(2000). Language Matters: the politics of teaching immigrant adolescents school English in the secondary school. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 61-71.

The paper examines the interest of the Sophists in the problems of the Pre-socratic philosophy of nature.

In the paper I argue that Kant’s philosophy underlies both contemporary individualism and personalism. The Kantian categorical imperative may be, in my opinion, interpreted in an anti-egotistical way and in an entirely individualistic one. The first kind of interpretation not only made a contribution to the emergence of numerous and manifold kinds of personalism, but it also inspired many critics of individualism. The second kind of interpretation, together with the Kantian analyses of human self, became essential to the conceptualization of (...) modern individualism. I argue that Kantian tradition in many respects appears to be close to Thomism as far as the conception of person and human individual is concerned. As the dispute between American Thomists, discussed in the paper, reveals, Thomistic personalists found, in Kant’s philosophy issues which filled some gaps in the scholastic heritage, especially in anthropology, ethics, and social problems. (shrink)

Brzezinski predicts that the interface between ethics and science will be the new frontier of politics, and it will place on the shoulders of democratic leaders and those concerned with human rights, the obligation to be at least part-time scientists and philosophers.

Critical Pragmatics develops three ideas: language is a way of doing things with words; meanings of phrases and contents of utterances derive ultimately from human intentions; and language combines with other factors to allow humans to achieve communicative goals. In this book, Kepa Korta and John Perry explain why critical pragmatics provides a coherent picture of how parts of language study fit together within the broader picture of human thought and action. They focus on issues about singular reference, that is, (...) talk about particular things, places or people, which have played a central role in the philosophy of language for more than a century. They argue that attention to the 'reflexive' or 'utterance-bound' contents of utterances sheds new light on these old problems. Their important study proposes a new approach to pragmatics and should be of wide interest to philosophers of language and linguists. (shrink)

This article questions the belief expressed in various histories of pharmacy that the tenth-century Arab physician Avicenna introduced the tradition of coating pills with gold and silver. Although an examination of his Canon documents Avicenna's interest in the medicinal application of gold and silver, no mention is made of coating pills. Nor do other Islamic physicians seem to have been familiar with this practice, any more than such medieval European authors as Arnaldus of Villanova, Raymund Lull or Johannes de Rupescissa. (...) The same is true of medicinal compendia representative of later periods, such as the Ortus sanitatis, Valerius Cordus' Dispensatorium or the Secrets of Alessio Piemontese. The earliest known mention of coating pills with precious metals occurs in a non-medical book, The Golden Fleece , and the earliest mention in the professional literature seems to appear only in the second half of the seventeenth century. The practice of coating pills with gold and silver was to be practiced in Europe into the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it assumes and what it proposes. Doubtless, some of these misconceptions are due to clumsy writing on our part; perhaps others are due to inattentive reading. And some may be due to an effort to shield us from the apparent implausibility of what we said—and in fact meant. It does not matter much. We focus on those misunderstandings that most matter to us, either because, by (...) repetition, they have ended up being annoying, even if they are not, perhaps, that important; or because they are substantial enough to represent a distortion of the basic picture of Critical Pragmatics and its theoretical foundations, namely, Critical Referentialism—also known as the Reflexive-referential Theory—and, more generally, Perry’s fundamental views on meaning and content(s). (shrink)

In formulating the puzzle about cognitive significance in ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Frege rejects the approach he suggested in the Begriffsschrift on the ground that if the utterance of a sentence of the form a = b is understood as ‘a’ and ‘b’ referring to the same object we lose the subject matter. In this note, we will show how Frege’s concerns can be understood and circumvented.

The author aims at evaluating the activities on the Facebook profiles of three regional media editorials – namely the ‘TVP 3 Łódź’ TV channel, the ‘Radio Łódź’ radio channel, and the Express Ilustrowany daily – particularly in terms of including local and regional information in their posts. Another objective was to attempt to quantify and compare these activities. The used research method is the analysis of profile content on Facebook, and the study was conducted within the period of one month.

Jednym z elementów współczesnej kultury są seriale telewizyjne, w przeważającej mierze charakteryzujące się brakiem jakichkolwiek wartości artystycznych oraz intelektualnych. Do nielicznych pod tym względem należy serial pt. Dr House. Centralną kwestią w tym serialu jest postawa moralna głównego bohatera. Krytycy dostrzegli w niej wiele analogii do moralności Nietzscheańskiego nadczłowieka. W artykule podjęto próbę ukazania, że w moralności dr House'a odzwierciedla się Nietzscheański model estetyzacji moralności, polegający na tym, że kryterium etycznej słuszności czynów jest wolność jednostki i jej autonomiczność w kształtowaniu (...) swego życia jako dzieła sztuki. (shrink)

Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. “Vulcan,” “Jacob Horn,” “Odysseus,” and “Sherlock Holmes,” for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or (...) false. We are basically referentialists about proper names. The ordinary semantic function of a proper name is to refer to an object, and to do it directly, that is, without semantically providing any identifying condition that the object should meet to be the referent. To put it differently, we agree that statements containing proper names express singular propositions, i.e., that their truth-conditions involve the referent of the proper name, if it exists, and not any identifying condition of it. Now, since empty names lack a referent, and therefore would not express such a singular proposition, how do we explain that many, if not all, statements containing them have a truth-value? Answering this question for the case of fictional names, in particular, is the aim of this paper. (shrink)

Philosophical interests of Joseph Życiński in the domain of the philosophy of science were focused on the debate concerning the nature of science and philosophy of science that followed the Einstein-Planck revolution in science. The unexpected discovery of the philosophical, extra-scientific presuppositions in science, as well as of the extra-rational factors determining the way these presuppositions are accepted in science were to be explained within the meta-scientific framework. It is the aim of this paper to present ˙ Życiński’s diagnosis of (...) this post-revolutionary situation in the philosophy of science as well as his critique of the metascientific answers to this challenge. The reasons will be given why all those answers are put under two dichotomous rubrics of _internalism_ and _externalism_. It will be also explained how Życiński intends to supersede this false in his opinion opposition with a new concept of the doxatic rationality. However, the details of the metascientific proposal of Życiński will be given only in the subsequent paper. In order to perform the aim of the paper the metatheoretic tools set out by Popper will be used. (shrink)

Der Artikel handelt von den ausgewählten Problemen, die sich mit der Einrichtung des Textraumes in folgenden Romanen: Granatowy Goździk, Rudolf Pątnicy z Macierzyzny, Gość beschäftigt. Jeder von den gennanten Romanen ist au f Grund eines Gesprächs-Dialogs aufgebaut, den ständig die Hauptdarsteller miteinander führen. Das Gespräch der Protagonisten weist auf verschiedene Arten der Weltanschaung hin, zielt auch au f die konfrontierung der verschiedenen kulturtraditionen. Prosa von Marian Pankowski erscheint aJs moderne Werkstattlösung. Es folgt unter anderen als Aussagegröße, die einen übertextlichen Charakter (...) hat. Diese Aussagen decken dem Leser die Geheimnisse des Schaflensprozes au f und erlauben damit seinen Verlauf zu verfolgen. Eine wichtige Eigenschaft des Autors des Romans Rudolf ist seine Autobiographie. In seinen phantasmatischen Erzählungen, der Dichter, in einer Gombrowiczartigen Weise, die authentischen Erlebnisse mit der literarischen Fiktion. Schließlich erreicht sein Schriftum die Form der Seelenautobiographie. (shrink)

The paper discusses the debate on the human nature in the sophistic thought. Focusing on the "nature-culture" controversy it presents the evolution of the views of the sophists: from Protagoras' optimistic contention of the progress of mankind and his appraisal of culture to its criticism and the radical turn to nature in Antiphon, Hippias, Trasymachos, and Callicles. The paper aims at presenting the analysis of the ongoing discussion, with the stress laid on reconstruction of the arguments and concepts as well (...) as the attitudes that are associated with various positions of this debate. -/- . (shrink)

The article deals with Witold Gombrowicz’s autocreational efforts to bring the readers and critics to believe in his own uniqueness, greatness and genius. In Gombrowicz’s opinion literature, having its roots in pure artistic contemplation, is also a fight of writer to establish his position among others. Author of Diary takes it as a rule to “ self-mitologize” in his receivers minds and according to this rule he ostentatiously makes a great writer of himself. When his writing at last achievers true (...) recognition and acclaim, he tries in turn to depreciate his strategy. (shrink)