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 the paper we discuss criticisms against David Armstrong’s general theory of truthmaking by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Peter Schulte and Benjamin Schnieder, and conclude that Armstrong’s theory survives these criticisms. Special attention is given to the problems concerning Entailment Principle, Conjunction Thesis, Disjunction Thesis and to the notion of explanation.

In this paper, we investigate the effect described in the literature as the Group Knobe Effect, which is an asymmetry in ascription of intentionality of negative and positive side-effects of an action performed by a group agent. We successfully replicate two studies originally conducted by Michael and Szigeti, who observed this effect and provide empirical evidence of the existence of two related effects—Group Epistemic and Doxastic Knobe Effects—which show analogous asymmetry with respect to knowledge and belief ascriptions. We explain how (...) the existence of the Group Knobe Effect and its epistemic and doxastic counterparts affects the philosophical debate on collective agency and intentionality and supports the intuitiveness of realism about collective agency among laypeople. We also critically assess the reasoning presented by Michael and Szigeti in favor of the realist-collectivist interpretation of their results. We argue that a thorough analysis of both their data and our new findings shows a rather wide range of differing intuitions among laypeople regarding the status of groups as agents. These results show that while some laypeople may have realist-collectivist intuitions, the contrary realist-distrubutivist intuitions are also widespread and the claim that the majority of laypeople hold collectivist intuitions regarding group agency is unjustified. (shrink)

The paper is a rejoinder to a challenge against the particularist version of the mental files framework posed by the relationist approach based on the notion of content coordination [such as recent attempt by Rachel Goodman and Aidan Gray in ]. Relationists argue that important explanatory goals of MFF: could be achieved without positing files as mental particulars, as there is a relationist notion of content coordination at hand that can be aptly used for “filing without files”; and should be (...) so achieved, as there are difficulties that afflict the particularist approach to MFF and the relationist account is simply better. However, both claims should be rejected. The particularist approach to MFF, properly interpreted, would not get into the troubles it is accused of generating. Indeed, it is the relationist approach that gets in trouble. Specifically, it lacks resources for explanation of nuances, which can be easily accounted for in terms of particularist interpretation, and, furthermore, it lowers the interdisciplinary standing of the whole framework. The particularist version is therefore better. (shrink)

This paper initially follows the final part of the debate between singularism and descriptivism to the point of convergence, and discusses the notion of acquaintanceless singular thought. Then a sketch of a mental files model is presented. Firstly, the triggering mechanisms for opening files are discussed. Two kinds of discourse situations, acquaintance-situations and decoding-situations, are identified and different triggering mechanisms are postulated for each. Secondly, a bipartite structure of a file is introduced, combining an objectual part, encompassing what traditionally has (...) been associated with the notion of a mental file, serving the purpose of storing information about the referent of the file, and a metadata part, serving the purpose of storing information about the file itself. Being capable of encoding a variety of types of mental files, this structure is then employed to illustrate how singularity/descriptivity of the files can be manipulated and how we can account for the cognitive discernibility of files containing identical objectual information and grounded with the same acquaintance relations. (shrink)

In the paper the author tries to show that semantico-categorial analysis in the traditional Ajdukiewiczian application as a tool of evaluating semantic completeness of complex expressions is ineffective. There is, however, another application, to which the analysis is much better fitted. Namely, it allows to precisify the actual uses of natural language - in all those cases in which on the one hand precision is a superior value, and on the other hand, the formalisation is not possible and one has (...) to stay within natural language. Obviously, in order to achieve this aim many particular problems, sometimes not at all trivial, have to be solved. Amongst the most important the author sees determining a binding canon of the rules of analysis and determining pragmatic criteria of the admissibility of paraphrases and of filling in ellipses. (shrink)

The starting point of my considerations is the idea that the criteria of rationality should be distinguished from the essence of rationality (in linguistic formulation: from a non-criterional connotative definition) and that the question of the universality of rationality arises separately for the criteria and for the essence. I notice that a similar distinction between the essence (or a definition) and the criteria applies to the notion of truth. The thesis which constitutes ny standpoint is a compromising one: the criteria (...) (the sets of criteria) of rationality change in time and in space, the essence of rationality is universal and unchangeable. Therefore, the principal challenge for the comprehensional conception of rationality, which is to back up my standpoint, is a formulation of a good, non-criterional connotative definition of the rationality of science. My definition is the following: „Science is rational” means „the consecutive stages of its development allow us to better understand (in an identificatory sense) the world”. (shrink)

The editor rounds up the discussion between Tadeusz Ciecierski and Leopold Hess by pointing out that their conclusions are not as opposed as they are trying to show. On the contrary, on some interpretation one may even suggest that both views can convergently approach to some picture of the semantics of proper names. Roughly, the interpretation is that historical form of the debate about proper names has some drawbacks (as Hess points out) that could be mended if shifted to the (...) problem of nominal use (as Ciecierski would have it). (shrink)

The paper is divided into two parts. Part one (published in Filozofia Nauki, no 1-2/1995) contains revies of main types of rationality that can be found in literature, and an attempt to point out various relations among these types. Part two is devoted to analysis of some issues concerning detailed problems of rationality (e.g.: How to define rationality? Is rationality decidable? Does it come in degrees?).

The claim of this paper is that theism and atheism as beliefs about the nature of the universe are equally distant from any sort of proper justification by reasoning, but that faith cannot be reduced to any sort of belief. This claim is illustrated by a survey of several case-studies, including the case of moral sense, the so-called “God gene” and discoveries of Benjamin Libet on “free” movement. The illustrations attempt to show that only some imagerial associations connected with these (...) cases, and respectively with religious beliefs, would make an impression of incoherence, not their actual content. The conclusion of the paper would echo the statements of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who said in his Oxford University Sermons: “Faith is an instrument of knowledge and action, unknown to the world before, a principle sui generis, distinct from those which nature supplies, and independent of what is commonly understood by Reason”. Some implications of this conclusion, such as the notion of the rationality of faith, an account of the relation between science and theology, or the problem of agnosticism, are discussed, too. (shrink)

Kuala Lumpur is a diverse city representing many different religions and nationalities. Recent government policy has actively promoted unity and cohesion throughout the city; and the country of Malaysia, with the implementation of a programme called 1Malaysia. In this book, the authors investigate the aims of this programme – predominantly to unify the Malaysian society – and how these objectives resonate in the daily spatial practices of the city’s residents. -/- This book argues that elements of urban infrastructure could work (...) as an essential mediator ‘beyond community’, allowing inclusive social structures to be built, despite cultural and religious tensions existing within the city. It builds on the premise of an empirical study which explores the ways in which different communities use the same spaces, supported through the implementation of a theoretical framework which looks at both Western and Islamic conceptualisations of the notion of community. Through the analysis of Kuala Lumpur, this book contributes towards the creation of more inclusive places in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious communities across the world. (shrink)

In the article I discuss functionalist interpretations of Husserlian phenomenology. The first one was coined in the discussion between Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre. They argue that Husserl’s phenomenology shares similarities with computational functionalism, and the key similarity is between the concept of noema and the concept of mental representation. I show the weaknesses of that reading and argue that there is another available functionalist reading of Husserlian phenomenology. I propose to shift perspective and approach the relation between phenomenology and (...) functionalism from a methodological perspective, specifically taking into account the functionalist explanatory strategy called functional analysis. I discuss the notion of function in Husserl’s works and Husserl’s idea of functional phenomenology. The key argument I develop is that in functional phenomenology we can find an explanatory strategy which is analogous to the strategy of functional decomposition used in functional analysis. I conclude that the proposed functionalist reading of phenomenology opens a new approach to the integration of phenomenology with cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to the debate on the epistemological status of thought experiments. I deal with the epistemological uniqueness of experiments in the sense of their irreducibility to other sources of justification. In particular, I criticize an influential argument for the irreducibility of thought experiments to general arguments. First, I introduce the radical empiricist theory of eliminativism, which considers thought experiments to be rhetorically modified arguments, uninteresting from the epistemological point of view. Second, I present objections to the (...) theory, focusing on the critique of eliminativism by Tamar Szabó Gendler based on the reconstruction of famous Galileo's Pisa experiment. I show that her reconstruction is simplistic and that more elaborate reconstruction is needed for an appropriate assessment of the epistemic power of general argument. I propose such a reconstruction and demonstrate that general version of Pisa experiment is epistemically equal to the particular one. Thus, from an epistemological perspective, Galileo's thought experiment is reducible to a straightforward argument without particular premises. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce the work of Leopold Blaustein — philosopher and psychologist, who studied under Kazimierz Twardowski in Lvov and under Husserl in Freiburg im Breisgau. In his short academic career Blaustein developed an original philosophy that drew upon both phenomenology and Twardowski’s analytical approach. One of his main publications concerns Husserl’s early theory of intentional act and object, introduced in Logische Untersuchungen. In the first part of the article I briefly present Blaustein’s biography and (...) some general features of his philosophy. The second part provides an overview of Blaustein’s dissertation concerning Husserl’s early phenomenology. In the third and final part I summarize Blaustein’s research, including the critical remarks of Roman Ingarden. (shrink)