1. Living organisms are characterized by complexity and uniqueness of structure, as well as by specific pattern of changes during ontogenesis programmed in their own genome.2. Although general mechanisms of gene expression and regulation are well understood, our knowledge of spatial morphogenesis is rather limited and patchy despite discovery of homeotic genes.3. Developmental biology is able to explain principles of formation of neuronal network in the brain, whereas neurophysiology provides detailed information on the role of various neurotransmitters, but we still do not understand the essence of consciousness, and even more self-consciousness of the man.4. Some philosophical theories trying to explain the nature of self-consciousness, such as parallelism and interactionism, are briefly discussed.

Differences between macro and microphysics. How do we come to know the world? Theories—can they be beautiful? Cloakroom principle. Microparticles are identical—conssquences. Platonian beings.

Problems connected with the questions of: being-nonbeing, existence, modes of existence and alike, belong to the basic and most important in metaphysics. The article discusses some answers to the aforementioned issues, as proposed by the ancient philosophers, St Thomas Aquinas, R. Ingarden and A.N. Whitehead. In the Appendix some remarks are made on Aristotle’s and S. Thomas’ theory of act and potency.

It is a story presenting various hiking trips “with Karol Wojtyła”. During these trips a lot of philosophical and scientific problems were discussed. That produced a basis for seminars including those which were held in Castel Gandolfo in 1980–2003.

A theocentric model of reality based on the postulate that God is love, which explains the frameworks of mathematical formalism of quantum theory and solves basic problems in interpretation of this theory, has been proposed. The model proposed is metaphysical and thanks to the use of the mathematical language it may bring important implications concerning a general structure of fundamental physical theories.

In philosophy /ontology/ as well as in physics one deals with various kinds of ESSE. Quantum objects do not obey the Bell inequalities, which are natural for macroscopic objects. Some beings may be real but not actual. Actual beings are those which show up NOW. For a physicist this seems to correspond to a reduction of the wave packet. Existence in an atractor.

I argue for a standpoint that—against various kinds of naturalism—epistemology is a complete philosophical science. Epistemology is theoretically and methodologically self-sufficient. It has its good described subject, its characteristic research methods and its exactly described goal. The subject of epistemology is broadly comprehended cognition (knowledge)—cognition (knowledge) is comprehended as action as well as result. Among various methods peculiar to philosophy it is necessary to distinguish first of all phenomenological, transcendental and analytical methods. However, the main goal of epistemology has been and still is a solution of the objective cognition issue—the problem of cognition adequacy and of its transcendence. Epistemology can achieve this goal only when: (1) it resists the temptation of its subject naturalization; (2) against the propositional theory of truth it operates a broad concept of cognition; (3) against manykinds of representationism (mediatism) it does not resign from the concept of direct cognition, i.e. view of presentationism. Thanks to reference to source cognitions and direct knowledge the realistic world view is also defendable.

The paper undertakes the problem of normativity within naturalized epistemology. The following issue is analyzed: can naturalism be developed as a normative enterprise, and if it can, what conditions it must satisfy to achieve a status of epistemology? According to “the standard condition”, in order to give a substantial account of normativity naturalism must present a theory of epistemic norms which are derived from descriptive statements about facts but which are not reduced to them. The thesis is that although naturalism cannot present the conception of genuine epistemic norms which satisfy “the standard condition” it is still normative. Namely, within naturalism epistemic norms are descriptive statements about empirical phenomena which are expressed in normative form for the sake of everyday life and scientific practice.

In the paper I point out to some problems of the traditional epistemology, i.e. epistemology oriented to search the foundations of cognitive evaluation. The epistemology of that kind which makes up the world outlook of science, I oppose the cultural studies reflection in a scientific knowledge practiced within one of the humanities domains of knowledge, for example, the theoretical history of science, which is limited in its cognitive tasks to the descriptive, reconstructive and explanatory study of science.