the complexity of investigation processes and their products we go beyond traditional epistemological characterization of knowledge in terms of mental states and turn to the concept of routine. (...) Investigation processes share a common symbolic representation form which we call here a knowledge thread. The dynamics of the knowledge thread may be characterized by two intertwined tiers: cognitive and institutional. Using examples from our previous studies, especially on the recent discovery of microRNAs in molecular biology, we illustrate the dynamics of threads and claim that it is susceptible to the social network analysis which, however, requires insightful applications and sound interpretation of the results. Such an interpretation, as we suggest, may further be elaborated on the grounds of anthropological theories of distributed agency and distributed cognition. (shrink)

The author presents Leszek Kołakowski from the perspective of his private acquaintanceship, lasting for about 47 years, as a witty man and a workaholic. L. Kołakowski never formed a classic “school”, but there is something all his disciples share: a thesis, key to understanding his ideas, which holds that “THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CORRECT OPINION IN THE HUMANITIES”, i.e. we will ALWAYS have opinions for and against, which goes against any dogmatism, wherever it may appear; this also bears consequences (...) in diagnosing the socio-political reality past and present. (shrink)

This article sets out to propose some characteristic features of the intellectual and ethical attitudes which, in the popular belief and scholarly communities alike, stand for ideals worthy of promoting as ones which could underpin a modern society where both believers and unbelievers can feel at home. The “ethos” is construed to be about the sort of behaviour logically stemming from a tolerant outlook on the one hand, and an intellectual commitment to a noble cause worthy of one’s efforts, on (...) the other. (shrink)

This article sets out to propose some characteristic features of the intellectual and ethical attitudes which, in the popular belief and scholarly communities alike, stand for ideals worthy of promoting as ones which could underpin a modern society where both believers and unbelievers can feel at home. The “ethos” is construed to be about the sort of behaviour logically stemming from a tolerant outlook on the one hand, and an intellectual commitment to a noble cause worthy of one’s efforts, on (...) the other. (shrink)

The author analyses conceptual metaphors characteristic of one of the literary theories, the theory of intertextuality, employing the methods of cognitive linguistics, i.e. the cognitive theory of metaphor. He claims that the tools of this conception enable one to describe the idea of paradigm-change; in this context author considers the role of metaphor in science. By interpreting synonyms as different realizations of various Idealized Cognitive Models, he shows that the change of metaphors employed in talking about ‘what happens between texts’ (...) leads to evolutionary change from ‘influentology’ to ‘intertextuality’, a transformation closely related to the change of the subject of history of literature. The change of metaphors transforms the focus of literary theory ; its focus moves from the author to the reader, and from the act of creation to the act of reception. Within this perspective writing is no longer a creatio ex nihilo but an innovative re-creation of ‘what has already been read’. This change enables one to capture some paradoxical inversions, like the one which demonstrates how a subsequent texts influence texts prior to them. (shrink)

The paper discusses basic philosophical assumptions of the new conception of scientific research which tends to possibly complete automation of research. The theoretical underpinnings of reliable inquiry sets a framework for a comprehensive spectrum of attainable solutions to a research problem formulated in the framework given the theoretical assumptions and available evidence. The framework is general, but the success criteria are adjustable to a domain of inquiry. Research on causal dependencies in macroeconomics seems a successful application of the framework.

The Community of the Polish Brethren operated in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1563–1658. Over this period the condition of toleration worsened from acceptance to the decree of banishment. The author analyzes the dynamics of the religious movement: its objectives, achievements and the conflicts with the society they were part of. The evolution, both within the community and in external relations, required the inclusion of the elements of Social Psychology into historical narration.

The paper develops and provides rationale for M. Foucault’s proposition of there being far-reaching theoretical convergences between his concept of Genealogy and the Critical Theory by Frankfurt School philosophers. In the author’s view, the similarities are marked in three areas:1. historical discourse, severing the ties with a traditional interpretation of history, i.e. one that makes the perspective of power absolute;2. an ambiguous approach to the Enlightenment as expressed in a rejection of the doctrine while preserving Enlightenment ethos;3. criticism of the (...) anthropology that assumes a primacy of mind over matter on the premise of exposing a self-conscious subject as a product of the harnessing of Nature. Wile emphasizing the spiritual kinship between Foucault and the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, the author does record significant differences, mostly concerning the nature of the historical process, an expression of the issue of power and the relation between power and knowledge. (shrink)

The article is preceded by “Introductory Remarks”, in which the author, for the sake of comparison, outlines the situation of Socinianism in Holland, England and France. The main part of the article is devoted to the discussion of the German scene, and describes the subject in seven points, namely: 1. The 17th century—the orthodoxy of the Protestant Germany in its fight against the Socinian phantom; 2. Leibniz; 3. The 18th century: orthodoxy and the Neologians; 4. The stance of Lessing; 5. (...) Socinianism as seen through Kantian-tinted spectacles; 6. Otto Fock: the first modern, scientific monograph of Socinianism; 7. Wilhelm Dilthey on the role of Socinianism in the intellectual history of Europe. (shrink)

The paper discusses the place occupied by Latin America and Eastern Europe in the contemporary world-system in the era of increasing globalization. It discusses the dominant types of consciousness in both parts of the world, where a tendency to overcome dependence and peripheral position are noticeable as is a desire for democracy and foreign relations based on partnership. What is long raised and very characteristic for thinkers coming from those very different regions of the globe are attempts to create a (...) new universalistic philosophy, more or less utopian, for the whole of mankind. (shrink)

Faced with the loss of a part of the Polish state’s territory, that is, after the first partitioning of Poland by the neighboring countries—Russia, Austria and Prussia—and fearing even worse possible scenario of the loss of independence, the last king of Poland Stanisław August Poniatowski made a far-sighted decision, which he implemented on 14 October, 1773, by a motion, passed by the Partition Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, establishing the Commission for National Education, prefiguring the Ministry for National Education. The (...) source of funding was the post-Jesuit property obtained by the suppression of the Jesuit Order by Pope Clement XIV; the order was abolished in Poland, as well.Cracow and Vilna universities were modernized, and these were also entrusted with the direct supervision of secondary schools, created anew as secular ones. Instruction in parochial elementary schools was carried out in Polish only; few of those were set up in the countryside, though. Entries were invited for course books in natural sciences and the history of Poland. Women were included in the state’s educational effort, too. (shrink)

The editorial note recommending the book by Vladimir Kantor Russkaya Klasika Ili Bytiye Rassiyi communicates that the author (philosopher, novelist and historian) believes that only this culture is fully valuable whose most representative artists’ work turns into classics, thus gaining the status of high culture. It indicates the extent to which the great names of Russian literature write with an awareness that in order to make it into the classics canon of European literature, too, one needs to reckon with the (...) previous work of Dante, Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Hegel, Marx, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and a number of other prominent representatives of the culture of the West. This is not to say that Pushkin, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Gogol or Dostoyevsky were imitators. By reproducing patterns or themes developed by the literature of the West, they set those in realities fundamentally different from the social realities of the West, often in a polemic vein. Kantor stresses that the great artistic ambitions or the Russian classics are accompanied by great social duties because they lived and created their artin a country that had been lagging behind for centuries. It did catch up at times, but it was successful only as of Czar Peter I, not without periodic regressive collapses, though. The sense of social obligations, characteristic of Russian writers, intellectuals, or intelligentsia, and to be more precise, the implementation of these obligations, enabled Kantor to prove that the progress of literature—the great classics in particular—was linked in Russia with civilizational progress, and that in terms of the weight of these links, Russia was very different in civilizational progress from Europe, which lay ahead civilization-wise. (shrink)

The early 18th century saw the beginnings of Russian military occupation of Poland, followed by a secret agreement by the neighboring countries, meant to maintain a political status quo in the internal affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then, the dynamics of the economic transformations of the European continent led to a permanent economic deadlock, particularly in the regions with large agricultural areas, such as Poland. Five years from the turn of the 18th century the Polish polity disappeared from the map (...) of Europe for 123 years. Analyzing the relationships and causes of a number of phenomena related to Old Poland is made all the more difficult by some historical processes which blow some ritual events of limited importance out of proportion, such as theadoption of the Constitution of 3 May (1791; particularly due to its content being rather reactionary); these also glorify the past of the society and the state as a “golden myth” of social harmony in relationships obtaining within the classes and between them. (shrink)

Przedmowa Problematyka związana z zależnościami przyczynowymi, ich modelowaniem i odkrywa¬niem, po długiej nieobecności w filozofii i metodologii nauk, budzi współcześnie duże zainteresowanie. Wiąże się to przede wszystkim z dynamicznym rozwojem, zwłaszcza od lat 1990., technik obli¬czeniowych. Wypracowane w tym czasie sieci bayesowskie uznaje się za matematyczny język przyczynowości. Pozwalają one na daleko idącą auto¬matyzację wnioskowań, co jest także zachętą do podjęcia prób algorytmiza¬cji odkrywania przyczyn. Na potrzeby badań naukowych, które pozwalają na przeprowadzenie eksperymentu z randomizacją, standardowe metody ustalania zależności przyczynowych (...) opracowano na początku XX wieku. Zupełnie inaczej sprawa przedstawia się w przypadku badań nieeksperymentalnych, gdzie podobne rozwiązania pozostają kwestią przyszłości. Zadaniem tej książki jest podanie warunków, które powinny być spełnione przez te rozwiązania, oraz sformułowanie proceduralnego kryterium zależności przy¬czynowych jako szczegółowej realizacji tych warunków. Pociąga ono waż¬kie konsekwencje dla filozofii i metodologii nauk, które ujawnia – podany w Części II – zarys me-todolo¬gii proceduralnej. W literaturze przedmiotu brakuje w miarę wszechstronnego i systema¬tycznego omówie¬nia najnowszych filozoficznych i metodologicznych dys¬kusji na temat przy¬czynowości, co niech będzie wytłumaczeniem, dlaczego w niektórych punktach obecnej książki szczegółowo referuję trudno dos¬tępne teksty źró¬dłowe. Przymiotnik „proceduralny” używam tu w znaczeniu węższym niż Huw Price (w którego pracach właściwszy byłby termin „kryterialny”) dla podkre¬ślenia – zgodnie z łacińskim źródłosłowem procedo – że dla ustalenia przy¬czyny niezbędne jest podjęcie przez uczonych określonych interakcji z ba¬daną rzeczywistością. Zalążki zamysłu prezentowanego w tej książce przedstawiłem podczas warsztatów filozoficznych „Philosophy and Probability” w roku 2002, zor¬ganizowanych przez Instytut Filozofii Uniwersytetu w Konstancji. Wdzięczny jestem uczestnikom tych warsztatów za uwagi, a przede wszyst¬kim następującym osobom: Luc Bovens, Brandon Fitelson, Alan Hájek, Stephan Hartmann oraz Jon Williamson. Podczas międzynarodowej konferencji „Analytical Pragmatism”, zorgani¬zowanej w Lublinie w roku 2003 przez Wydział Filo¬zofii Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, odniosłem swoją koncepcję do prac Nancy Cartwright. Szczególnie inspirujący okazał się komentarz Huw Price’a do mojego referatu i przeprowadzona z nim dysku¬sja. Ujęcie koncepcji metodologii proceduralnej na szerszym tle współ-czes¬nego nurtu empirystycznego w filozofii nauki przedstawiłem w roku 2004 podczas konferencji „5th Quadrennial Fellows Conference”, zorgani¬zowanej przez Instytut Filozofii Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego oraz Centrum Filozofii Nauki w Pittsburghu. Szczególnie pomocne w dalszych moich pra¬cach były uwagi Jamesa Bogena, Janet Kourany, Jamesa Lennoxa, Johna Nortona, Thomasa Bonka, Jana Woleńskiego i Johna Worralla, za które wyra¬żam swoją wdzięczność. Korpus książki powstał podczas mojego stażu w Centrum Filozofii Nauki w Pittsburghu, który odbyłem jako stypendysta Fundacji na Rzecz Nauki Polskiej w roku akademickim 2004-2005. Uczestniczyłem w tym czasie w życiu naukowym Centrum i w pracach badawczych zespołu z Instytutu Filozofii Uniwersytetu Carnegie-Mellon w Pittsburghu kierowanego przez Clarka Glymoura. Na jego ręce składam podziękowanie za wiele po¬mocnych uwag do moich wy¬stąpień oraz tekstów i za dyskusje przede wszystkim z nim samym i z jego najbliższymi współpracownikami: Peterem Spirtesem oraz Richardem Scheinesem, a także pozostałymi członkami tego zes¬połu, doktorantami i uczestnikami seminarium badawczego „Causality in the Social Sciences”. Za wieloletnie wsparcie, wielopłaszczyznowe inspiracje towarzyszące pi¬saniu tej książki, a także liczne pomocne uwagi do jej wcześniejszych wersji dziękuję przede wszystkim Księdzu Profesorowi Andrzejowi Bronkowi oraz Księdzu Profesorowi Józefowi Herbutowi, współprowadzącemu seminarium doktorskie w Katedrze Metodologii Nauk Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubel¬skiego im. Jana Pawła II, jak również pozostałym uczestnikom tego semina¬rium. Dziękuję mojej Żonie, dr Annie Kawalec za wiele wysiłku włożonego w ulepszenie redakcji – językowej i merytorycznej – obecnej książki. Książkę tę można czytać na kilka sposobów. Czytelnikom zainteresowa¬nym przede wszystkim prowadzeniem badań empirycznych polecałbym rozpoczęcie od Rozdziału 2. i kontynuację pozostałych rozdziałów Części I, a następnie Dodatków. Czytelnikom zainteresowanym problemami filozo¬fii i metodologii nauk polecałbym rozpoczęcie lektury książki od Części II i uzupełniającą lekturę Rozdziału 2., a następnie Wprowadzenia i Zakończenia. Czytelnikom mniej zainteresowanym zagadnieniami teoretycznymi pole¬całbym zapoznanie się z fascynującymi dziejami odkrycia przyczyn cholery przez Johna Snowa, które rekonstruuję w Rozdziale 1. W dalszej części nato¬miast polecałbym przejście do Wprowadzenia i Zakończenia, które w mniej specjalistyczny sposób przybliżają proponowane tu rozstrzygnięcia. Tekst książki nie był dotąd publikowany. Wyjątkiem są pewne fragmenty Rozdziału 8. oraz 9., które w zmienionej postaci ukazały się w Rocznikach Filozoficznych (Kawalec 2004). -/- Lublin, luty 2006 r. (shrink)

People of Jewish origin arrived in the American Continent as early as 15th century and have participated in shaping the states and societies on the continent. A fact little known in Poland, Jews and their culture are inherent in Latin American reality. The paper attempts to provide an insight into Ashkenazic Diaspora in its Latin American dimension.

One of Darwin’s purposes in writing The Origin of Species was to rebut the doctrine of separate creations. Moreover, the argument he was chiefly concerned with—which was both his target and the model of his own argument—was the familiar argument from design.

Author tells the story of his close and very long-lasting acquaintance with Leszek Kołakowski as well as commentates on his intellectual biography and achievements as political and literary essayist, philosopher, historian of ideas, and public figure. In particular, he describes in details the first half of Kołakowski’s life, namely the period when he made his long journey from being communist in his student years to becoming as a young scholar the leading figure of Marxist revisionism in the late fifties and, (...) after a time, a principled critic of Marxism itself and a fervent anti-communist.In many respects, Kołakowski’s itinerary was not exceptional but it had at least two noteworthy characteristics. First, in opposition to quite a few other cases, his way away from communism turned out to be scholarly fruitful as it resulted in an uniquely indepth historical research, covering the founders, the golden age and the breakdown of so called “scientific socialism” (his voluminous work Main Currents of Marxism remains one of the best and the most comprehensive monographs of the topic). Second, Kołakowski’s abandoning of his former Weltanschauung was followed by his discovery of religion as an extremely important part of human experience and sine qua non condition of the survival of civilization, permanently menaced by barbarians. However, it is to be doubt whether he may be considered as a convert or a religious thinker in the strict sense of the word since he believed in horrors of the absence of God rather than in the real presence of his in the world. As defender of transcendence and tradition, Kołakowski certainly became a kind of catholic-Christian without denomination but as acritical philosopher remained at the same time highly skeptical about everything. Dreaming of solid fundaments, he was all his life an uncompromising enemy of any fundamentalism. Being nostalgic about the Absolute, he was incurable anti-absolutist. (shrink)

Our life in this broken world requires tools to own and express our grief in ways that are connected to our faith in God. We find that the biblical genre of lament is appropriate to the task. However, we do not come to lament without baggage, and we sometimes require additional help in the form of symbolic capital borrowed from stories and songs. In this case, The Chronicles of Narnia provide such capital. As we reflect on these stories, we can (...) see lament in a new way that helps us bring our pain to God. As we engage in the discipline of lament, we are spiritually formed into the image of Jesus. (shrink)

Anna Kawalec ABSTRACT: Through a detailed case study of investigations on beauty, I demonstrate that a thoughtful consideration of empirical evidence can lead to the disclosure of the fundamental assumptions entrenched in a philosophical discipline. I present a contrastive examination of two empirically oriented approaches to art and beauty, namely, the anthropology of art and ….

In this work, we explore the epistemic import of the value-ladenness of Neyman-Pearson’s Theory of Testing Hypotheses by reconstructing and extending Daniel Steel’s argument for the legitimate influence of pragmatic values on scientific inference. We focus on how to properly understand N-P’s pragmatic value-ladenness and the epistemic reliability of N-P. We develop an account of the twofold influence of pragmatic values on N-P’s epistemic reliability and replicability. We refer to these two distinguished aspects as “direct” and “indirect”. We discuss the (...) replicability of experiments in terms of the indirect aspect and the replicability of outcomes in terms of the direct aspect. We argue that the influence of pragmatic values is beneficial to N-P’s epistemic reliability and replicability indirectly. We show that while the direct influence of pragmatic values can be beneficial, its negative effects on reliability and replicability are also unavoidable in some cases, with the direct and indirect aspects possibly being incongruent. (shrink)

We show that if among the tested hypotheses the number of true hypotheses is not equal to the number of false hypotheses, then Neyman-Pearson theory of testing hypotheses does not warrant minimal epistemic reliability. We also argue that N-P does not protect from the possible negative effects of the pragmatic value-laden unequal setting of error probabilities on N-P’s epistemic reliability. Most importantly, we argue that in the case of a negative impact no methodological adjustment is available to neutralize it, so (...) in such cases the discussed pragmatic-value-ladenness of N-P inevitably compromises the goal of attaining truth. (shrink)

For a fixed q  ℕ and a given Σ1 definition φ(d,x), where d is a parameter, we construct a model M of 1 Δ0 + ¬ exp and a non standard d  M such that in M either φ has no witness smaller than d or phgr; is equivalent to a formula ϕ(d,x) having no more than q alternations of blocks of quantifiers.

The article reviews the book Metodologia nauk [Methodology of the Sciences], by Adam Grobler.

The widespread particularist account of the onset of molecular biology that identifies it with the discovery of the DNA structure in 1953 has been recently contested. The paper contributes to this debate by focusing on a more recent discovery of small noncoding RNAs. First, it outlines a particularist account of the microRNAs discovery and the origins of the particularist predilection of the modern scientometric studies of science dynamics. Next, it discusses its limitations and proposes an alternative, modified processualist account of (...) the discovery. In the final part, the paper applies this approach to unravel network dynamics of the research on the first two microRNAs that were discovered, namely lin-4 and let-7. (shrink)

Abstract The opening section outlines probabilism in the 20th century philosophy and shortly discusses the major accomplishments of Polish probabilist thinkers. A concise characterization of Bayesianism as the major recent form of probabilism follows. It builds upon the core personalist version of Bayesianism towards more objectively oriented versions thereof. The problem of a priori probability is shortly discussed. A tentative characterization of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s standpoint regarding the inductive inference is cast in Bayesian terms. His objections against it presented in Pragmatic (...) Logic are presented. His 1958 paper on justification of non-deductive inference, as amply demonstrated by K. Szaniawski and I. Niiniluoto, extends his earlier Baysian position from 1928 monograph. In the closing section Ajdukiewicz’s standpoint is presented as a characteristically pragmatist and empiricist version of Bayesianism, which remains an unexplored and stimulating position. (shrink)

This article sets out to propose some characteristic features of the intellectual and ethical attitudes which, in the popular belief and scholarly communities alike, stand for ideals worthy of promoting as ones which could underpin a modern society where both believers and unbelievers can feel at home. The “ethos” is construed to be about the sort of behaviour logically stemming from a tolerant outlook on the one hand, and an intellectual commitment to a noble cause worthy of one’s efforts, on (...) the other. (shrink)

The paper outlines and discusses the major tenets of moderately pluralistic methodology. The latter is juxtaposed to J. Życiński’s principle of natural interdisciplinarity. It instantiates scientific pluralism as a domain-specific agenda for research. The symbolic and causal understanding are integrated in this methodological conception by means of a specific kind of counterfactual reasoning, which is coined the delimiting counterfactual. It makes the moderately pluralistic methodology applicable to non-experimental research. -/- Streszczenie Tytuł: “Umiarkowanie pluralistyczna metodologia” -/- Artykuł prezentuje i omawia zasadnicze (...) założenia koncepcji umiarkowanie pluralistycznej metodologii. Ta ostatnia jest zbieżna z J. Życińskiego zasadą naturalności interdyscyplinarnej. Reprezenuje ona szeroko rozumiany nurt pluralizmu naukowego w zakresie sposobu prowadzenia badań w danej dziedzinie. W tej koncepcji połączone są dwa poziomy rozumienia symboliczny i przyczynowy za pomocą swoistego rodzaju wnioskowań kontrfaktycznych, określonych tu jako rozgraniczających wnioskowań kontrfaktycznych. Dzięki nim umiarkowanie pluralistyczna metodologia ma zastosowanie do badań nieeksperymentalnych. -/- Słowa kluczowe: pluralizm naukowy, Józef Życiński, Rudolf Carnap, wnioskowanie kontrfaktyczne . (shrink)