This is a new edition of the manual published in 1974 and 1984. Compared with those earlier editions it is revised, enlarged and more precise in its argumentation. In its beginnings the manual aimed at meeting the didactic needs to present students of the Faculty of Christian Philosophy at the ATK a complete handling of Christian ethics. The author, who wrote his manual in difficult times of communist ideology, decided to include in one work, besides a positive exposition of Christian (...) ethics, a critical discussion with other ethical systems as well as his own explicit theory on Augustinian and Thomistic ethics, which he endeavoured to develop. Thus the work interlocked the didactic objectives and the process of growth and justification of the Author's views, Krakow 2001, p. 308). (shrink)

I review recent evidence that very young, pre-verbal infants attribute belief-like states when anticipating the behavior of others. This evidence is drawn from infant performance on non-verbal false belief tasks. I argue that, contrary to typical interpretations, such evidence does not show that infants attribute belief-like states. Rather, it shows that infants apply an enhanced version of what Gergely ( 2011 ) calls the “teleological stance” to brief bouts of behavior. This requires them to parse behavioral sequences into goals and (...) rationally/informationally-constrained means of achieving them; however, it does not require the attribution of unobservable mental states, like beliefs, that are causally responsible for behavior. (shrink)

In this paper, we introduce an extension of the modal language with what we call the global quantificational modality [∀p]. In essence, this modality combines the propositional quantifier ∀p with the global modality A: [∀p] plays the same role as the compound modality ∀pA. Unlike the propositional quantifier by itself, the global quantificational modality can be straightforwardly interpreted in any Boolean Algebra Expansion (BAE). We present a logic GQM for this language and prove that it is complete with respect to (...) the intended algebraic semantics. This logic enables a conceptual shift, as what have traditionally been called different “modal logics” now become [∀p]-universal theories over the base logic GQM: instead of defining a new logic with an axiom schema such as □φ→□□φ, one reasons in GQM about what follows from the globally quantified formula [∀p](□p→□□p). (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding the conceptual framework for the determination of death by neurological criteria, including several clinical and diagnostic practices, are addressed. The significance of a diagnosis of brain death, diagnostic criteria, and certain technical aspects of the brain-death exam are presented. Standard and ancillary tests that typically help achieve prudential certitude that an individual has died are indicated. Ethical concerns surrounding interinstitutional variability of testing protocols are evaluated and considered, as are potential apnea-testing confounders such as hypotension, hypoxemia, hypercarbia, (...) and penumbra effects during ancillary testing. Potential adjustments to apnea-testing protocols involving capnography, thoracic impedance monitors, or spirometers to assess respiratory efforts are discussed. Situations in which individuals determined to be brain dead “wake up,” or fail to manifest the imminent cessation of somatic functioning typically seen when supported only by a ventilator, are also briefly reviewed. (shrink)

"I reached the chair of philosophy via logic. Teaching logic became the field of my activity as a university professor of philosophy, a member of other humanistic faculties. Emphasis is here placed on the words 'teaching' and 'humanistic'. For my lectures and classes were conceived as an organon in the classical sense of the term, for philosophers as well as for those who, having completed their course of study, would espouse the cause of disseminating humanistic knowledge and thinking, particularly future (...) secondary school teachers. Somewhat later my activity embraced also law students. My linguistic equipment proved to, be very helpful in this respect. For it seems especially important when the problems of an organon of this kind are.. (shrink)

This book is an expanded version of the John Locke lectures delivered at Oxford in 1995 by one of the leading Australian philosophers. Its principal aim is to provide a defense of conceptual analysis against the familiar attacks of W. V. Quine and his followers, and to show that it is an indispensable method of philosophical inquiry. Being suspicious of abstract metaphilosophical declarations, Jackson builds his case for conceptual analysis upon detailed discussions of particular metaphysical and ethical doctrines, such as (...) physicalism, the primary quality view of color, and cognitivism and descriptivism concerning moral discourse. Hence the book is as much an original metaphilosophical study, as an important contribution to analytical metaphysics and ethics. (shrink)

Several years ago, Cohen, Dearnaley, and Hansel [1] demonstrated that under the influence of alcohol drivers became more risk prone, although their risk perception remained unchanged. Research shows that ambiguity aversion is to some extent positively correlated with risk aversion, though not very highly [2]. The question addressed by the present research is whether alcohol reduces ambiguity aversion. Our research was conducted in a natural setting (a restaurant bar), where customers with differing levels of alcohol intoxication were offered a choice (...) between a risky and an ambiguous lottery. We found that alcohol reduced ambiguity aversion and that the effect occurred in men but not women. We interpret these findings in terms of the risk-as-value hypothesis, according to which, people in Western culture tend to value risk, and suggest that alcohol consumption triggers adherence to socially and culturally valued patterns of conduct different for men and women. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives towards building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the (...) study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We claim that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals towards the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences. (shrink)

Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

I argue for two claims. First I argue against the consensus view that accurate behavioral prediction based on accurate representation of cognitive states, i.e. mind reading , is the sustaining function of propositional attitude ascription. This practice cannot have been selected in evolution and cannot persist, in virtue of its predictive utility, because there are principled reasons why it is inadequate as a tool for behavioral prediction. Second I give reasons that favor an alternative account of the sustaining function of (...) propositional attitude ascription. I argue that it serves a mind-shaping function. Roughly, propositional attitude ascription enables human beings to set up regulative ideals that function to mold behavior so as to make it easier to coordinate with. (shrink)

The eminent 20th-century Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981) is the author of a novatory philosophy of combating global suffering. Kotarbiński’s theory states that although humans are by nature rational, and additionally endowed with goodwill, human life nonetheless offers an endless stream of pain and suffering. Some of this suffering results from the essence of the human condition and can not be helped, mostly, however, it is the effect of the meanderings of the human mind and can be eliminated by (...) education. More than by anything else, the human mind is brought to err by so-called phantasmats, or emotion-laden intellectual mirages, mainly of a religious, national and political nature. Such phantasmats are the source and fundament of humanity’s divisions into hostile cultures, nations and political systems, which in turn gives rise to conflict between civilizations, countries and ideologies, inadvertently accompaniedby mounting mistrust, suspiciousness, xenophobia, hatred, armaments—and ultimately war. All this means an ocean of suffering for countless individuals. Both in philosophy and praxis Kotarbiński strove to eliminate all sources of suffering, including that stemming from differences in culture, development, nationality, and politics. He believed in the motivating powers of reason and the creative powers of persuasion, and consequently sought to attain his goal by rationalization, or focusing solely on the logic-driven and common experiencing of the human fate in a bid to eradicate cultural, national and political difference. Thus united, humanity would melt into one big human state devoted to lingering inevitable suffering. Today similar views are promoted as “global humanism”—which makes Kotarbiński a pioneer of the Humanistic Manifesto 2000. An Appeal for New Global Humanism brochure. (shrink)

Models and Tests : Contributions to the Quantitative Psychology and Its Methodology Jerzy Brzeziński, Tadeusz Marek. Marek Gaul INTERACTIONAL MODELS IN BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH Testing interaction on non-interval level of ...

The article presents two concepts of indexicality. The first, more standard and narrow, identifies indexicality with systematic (meaning controlled) context-sensitivity. The second, broader (derived from the work of Jerzy Pelc), conceives indexicality in terms of the potential variability of the general semiotic characteristics expressions (with respect to the context of use). The text introduces the concept of a pragmatic matrix that serves for a schematic representation of contextual variation. I also recapitulate briefly the views of Jerzy Pelc on the meaning (...) (manner of use) and use of expressions, and briefly indicate its relationship approaches with contemporary debates around contextualism and status of non-sentential speech acts. Finally, the relationship between the broader notion of indexicality and the directival theory of meaning is analyzed. (shrink)

I defend an alternative to the two traditional accounts of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognition as primary versus social cognition as primary. These accounts have complementary explanatory vices and virtues. They also share a natural assumption: that interpretation in terms of mental states is “spectatorial”, aiming exclusively for an objective description of the mental facts about self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental (...) states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person-level metacognitive concepts are socio-cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non-conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper, I shall consider how Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological argument has been misapprehended by those treating it as a proof for the existence of God. In the second part, I shall focus on Chapter One of the Proslogion and on the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to show what Anselm’s real purpose was regarding the problem of the existence of God. I shall support my view by referring also to the thought of John Henry (...) Newman and Henri de Lubac. (shrink)

There are three working theses formulated and proved in the paper. First, business ethics as a science not wishful thinking, encounters the following, impossible to overcome, difficulties: Lack of a precise definition of business ethics, Ethical relativism, Strong competition on national, international, and global market, Shareholders’ interests vs. social responsibility of a company, Objective (based on scientific laws) limitations of business ethics, Ethical codes vs. the rules of a company, labour and employment legislation. Second, the author claims that a company (...) cannot be treated as an ethical education institution. This kind of education should begin in a family, kindergartens, and schools. The issues of business ethics should be included into ethical education in above mentioned places. (e.g. negotiation, to keep one’s promise, to keep on schedule etc.) Third, the issue of business ethics (ethical codes) should not be restricted to a company only. It should be put into the context of sector, national, multinational, and global market. (shrink)

I argue that proponents of embodied social cognition (ESC) can usefully supplement their views if they enlist the help of an unlikely ally: Daniel Dennett. On Dennett’s view, human social cognition involves adopting the intentional stance (IS), i.e., assuming that an interpretive target’s behavior is an optimally rational attempt to fulfill some desire relative to her beliefs. Characterized this way, proponents of ESC would reject any alliance with Dennett. However, for Dennett, to attribute mental states from the intentional stance is (...) not to attribute concrete, unobservable mental causes of behavior. Once this is appreciated, the kinship between IS—understood as a model of our quotidian interpretive practices—and ESC is apparent: both assume that quotidian interpretation involves tracking abstract, observable, behavioral patterns, not attributing unobservable, concrete, mental causes, i.e., both assume social cognition is possible without metapsychology. I argue that this affinity constitutes an opportunity: proponents of ESC can use IS as a characterization of the subpersonal basis for social cognition. In the process, I make my interpretation of IS more precise and relate it to current empirical literature in developmental psychology. (shrink)

The author presents the problem of humanizing the demon and giving to the human being the demonic features. The analysis focuses on modern Polish prose, especially on such works: Cz. Miłosz, A. Szczypiorski, J. Broszkiewicz, A. Gołubiew, T. Konwicki, G. Herling- Grudziński. He is mostly interested in the devil figure as an evil spirit.

Bioethics is a fairly new, but very popular, discipline broadly present in the public debate of the Western Societies. It deals with difficult tasks and challenges faced by scientists to find ethical, social or political solutions to various problems created by modern science and technological growth. An impressive exploration of several bioethical issues can be found in the works of the Polish Jesuit, philosopher and, now a retired professor, Tadeusz Ślipko. For decades, his scientific attention, apart from theoretical topics, (...) was focused on the issues important to everyday human life. He placed a lot of emphasis on finding ethical solutions to the difficult issues discussed in the postwar Poland. He authored the first Polish ethical monograph devoted exclusively to modern problems of medical and technological development and titled Limits of Life. Dilemmas of the Modern Bioethics, first published in 1988 and reprinted in 1994. (shrink)

Using randomly generated sequences of binary events we asked participants to make predictions about the next event. It turned out that while predicting uncertain events, people do not behave unsystematically. Our research identifies four types of relatively consistent strategies for predicting uncertain binary events: a strategy immune to short-run sequential dependencies consisting of the persistent prediction of long-run majority events, hereafter called the long-run momentum strategy ; a strategy immune to short-run sequential dependencies consisting of the persistent prediction of long-run (...) minority events, called the long-run contrarian strategy ; a strategy sensitive to short-run sequential dependencies consisting of the prediction of short-run majority events, called the short-run momentum strategy ; and a strategy sensitive to short-run sequential dependencies consisting of the prediction of short-run minority events, called the short-run contrarian strategy. When the character of events remains unknown, the most common strategy is the short-run momentum strategy. With the increase of a perceived randomness of the situation, people tend more often to use the short-run contrarian strategy. People differ in their general beliefs about the continuation or reversal of a trend in various natural and social processes. Trend believers, when facing sequences of binary events commonly perceived as random, tend to use momentum strategies, whereas those who believe in the trend's reversal tend to use contrarian strategies. (shrink)

English title: The Issue of Evil in Philosophy of Józef Tischner. The paper presents several understandings of evil distinguished by Józef Tischner, like the axiological evil, agathological evil and structural evil. While exposing the phenomenological approach of Tischner, Gadacz discusses evil as ‘a phantom’ that accompanies the very source form of experience which, according to Tischner, stands for the episode of meeting another man. In this perspective evil as a ghost proves to be the source experience as well, alike the (...) episode of meeting being the source of happening of the good and freedom. Therefore, the original experience does not inform us whether something exists or it should be such and so, but rather tells us that there is something which ought not to be. (shrink)

One of the most controversial principles of contemporary functionalism is the so-called principle of organizational invariance. Roughly speaking it states that all systems with the same fine grained functional organization have the same conscious experience. The author of this article tries to show that the principle leads to absurdity.

A set-theoretical proof of Gowers’ Dichotomy Theorem is presented together with its application to another dichotomy concerning asymptotic l 2 basic sequences.

During the last two decades, the literature in management studies has shown a significant increase in interest in the theory of business models, and there has been wide-ranging discussion about the definitions of those models. These studies and discussions have provoked questions about the scientific nature of the foundations of business models. This article attempts to verify whether the proposed constructions of business models meet the objectives of abduction, which is, according to the methodology of science, one of the recognised (...) methods to verify the scientific nature of created theories. The verification was performed by using the method of the Scientific Research Tradition by Larry Laudan. The result unequivocally confirmed that the theory of business models that is created and defined based on management sciences falls under the scope of ScRT. It can be said that according to the methodology of science, the business models theory proposed on the basis of management science points to abduction as a tool that allows for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of formation and opens a new way of interpretation than is the case when using deduction or induction. (shrink)

Father Marian Morawski was born on the fifteenth of August 1845 in Gräfenberg. He joined the order of the Jesuits in 1863 in Stara Wieś. He began his philosophical studies there in 1866, which he finished in Cracow in 1868. Next he studied theology there during the years 1868-1872. In 1870 he was ordained in Śrem. So educated, he lectured philosophy to young Jesuits at Stara Wieś College. It was at that time, that he prepared and published the work by (...) the titile: Filozofia i jej zadanie [Philosophy and its task]. When, at the request of the editor Edward Podolski, the Jesuits took over the periodical "Przegląd Lwowski" and from 1884 began to publish it by the new title of "Przegląd Powszechny", Morawski became its first editor and published many of his own articles in it concerning science and religion. In this way he created a new breed of theological literature, known as „world-view literature". As a typical example, Wieczory nad Lemanem [Evenings on Leman] as well as the thesis Celowość w przyrodzie. Studium przyrodniczo-filozoficzne [Finality in the nature. A natural-philosophical study] were published multiple times and in many languages. From 1887 to 1899 Morawski was a professor at the Jagiellonian University, and during the years 1894-1895 he was the Dean of the Theology Department. He died in Cracow on the sixth of May 1901. (shrink)