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articles
1. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Natan Berber A Situational Formal Ontology of the Tracatus
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This paper disucsses the Boolean algebraic axiomatic system of situations suggested by the Polish logician Roman Suszko (1919-1979). The paper will specifically examine the adequacy of the axioms, definitions and theorems of Suszko’s system as a model for Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tracatus Logico-Philosophicus. It will be shown how the formal properties of Suszko’s system - the atomicity and completeness of the Boolean algebraic system - can be employed in order to clarify key concepts of the situational part of the Tractarian ontology. After considering the formal reconstruction of the Tractarian concepts of teh world and logical space, a controversial issue pertaining to necessary facts in the Tracatus will be addressed. This will be followed by a formal clarification of the Tractarian concepts of logical place and possible worlds, the latter being identified as combinations of states and affairs, which are, according to the Tractarian ontology, the simplest kinds of situations.
2. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Mikel Burley The B-Theory of Time and the Fear of Death
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This paper discusses Robin Le Poidevin’s proposal that a commitment to the B-theory of time provides a reason to relinquish the fear of death. After outlining Le Poidevin’s views on time and death, I analyze the specific passages in which he makes his proposal, giving close attention to the claim that, for the B-theorist, one’s life is “eternally real.” I distinguish two possible interpretations of this claim, which I call alethic eternalism and ontic eternalism respectively, and argue, with reference to statements by other B-theroists, that alethic eternalism is the only viable option. I highlight two problems for Le Poidevin’s proposal: firstly, even if alethic eternalism does provide a reason not to fear death, this same reason is available to A-theorists; and secondly, alethic eternalism does not in fact provide such a reason. Having critically assessed possible responses to these problems, I conclude that Le Poidevin’s proposal is unfounded.
3. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Wesley Cooper Decision-Value Utilitarianism
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A decision value alternative is proposed to the various formulations of the principle of utility, which counsel maimization of expected utility as utility is variously conceived. Decision value factors expected utility into causal expected utility and evidential expected utility, and it adds a third factor --- symbolic utility. This latter introduces deontological and a ‘perceived value’ elements into calculations of utility. It also suggests a solution to a lingering problem in population ethics, the so-called Repugnant Conclusion that consequentialist thinking demands a vast population of people leading lives barely worth living.
4. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Todd D. Janke Making Room for Bodily Intentionality
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The recived view in contemporary philosophy of action, inspired and sustained largely by Donald Davidson and his followers, holds that an action is intentional if and only if it is caused in the right way by beliefs and desires. In what follows below I discuss Merleau-Ponty’s account of bodily intentionality, with the aim of showing that it offers us an account of a form of intentional behavior that cannot be understood in terms of causally efficacious mental states like beliefs or desires. the aim, in short, is to show that, however things may stand with other forms of intentional behavior (deliberate action, for example), bodily intentional behavior is autonomously intentional --- it doesn’t derive its intentionality from the intentionality of mental states.
5. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Katarzyna Paprzycka Sneddon on Action and Responsibility
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The paper is a critical discussion of Sneddon’s recent proposal to revive ascriptivism in philosophy of action. Despite his declarations, Sneddon fails in his central task of giving an account of the distinction between actions and mre happenings. His failure is due to three major problems. First, the account is based on a misconceived methodology of “type” necessary and “token” sufficient conditions. Second, the “type” necessary condition he proposed is so weak that the connection that obtains between action and responsibility also obtains between action and lack of responsibility. Third, neither the idea of responsibility nor the idea of defeating conditions is elucidated sufficiently to play any role in understanding what it is to be an action.
6. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Murali Ramachandran Kripkean Counterpart Theory
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David Lewis’s counterpart-theoretic semantics for quantified modal logic is motivated originally by worries about identifying objects across possible worlds; the counterpart relation is grounded more cautiously on comparative similarity. The possibility of contingent identity is an unsought -- and in some eyes, unwelcome -- consequence of this approach. In this paper I motivate a Kripkean counterpart theory by way of defending the prior, pre-theoretical, coherence of contingent directness. Contingent identity follows for free. The theory is Kripkean in that the counterpart relation is in a sense stipulated rather than grounded on similarity, and is such that no object has more than one counterpart at a world. This avoids a number of objections Fara and Williamson have recently levelled against counterpart theory generally; their other objections are addressed by enriching the theory with special quantifiers and actuality operators.
7. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Simon Robertson How to be an Error Theorist about Morality
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This paper clarifies how to be an error theorist about morality. It takes as its starting point John Mackie’s error theory of the categoricity of moral obligation, defending Mackie against objections from both naturalist moral realists and minimalists about moral discourse. However, drawing upon minimalist insights, it argues that Mackie’s focus on the ontological status of moral values is misplaced, and that the underlying dispute between error theorist and moralist is better conducted at the level of practical reason.
critical notices and book reviews
8. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Szymon Wróbel O istocie pojęć: [On the Nature of Concepts]
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9. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Khalil M. Habib Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership
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10. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Kristen Intemann Value-Free Science?: Ideals and Illusions
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11. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Joseph Ulatowski Rationality and Logic
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12. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Urszula M. Żegleń Jak to jest być świadomym. Analityczne teorie umysłu a problem świadomości: [What is it like to be conscious. Analytic theories of mind and the problem of consciousness]
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13. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 2
Jan Woleński Notes on Books
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articles
14. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Emanuela Ceva Impure procedural justice and the management of conflicts about values
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This paper aims to outline the essential structural traits that a procedural theory of justice for the management of conflicts about values should display in order to combine open-endedness and cogency. To this purpose, it offers an investigation into the characteristics of procedural justice through a critical assessment of John Rawl’s taxonomy of prodeduralism, in terms of perfect, imperfect and pure procedural justice. Given the concessions the two former kinds of proceduralism make to substantive theories, and the potentially misleading characterisation Rawls gave of pure procedural theories of justice, it reformulates the latter category in terms of impure proceduralism. In this case, the theory is required not to pose substantive constraints on the qualities of just outcomes, but is, rather, expected to provide a transcontextually applicable account of the qualities of just procedures on the basis of an independent criterion of justice.
15. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Arkadiusz Chrudzimski Truth, Concept Empiricism, and the Realism of Polish Phenomenology
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The majority of Polish phenomenologists never found Husserl’s transcendental idealism attractive. In this paper I investigate the source of this rather surprising realist attitude. True enough the founder of Polish phenomenology was Roman Ingarden - one of the most severe critics of Husserl’s transcendental idealism, so it is initially tempting to reduce the whole issue to this sociological fact. However, I argue that there must be something more about Ingarden’s intellectual background that immunized him against Husserl’s transcendental argumentation, and that the same background made his students so sympathetic to his “naive” realism. My claim is thatthis “something” is Ingarden’s realist concept of truth that he learned (at least partially) from Tarski as opposed to Husserl’s epistemic construal that he took from Brentano.
16. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Andrew Jorgensen Understanding as Endorsing an Inference
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Fodor & Lepore (2001) and Williamson (2003) attack the inferentialist account of concept possession according to which possessing or understanding a concept requires endorsing the inference patterns constitutive of its content. I show that Fodor & Lepore’s concern - that the conception places an exorbitant epistemological demands on possessors of a concept - is met by Brandom’s tolerance of materially bad nonconservative inferences. Such inferences themselves, as Williamson argues, present difficulties for the ‘understanding as endorsement’ conception. I show that, properly understood, Brandom’s broad conception of inferential role, which encompasses social-perspectival inferential connections, has the resources to respond to Willianson’s challenge.
17. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Marek Kwiek Revisiting The Classical German Idea of the University: (On the Nationalization of the Modern Institution)
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The aim of the paper is to provide a philosophical and historical background to current discussions about the changing relationships between the university and the state through revisiting the classical “Humboldtian” model of the university as discussed in classical German philosophy. This historical detour is intended to highlight the cultural rootedness of the modern idea of the university, and its close links to the idea of the modern national state. The paper discusses the idea of the university as it emerges from the philosophy of Wilhelm von Humbold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher, as well as - in the 20th century - Karl Jaspers and Jürgen Habermas. More detailed questions discussed include the historical pact between the modern university and the modern nation-state, the main principles of the Humboldtian university, the process of the nationalization of European universities, the national aspect of the German idea of culture (Bildung), and the tension between the pursuit of truth and public responsibilities of the modern university. In discussing current and future missions and roles of the institution of the university today, it can be useful to revisit its foundational (modern) German idea. In thinking about its future, it can be constructive to reflect on the evident current tensions between traditional modern expectations of the university and the new expectations intensified by the emergence of knowledge-based societies and market-driven economies. From the perspective of the tensions between old and new tasks of the university, it is useful to look back at the turning point in its history.
18. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Robert Poczobut Interdisciplinarity and Mind: An Onto-Methodological Perspective
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The article’s aim is to analyse the ontological and methodological aspects of the interdisciplinarity problem in the context of contemporary research into the mind. After a brief presentation of the differences in meaning in the use of the terms: “multi-,” “inter-,” and “transdisciplinaryity,” the case of cognitive sicence is discussed. According to the author, the levels of analysis and explanation inmulti(inter)disciplinary science of the mind correspond to different levels or dimensions of its architecture. One of the main ontological issues arising here concerns the nature of interlevel relationships constituting the hierarchical structure of the cognitive system. The article’s last part is devoted to showing that an integrated ontology of mind (consistent with scientific knowledge) must be transdisciplinary in character and based on emergentist assumptions.
19. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Michael Shaffer Re-formulating The Generalized Correspondence Principle: Problems and Prospects
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The generalized correspondence principle is the assertion of something like the following methodological norm: successor theories ought to incorporate precursor theories as special cases. However, the actual core connotation of this principle seems to be that when we are constructing new theories in some domain of application we ought to retain as much of prior but refuted theories as is possible while eliminating inconsistency with the data. As a result, it is argued here that the correspondence principle has not been correctly formulated. Also, it is argued here that there is no compelling extant justification of this proposed methodological norm.
20. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Urszula Żegleń Perceptual Identification - Representational or Not?: In Search of the Cognitive Basis for Perceptual Identification
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The paper is focused on the problem of identification in perception. I attempt to inquire on what ground the cognitive system is able to identify an object of perception (I restrict my analysis to visual perception). Although this is an empirical question for cognitive science, I consider it using a philosophical method of analysis. But my considerations in great part are heuristic, I ask questions and rather search for the answers than give a ready solution. The questions I ask arise from a theoretical philosophical inquiry made in the context of cognitive science. The key question of my paper is whether perceptual identification has any cognitive basis, i.e. does it require any concepts or any prior knowledge. I especially pay attention to the problem of representation, asking if perceptual identification is representational or not. These questions are topical today and show that the traditional philosophical approaches to perception require revision and a new critical look at old problems and controversies.