The late 19th century debate among German-speaking physicists about theoretical entities is often regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate. This paper brings out differences between them by concentrating on the part of the earlier debate that was concerned with the conceptual consistency of the competing conceptions of matter—mainly, but not exclusively, of atomism. Philosophical antinomies of atomism were taken up by Emil Du Bois-Reymond in an influential lecture in 1872. Such challenges to the consistency of atomism had repercussions within (...) the physics community, as can be shown for the examples of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. The latter developed a series of counter-arguments, culminating in an ingenious attempt to turn the tables on the critics of atomism and prove the inconsistency of non-atomistic conceptions of nature. Underlying this controversy is a disagreement over specific goals of physical research which was considered crucially relevant to the further course of physical inquiry. It thereby exemplifies an attitude towards the realism issue that can be contrasted with a different, more neutral attitude of construing the realism issue as merely philosophical and indifferent with respect to concrete research programs in physics, which one also occasionally finds expressed in the 19th century controversy and which may be seen as the prevailing attitude of the 20th century debate. (shrink)

The late 19th century debate among German-speaking physicists about theoretical entities is often regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate. This paper brings out differences between them by concentrating on the part of the earlier debate that was concerned with the conceptual consistency of the competing conceptions of matter---{}mainly, but not exclusively, of atomism. Philosophical antinomies of atomism were taken up by Emil Du Bois-Reymond in an influential lecture in 1872. Such challenges to the consistency of atomism had repercussions within (...) the physics community, as can be shown for the examples of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. The latter developed a series of counter-arguments, culminating in an ingenious attempt to turn the tables on the critics of atomism and prove the inconsistency of non-atomistic conceptions of nature. Underlying this controversy is a disagreement over specific goals of physical research which was considered crucially relevant to the further course of physical inquiry. It thereby exemplifies an attitude towards the realism issue that can be contrasted with a different, more neutral attitude of construing the realism issue as merely philosophical and indifferent with respect to concrete research programs in physics, which one also occasionally finds expressed in the 19th century controversy and which may be seen as the prevailing attitude of the 20th century debate. (shrink)

A fundamental notion in a large part of mathematics is the notion of equicardinality. The language with Hartig quantifier is, roughly speaking, a first-order language in which the notion of equicardinality is expressible. Thus this language, denoted by LI, is in some sense very natural and has in consequence special interest. Properties of LI are studied in many papers. In [BF, Chapter VI] there is a short survey of some known results about LI. We feel that a more extensive exposition (...) of these results is needed. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the present knowledge about the language LI and list a selection of open problems concerning it. After the Introduction $(\S1)$ , in $\S\S2$ and 3 we give the fundamental results about LI. In $\S4$ the known model-theoretic properties are discussed. The next section is devoted to properties of mathematical theories in LI. In $\S6$ the spectra of sentences of LI are discussed, and $\S7$ is devoted to properties of LI which depend on set-theoretic assumptions. The paper finishes with a list of open problem and an extensive bibliography. The bibliography contains not only papers we refer to but also all papers known to us containing results about the language with Hartig quantifier. Contents. $\S1$ . Introduction. $\S2$ . Preliminaries. $\S3$ . Basic results. $\S4$ . Model-theoretic properties of $LI. \S5$ . Decidability of theories with $I. \S6$ . Spectra of LI- sentences. $\S7$ . Independence results. $\S8$ . What is not yet known about LI. Bibliography. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss Gabbay's idea of basing nonmonotonic deduction on semantic consequence in intuitionistic logic extended by a consistency operator and Turner's suggestion of replacing the intuitionistic base system by Kleene's three-valued logic. It is shown that a certain counterintuitive feature of these approaches can be avoided by using Nelson's constructive logic N instead of intuitionistic logic or Kleene's system. Moreover, in N a more general notion of consistency can be defined and nonmonotonic deduction can thus be based (...) on a logical system satisfying the Deduction Theorem. (shrink)

Zum Verhältnis von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Revolution bei Marx und Engels.--Primat der Ökonomie?--Die "neue Linke" und der Faschismus.

Czy eutanazja gwałci prawo do życia ("the right to life")? Odpowiedź na to pytanie zależy od rozumienia terminu "prawo do życia". Autor, odwołując się do pojęcia uprawnienia i typologii uprawnień, zaproponowanej przez Stiga oraz Helle Kanger, wyróżnia i analizuje w kategoriach formalnologicznych cztery rozumienia tego terminu. Każdemu z nich odpowiada odmienne stanowisko w sprawie dopuszczalności eutanazji. Pierwszym z tych stanowisk jest "mocna doktryna świętości życia", według której prawu do życia towarzyszy obowiązek przedłużania życia za pomocą wszelkich możliwych środków. Eutanazja zatem, (...) według zwolenników tego stanowiska, jest niedopuszczalna pod żadną postacią. Takie zdecydowane odrzucenie eutanazji stoi w sprzeczności z zasadą szacunku dla autonomii pacjenta oraz zasadą niezadawania zbędnego cierpienia (the principle of nonmaleficence). Uwzględnienie tych dwóch zasad prowadzi do modyfikacji powyższego stanowiska, w wyniku czego otrzymujemy "słabą doktrynę świętości życia". Według tego stanowiska dopuszczalna jest pod pewnymi warunkami eutanazja bierna, czyli zaniechanie leczenia czy też podtrzymywania życia pacjenta. Odmienne stanowisko od zwolenników doktryny świętości życia w obu jej odmianach zajmują zwolennicy liberalnego podejścia do eutanazji. Tutaj także możemy wyróżnić dwa stanowiska. Według słabego stanowiska liberalnego, w pewnych warunkach dopuszczalne moralnie jest popełnienie samobójstwa, niemniej jednak ściśle zakazana jest pomoc osób trzecich w samobójstwie, jak też pozbawienie z rozmysłem życia drugiej osoby na jej własną prośbę. Mocne liberalne stanowisko uznaje za moralnie dopuszczalną pomoc w samobójstwie czy też pozbawienie z rozmysłem życia drugiej osoby na jej własną prośbę. Innymi słowy, za moralnie dopuszczalną uznaje eutanazję czynną. (shrink)