In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Green Utopia Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis: November 30, 2022, University of Ferrara, ItalyManuel Sousa Oliveira, Ilenia Vittoria Casmiri, Fabiola Onofrio, Tânia Cerqueira, Francisca Teixeira, and Florian WagnerHow could we come together in transdisciplinary collaboration to deal with the climate crisis? Could utopianism be what brings us together? Last summer (2022) we started asking ourselves these questions, and months later Green (...) Utopia Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis was our initial attempt at finding an answer. The symposium was an ambitious and challenging venture from the start. Our aspirations for it were perhaps still formulated best in the event program:Green Utopia Now! brings together an outstanding group of early career researchers (ECRs) working on climate and the environment in various fields of study. The symposium will provide a creative space where ECRs can share their transdisciplinary perspectives on how to challenge the limits of monodisciplinary views on sustainability, and how the sciences and the humanities can join forces to tackle the current climate crisis. Each of these scientific and cultural points of view will be brought together by a utopian impulse that insists on the role of collaboration, and the urgency of positive [End Page 368] climate action. In fact, this symposium is guided by our conviction about the importance of (1) transdisciplinary collaboration, (2) innovative research conducted by ECRs, and (3) utopian thinking and practice for engaging with global scale problems.Fortunately, eleven guest speakers accepted the challenge, and their answers were unsurprisingly diverse.1If we are to approach the vicissitudes of the climate crisis, we must, as Hannah Nelson-Teutsch and Lena Pfeifer recently called for, seek “new, entangled form(at)s of scholarship in the humanities.”1 These entanglements have become even more obvious in the ways in which research on the climate and environmental crises challenges the very limits of humanities and monodisciplinary scholarship. Not circumscribed to the humanities, then, Green Utopia Now! similarly aspired to “new, entangled form(at)s” of transdisciplinary research at the intersection of environmental and utopian studies. Thus, it follows that this briefing too should diverge from the conventional form(at) in an attempt to convey the professional, personal and collective entanglements of our projects.Green utopianism, as described in a recent issue of this journal, shares with political ecological movements a radical and urgent “need to live and embody better alternatives within the Now.”2 This idea of “nowness” inspired our symposium down to its title. It would be only fitting, then, that the author, Heather Alberro, would deliver the opening keynote of the Green Utopia Now! symposium. Alberro (Nottingham Trent) joined us online to, on the one hand, (re)introduce the idea of green utopianism and, on the other, propose a new iteration termed “terrestrial ecotopianism.” Drawn for a wide range of both fictional and nonfictional, imaginative and empirical sources, Alberro’s terrestrial ecotopianism redirects our focus toward the here and the now. Providing a further layer to this utopian project is the work being conducted in empirical ecocriticism, as made obvious by W. P. Małecki (Wrocław), who delivered the closing keynote, which was based on “hot off the press” research on environmental communication, environmental psychology, as well as affective (and, of course, empirical) ecocriticism. It inquired into the possibilities of utopian cli-fi in general, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020) in particular, to change attitudes toward the climate crisis. [End Page 369]Most of our speakers, were far from being utopian scholars. Still, by the end of the symposium it was becoming clear that many (if not all) were in fact unwitting utopians. Regardless of the fields—from literature to genetics, biology to sociology, or economics to architecture—collectively the proposals that were put forth constitute a fresh and wide-ranging utopian project exploring both more and less exact ways of dealing with the climate crisis now. Not wishing to have the project become monolithic, much of the utopian aspirations for the symposium were placed in the process, the relationships, and the conversations. Even if to admittedly mixed results, the panels too... (shrink)

Dieter Birnbacher is professor of philosophy at the University of Düsseldorf and a member of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations’ scientific board. In 1988 he published the book Verantwortung für zukünftige Generationen ; which was translated into French and Polish. Hanna Schudy is an ethicist and environmentalist interested in questions of intergenerational responsibility concerning the natural environment. She is a doctoral student at the University of Wroclaw and a DAAD scholarship holder. The interview was conducted (...) in December 2011 at the Heinrich Heine Universität; Duesseldorf. It is part of Ms. Schudy’s current research into “The principle of responsibility in Hans Jonas’ and Dieter Birnbacher’s environmental ethics”. (shrink)

There were few Marxist sympathizers among Polish classicists decimated during World War II. How they fared during the tense and uncertain first postwar decade depended on their Communist connections and personality. Kazimierz Majewski (1903–1981), a classicist from Lviv, commanded quasi-universal respect in the academic community – despite his Communist views – because of his scholarly, organizational, and didactic achievements. Tasked with organizing and inaugurating a new Polish University in Wrocław in 1945, he contributed to creating three thriving classical (...) departments – philology, ancient history, and archaeology – a scholarly society, academic journals, and a vibrant academic community. When he moved to Warsaw four years later, he founded an institute for material culture, developed a multidisciplinary research team, and launched within the Soviet bloc two major archaeological excavation projects, in Olbia and in Novae, where generations of archaeologists learned how to perform fieldwork and communicate its results internationally through regular publications and cooperation. Through his Party connections, he protected and ensured support for colleagues less fortunate in this respect. (shrink)

Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Poland This article is a review of the book _Making AI Intelligible. Philosophical Foundations_, written by Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever, and published in 2021 by Oxford University Press. The authors of the reviewed book address the difficult issue of interpreting the results provided by AI systems and the links between human-specific content handling and the internal mechanisms of these systems. Considering the potential usefulness of various frameworks developed in philosophy to (...) solve the problem, they conduct a thorough analysis of a wide spectrum of them, from the use of Saul Kripke’s work to a critical analysis of the explainable AI current. (shrink)

From the initiative of the Institute of Philosophy of the Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow there was a debate last May that centred on a book by young author Filip Borek from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who is also a member of the board of the Polish Phenomenological Association. His book consists of a phenomenological interpretation of Vom Wesen der Wahrheit [On the Essence of Truth], an important work in which Heidegger (...) explores the essential connection between truth as correctness and freedom. In attendance were the following guests: Maria Gołębiewska (Polish Academy of Sciences), Paweł Korobczak (University of Wrocław), Daniel R. Sobota (Polish Academy of Sciences) and Jacek Surzyn (Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow), as well as the author himself. The debate was led by Magdalena Kozak (Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow). (shrink)

: Research done in recent years shows that Virtual Reality can be an effective tool for distracting attention from pain. The purpose of this study was to test how the complexity of Virtual Environment influences the experienced intensity of thermal pain stimuli. A within-subjects design experiment was conducted, using cold pressor test for pain stimulation. Research was done on 31 students of Wroclaw Universities. Participants played games created for the purpose of the study, using head mounted displays and movement sensors. (...) Two Virtual Environments differing in the level of complexity and non-VR control condition were used. The order of all conditions was counterbalanced. Participants reported significantly lower pain intensity after playing the high complexity game, compared to the low complexity game. There were also significant differences between non-VR control condition and high complexity game, but not between non-VR and low complexity game. The pain tolerance was significantly higher in both VR conditions comparing to non-VR conditions. However, no significant differences between VE’s were found in pain tolerance ratings. Results of this study provide preliminary evidence that game complexity can be related to pain experience during VR interventions. (shrink)

Maria Kokoszyńska-Lutmanowa was one of the most outstanding female representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School. After achieving her PhD in philosophy under Kazimierz Twardowski’s supervision, she was Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s assistant. She was also influenced by Alfred Tarski whose results in semantics she analyzed and popularized. After World War II, she got the chair of logic in University of Wrocław and she organized studies in logic in this academic center. In the 1930s, Kokoszyńska kept in contact with members of the (...) Vienna Circle and became a kind of connecting factor between Polish logicians and the Viennese group. In Poland, she presented the views of members of the Vienna Circle. In Vienna, she emphasized the results of her Polish colleagues. In the present paper, some of Kokoszyńska’s results connected with the matters discussed in the Vienna Circle are presented, namely with the problem of metaphysics, the status of logic and the idea of unity of science. (shrink)

Neo-Kantian in the Psychological Laboratory — Richard Hӧnigswald’s Research on the Principles of Mental BeingThe specificity of Richard Hӧnigswald’s attitude to the issues raised in the Neo-Kantian philosophy was clearly visible in his approach to psychology. First of all, this covered the question of the objectivity of cognizance. Like other Neo-Kantian philosophers, Hӧnigswald undertook in his work both the problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychology and the problem of psychologism. Unlike the representants of both Neo-Kantians schools, he took (...) up psychology practically. In the years 1916–1930 he led the psychological laboratory of the Philosophical Seminar at the University of Wrocław, where he conducted a study of the process of thinking. Hӧnigswald took up psychology as he intended to expand the question of objectivity by the subjectivity conditions of cognizance, among which the most important was a synthesis in the way that Kant used this term — primary apperception, i.e. the unity of Self-Knowledge. According to Hӧnigswald, there is no knowledge beyond the knowing subject — an experience centre in which cognitive acts take place. In this way, Hӧnigswald extended the epistemological questions by the notion of ontology of thinking — the theory of mental existence. (shrink)

Wilhelm Dilthey in WrocławThe article above discusses 11 years of Wilhelm Dilthey’s creative presence in Wrocław, a philosopher whose contribution to the European culture has been never questioned. Dilthey was appointed to the University of Wrocław in March 1871. Same year in October, he moved to Wrocław, took over the department of philosophy from Christlieb Julius Braniβ and started academic lectures in autumn. Acclimatizing in the Silesian capital was dif ficult for the philosopher, in his letters (...) he complained about the climate and provinciality of the city. It has changed over time, so that Dilthey finally adjusted to the environment. It happened because of numerous connections with the people from the university, among others with Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, but not only. In Dilthey’s biography, years in Wrocław were extremely prolific. In Wrocław Dilthey matured to the work of his life: Introduction to the Human Sciences, called in the subject literature the “crowning of the period in Wrocław”. He presented the concept of his work in a letter, among others, to Theodor Althof f, an of ficial from the Prussian Ministry of Culture. The preserved sketch of the letter is interesting because of its concept, but also because it shows a certain dependence of onetime philosophers on the state system. The article above contains an annex—a translation of this letter into Polish. Dilthey was a lecturer at the University of Wrocław until the end of the summer semester in 1882, after that he was appointed to Berlin in July 1882. (shrink)

Wroclaw’s Neo-Kantian Manifesto of Jacob FreudenthalThe initial part of the article focuses on the presentation of Jacob Freudenthal, his scientific activity and scientific achievements. The central point of the article is the analysis of the solemn speech that Jacob Freudenthal gave in front of the academic community of Wrocław on the hundredth anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s death. This speech — but also his didactic activity popularizing Kantian thought — was important because it gave rise to the relatively late Neo-Kantianism (...) of Wrocław which was developed more extensively — after Freudenthal’s death — thanks to Richard Honigswald. Neo-Kantianism opposed the prevailing Kantian idealism and experimental psychology at the University of Wrocław. (shrink)

Daniel Sennert is one of the more neglected big figures of that seventeenth-century process that goes by the shorthand name of Scientific Revolution. Born in Breslau/wroclaw in 1572, he was professor of medicine at the University of Wittenberg from 1602 until his death in 1637. However, his fame and importance were not due to his classroom teaching but to his writings, which were reprinted throughout the century in Germany, France, England, Italy, and the Netherlands, and partially translated into English. (...) His reputation among both his contemporaries and today’s historians of science has to do with the highly innovative synthesis of natural philosophy, medicine, and chymistry, which he presented notably in the two editions of his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu and in his late Hypomnemata physica, both of which relied on a novel type of atomistic matter theory. His influence, generally underestimated in today’s scholarship, was felt throughout the century and, as William R. Newman has demonstrated, is particularly important in the case of Robert Boyle, who was “plundering Sennert’s œuvre for proofs of the corpuscularian hypothesis,” albeit without acknowledging his source. (shrink)

This thesis defends the diagnostic accuracy and political usefulness of the claim that women are complicit in their sexual objectification. Feminists have long struggled to demarcate the appropriate limits of feminist critiques of sexual objectification, particularly when it comes to objectifying practices which women both consent to and experience as empowering. These struggles, I argue, are the result of a fundamental misdiagnosis of what happens when women are sexually objectified, whereby the abstract notion of 'treating as an object' is called (...) upon to explicate the kind of phenomena which can only be properly understood in light of a more general set of social norms of masculinity and femininity. A more accurate diagnosis of sexual objectification, I argue, is provided by Catharine MacKinnon's radical feminist theory, according to which sexually objectifying acts are manifestations of the social process through which women are made into objects of male sexual gratification. One important implication of this account is that women themselves play a role in perpetuating the norms through which sexually objectifying treatment of women is enabled: insofar as they participate in the re-constitution of the social context which facilitates their sexual objectification, they are complicit in it. Although this idea lacks intuitive appeal from a feminist perspective, I argue that understanding the nature of the contribution women make to perpetuating their objectification enables a better understanding of what practices of resistance are necessary for effectively combatting the sexual objectification of women. I defend the explanatory power of the complicity account of objectification in light of two pressing debates in contemporary feminist philosophy: the question of how women can disidentify from femininity given the strong attachments they develop to it, and the question of how feminism can continue to appeal to the motif of solidarity considering the anti-essentialist commitments of recent feminist theory. (shrink)

During the 15th century the Cracow University had become a major intellectual centre in central Europe. It was especially important in educating lawyers and administrators for the Polish-Lithuanian state as well as the higher clergy: as a result, special stress was put on legal and theological studies. The faculty of Liberal Arts (Philosophy), though less prized, also took part in the intellectual life of the Latin Europe, becoming home to representatives of most philosophical schools of the late Middle Ages. (...) Scotism was one of the last medieval schools to arrive in Cracow. It was introduces there by Michael Twaróg of Biestrzyków, who studied the doctrines of scotism in logic and metaphysics. His main source was not Duns Scotus, however, but his pupils and followers, notably Antonius Andreae, whose "Quaestiones super XII libros Metaphysicae" was a book widely read in Cracow since 1489. Antonius' solutions on the division of sciences, the subject-matter of metaphysics, the concept of being, etc. were accepted also by Nicholas of Michałowice, Martin Kulap of Tarnowiec, John of Głogów, and John of Stobnica. Some of them tried to combine some scotist ideas with philosophical views of other schools. In logic, the solutions associated with scotism started appearing in Cracow s little earlier – in 1470s – but their influence was weaker than in metaphysics. Again, they were mostly coming from the works of Scotus's followers of the 14th and early 15th century. The group of Cracow logicians influences by scotist opinions included John of Głogów, Michael of Wrocław, Nicholas of Giełczewo and Michael od Biestrzyków, who tried to combine the views of Scotus with those of Peter of Spain in his commentary on "Parva naturalia". Philosophy of nature was the discipline in which the influence of scotism was felt last and least. It is found mostly in the works of John of Stobnica – especially in his commentary on "Parvulus philosophiae naturalis" (1498) – and Simon of Leśniewo, John's pupil, who wrote glossa to the commentary. (shrink)

Traditionally, the field of science and technology studies (STS) considered the scientific laboratory as the central site of knowledge production and technological development. While providing rich analyses of the social construction of scientific knowledge and the role of non-human actors, STS scholars have often neglected the university – the very context in which laboratories themselves are embedded – as a relevant object of research. In this paper, we argue for re-introducing the university as a relevant category and object (...) of analysis by using the notion of epistemic virtues to link epistemic culture – traditionally the focus of STS – and epistemic structure – traditionally the focus of higher education studies. Advancing this line of argumentation, we make three analytical moves. First, we explore academic freedom as a specific version of negative liberty that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. We suggest that academics continuously negotiate academic freedom considering culturally and socially situated epistemic virtues such as objectivity and neutrality. Second, we introduce the notion of humility to revisit scientific knowledge production more generally and academic freedom in particular. Finally, we argue that practicing humility leads to enacting the university as an infrastructure of becoming otherwise, thereby enriching our understanding of universities as distinct and highly complex social spaces with a logic of their own. (shrink)

Digitalization of (higher) education has been an increasingly important subject in the recent years, spiking especially due to pandemic lockdowns. While many scholars and third parties consider this process to be an improvement or even an inevitability, I argue that there is much to understand about it beyond ‘attending to the materialities of digital education’. This paper aims to do two things: 1) to argue why digital materialities approach (‘attending to the materialities of digital education’) is not enough to grasp (...) the digitalization of the University (and thus, its stakes) and 2) to discuss how combining general organology and an educational-phenomenological outlook offers a more robust way of understanding digitalization of the University and its stakes. I conclude by pointing to the issue of place and placefulness that seems to be one of the most directly affected characteristics of the University and studying, which calls on to be reflected further upon. (shrink)

Musical Work Analysis is a holistic approach to the cognitive theory of the musical work. The book develops some of Roman Ingarden's concepts on the epistemology of an actually existing work of music. The author outlines an epistemological theory of the musical work by discussing the role of musical analysis in modern musicology, defining sources and objects of epistemological activity, formulating a systematization of analytical terms, issues and methods, both normative and descriptive, and addressing the relation between analysis and interpretation (...) of a musical work. The book was published in Polish language in edition of the Foundation for Polish Science (Wrocław University Press, Wrocław 2003) and awarded by the Polish Ministry of National Education (2004). (shrink)

Introduction. Higher education plays a particularly important role in the development of a country. The goal of the article is to describe the development of concepts about education in general and higher education in particular to explain the role of education in social life. Humboldt sees higher education as a process toward freedom and the search for true truth. Humboldt's philosophy of higher education is an indispensable requirement in the context of people struggling to escape the influence of the state (...) and church forces. The purpose is to find out the content and principles of higher education, especially meaningful suggestions for building an autonomous education in Vietnam today. Materials and Methods. The article uses materialist dialectic to analyze Humboldt's philosophy of higher education. In addition, the article also uses methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and contrast to clarify views on education in the history of human thought from ancient, medieval, modern and modern times, from which to draw the basic contents and principles in the philosophy of higher education of Humboldt. Results and Discussion. Humboldt is the founder of the University of Berlin - known as the mother of modern universities. It is a new university model based on the philosophy of upholding freedom in learning and teaching, upholding the scientific spirit to seek and discover the truth, and at the same time, combining teaching with scientific research. His liberal education philosophy has contributed to affirming the strength and position of universities. He criticized state intervention in university institutions. Based on the anthropological foundation of emphasizing human diversity, Humboldt's higher education philosophy is truly liberating when it comes to bold views. Humboldt believes that a university is a pure place of science and research, so it is not influenced by any outside force, even from the state. A university is where academic freedom, scientific freedom and other autonomy are guaranteed so that the institution can run smoothly. Universities must have unity between research and teaching. However, Humboldt's philosophy of higher education still contains many issues that need to be considered thoroughly. Specifically, the promotion of internal self-determination requires financial autonomy while the state's investment capital in universities is still quite large; Calling for education to be privatized is still inadequate. The elitist spirit in the Humboldt model is no longer fully relevant in the context of a market economy that tends to lead to the pursuit of targets, which are often related to quality. Practical significance. Humboldt's liberal philosophy of higher education has a strong influence, dominates and becomes a reality in many countries with advanced education. For Vietnam, Humboldt's higher education philosophy is a meaningful suggestion to build an autonomous education under the country's socio-historical conditions. (shrink)

The European Summer Schools in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) have been organised every year since 1989 under the auspices of the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in different cities around Europe. The 24th European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI 2012) took place at the University of Opole, Poland, during August 6-17, 2012. The organisation committee was chaired by Janusz Czelakowski and Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Opole) and the (...) programme committee was chaired by Andreas Herzig (University of Toulouse and CNRS). During two weeks, over 340 participants from 36 countries were offered a rich academic program of their choice from 9 foundational, 16 introductory and 17 advanced courses and 6 workshops. Just as in the previous years, the 17th conference on Formal Grammar collocated with ESSLLI. Besides the regular courses, a traditional highlight of the summer school were the 4 evening lectures by distinguished academics: - Johan van Benthem (Institute for Logic, Language & Computation (ILLC), Amsterdam and Department of Philosophy, Stanford University), "Computation as Agency''; - Melvin Fitting (Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, City University of New York), "Reasoning About Games''; - Jonathan Ginzburg (UFR Études anglophones, Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7)), "False starts, jokes, and music:semantics in the 21st century''; - Adam Przepiórkowski (Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), "Secret life of corpora''. Another traditional event was the student session, organised by a student programme committee chaired by Rasmus K. Rendsvig (University of Copenhagen): master and doctoral students presented 16 papers and 5 posters, and Michał Zawidzki obtained the best paper award and Raul Fervari obtained the best poster award. Moreover, the Beth Dissertation Prizes were announced at the FoLLI General Meeting and went to Andreas Kapsner (University of Barcelona) and Daniel R. Licata (Carnegie Mellon University). Apart from the busy academic programme, participants of the summer school were offered an exciting social program as well. In addition to the traditional ESSLLI Party and the famous Students vs. Lecturers Soccer Match (also called `Johan van Benthem Cup'), kayaking, and excursions to Kraków and Wrocław were offered. -/- . (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2019, Page 1-2.

Volume 51, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 89-91.

Mental disorders in university students are very frequent, therefore higher education institutions have established in-campus mental healthcare centres. These clinics have particular characteristics that differ from other mental health centres, as they report to and represent an educational institution, while at the same time looking after the interests and well-being of patients requesting assistance, thus generating unique bioethical conflicts. Ethics Committees are useful tools to offer support to mental health professionals in making ethical decisions. In order to respond to (...) these issues, it was decided that an Ethics Committee would be created in the mental health clinic of a private university in Mexico City. This article describes the implementation process for this Committee, its duties and scope, as well as the case work and review methodology. A list of the most frequent ethical conflicts is attached, jointly with the ethical analysis of the cases treated throughout the year and a half or work by the Committee. (shrink)

“Songspirals are a university for us, they are a map of understandings” (Gay’wu Group of Women, 2019, p. 33). This paper is authored by Bawaka Country, acknowledging Country’s ability to teach and share. Country is homeland and place. Country is everything and the relationships that bring everything to life. Country is knowledge. This paper is shaped and enabled by songspirals. Songspirals are sung and cried by Yolŋu people in north east Arnhem Land, Australia, to awaken Country, to make and (...) remake the life-giving connections between people and place. The Goŋ-gurtha songspiral leads this paper, showing us how a Yolŋu Country-led pedagogy centres Country’s active agency by learning through, with, and as Country. This pedagogy shares with us the ongoing connections within and between generations to ensure that knowledge remains strong and that sharing is done the right way, according to Yolŋu Rom, Law/Lore. This learning is predicated on relationality and responsibility. It is a more-than-human learning in which human knowing is decentred and Country is knowledgeable. It is a learning which recognises and respects its limits and it is a learning in which the ongoing sovereignty of Yolŋu people is front and centre. (shrink)