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81. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 1 > Issue: 2
Adam J. Chmielewski The Enlightenment’s Concept of the Individual and its Contemporary Criticism
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Communitarian social philosophy was born in opposition to some tenets of liberalism. Liberal individualism has been among its most strongly contested claims. In their criticisms, the communitarians point to the Enlightenment’s sources of the individualist vision of society and morality. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, even if the communitarian line of argument has been justified in more than one way, it is at the same time important to remember that the greatest figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, that of of David Hume, does not fit the individualistic picture too well. I shall begin with a contemporary definition of individualism, as defined by John Watkins, then I shall proceed to argue that methodological individualism is rarely an innocent philosophical position, i.e. that it is very often a preliminary step in attempts to find a solution to many other, much more important and more practically relevant issues. For methodological individualism is usually associated with ontological, as well as moral and political individualistic doctrines, and they usually go hand in hand, influencing and strengthening each other.
82. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Anna Cremaldi Is Aristotelian Generosity a Unified Virtue?
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Commentators worry that Aristotelian generosity is a conglomeration of distinct virtues, rather than a single, unified virtue. This paper argues that the virtue of generosity is unified if we recognize that the generous person’s goal lies in promoting friendship — in particular, in ensuring that there is sufficient wealth to support a community of friends. One of the important consequences of this reading is that it reverses the standard interpretation according to which Aristotelian generosity resembles our modern conception of generosity as an impartial virtue. On the proposed view, Aristotelian generosity is undergirded by reciprocity, rather than impartiality.
83. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Diego Fusaro The Role of Aesthetics in Fichte’s Science of Knowledge
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This paper aims to address the problem of aesthetics in relation to Fichte’s Science of Knowledge Wissenschaftslehre as System der Freiheit. We will focus more specifically on the role that aesthetics plays in connection with the supporting structures of the science of knowledge and on what has been happily referred to as Fichte’s praxologische Dialektik.
84. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Wolfgang Barz A Note on a Remark of Evans
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In his seminal paper, ‘Can There Be Vague Objects?’ (1978), Gareth Evans advanced an argument purporting to prove that the idea of indeterminate identity is incoherent. Aware that his argument was incomplete as it stands, Evans added a remark at the end of his paper, in which he explained how the original argument needed to be modified to arrive at an explicit contradiction. This paper aims to develop a modified version of Evans’ original argument, which I argue is more promising than the modification that Evans proposed in his remark. Last, a structurally similar argument against the idea of indeterminate existence is presented.
85. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Ryan J. Johnson Homesickness and Nomadism: Traveling with Kant and Maimon
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Solomon Maimon argues that while Kantianism does venture quite a way toward the establishment of an immanent critical project that more satisfyingly addresses real experience, it does not fulfill the aims of its own project. In order to negotiate Maimon’s claim, I utilize the primary metaphorics of the First Critique: homesickness. The Kantian longing for home is an insatiable yearning, a striving for the end of something that cannot end, namely, the end of the search for home (Zuhause). According to Maimon, although home is unattainable, there is a different sense of home: home is the path itself, a sort of nomadism, a roving life of the path that never leads home. The Kant of the first Critique did not fully realize that the project could not reach an actual final resting place; in fact, this realization, that home is a transcendental ideal, might be the very motivation for the third Critique. Thus, in order not merely to justify the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, but also to allow the application of such knowledge to reach the facts themselves, actuality as such, the “well-groundedness” of the critical project requires some re-direction from Maimon. To do this, Maimon renders Kantian transcendental conditions truly genetic.
86. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Piotr K. Szałek Thomas Reid, Sensations, and Intentionality
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The paper attempts to examine whether Reid adopts, but does not articulate explicitly, a philosophical theory regarding intentionality, or rather if intentionality remains an unexamined assumption within Reid’s philosophy. In the recent interpretations, Reid is perceived both as the proponent of the notion of intentionality and at the same time as a forerunner of the anti-intentional view. I will argue that the crucial element to solving this puzzling opposition in the interpretations is an analysis of the relation between sensations and perceptions. Perceptions are intentional in Reid’s view, while sensations are not intentional. However, what seems to be missing in this dichotomy is Reid’s firm assumption about the role of ‘common sense’ in sensations. Both sensations and perceptions as two separate operations of the mind contain an immediate conviction on the part of the observer about the existence of some item that is apprehended. In that sense, sensations exhibit themselves intentionally, as do perceptions. Moreover, this view of sensations argues for Reid’s position as proto-Brentanian as regards the notion of intentionality, because Brentano also assumed an essential role of an assistant judgment in the formation of sensations of items that are apprehended.
87. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Michael J. Shaffer Grounding Reichenbach’s Pragmatic Vindication of Induction
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This paper has three interdependent aims. The first is to make Reichenbach’s views on induction and probabilities clearer, especially as they pertain to his pragmatic justification of induction. The second aim is to show how his view of pragmatic justification arises out of his commitment to extensional empiricism and moots the possibility of a non-pragmatic justification of induction. Finally, and most importantly, a formal decision-theoretic account of Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification is offered in terms both of the minimax principle and of the dominance principle.
88. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Adam Tamas Tuboly From ‘Syntax’ to ‘Semantik’ — Carnap’s Inferentialism and Its Prospects
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The aim of this paper is to provide context for and historical exegesis of Carnap’s alleged move from syntax to semantics. The Orthodox Received View states that there was a radical break, while the Unorthodox Received View holds that Carnap’s syntactical period already had many significant semantical elements. I will argue that both of them are partly right, both of them contain a kernel of truth: it is true that Carnap’s semantical period started after his Logical Syntax of Language — in one sense of semantics. But it is also true that Carnap had already included semantical ideas in LSL: though not (just) in the sense that URV maintains. This latter sense of semantics is related to what is usually called inferentialism, and by getting a clearer picture of Carnap’s original aims, context, and concept-usage, we might be in a better position to approach his alleged inferentialism.
89. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Valeria Bizzari Aristotle, Phenomenology, and the Mind/Body Problem
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The mind-body relationship is a fundamental issue that has interested philosophers from very different schools of thought. Nowadays we can observe several positions being taken on this topic — my aim is to emphasize the phenomenological perspective on the mind-body relationship and, in particular, the role of Aristotelian thought in the contributions of philosophers such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper consists of three different parts: in the first part, I will briefly sketch out a phenomenological account of the living body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty; in the second part, I will try to find parallels between phenomenology and Aristotle’s philosophy. Finally, I will argue for an Aristotelian reading of schizophrenia, a pathology that seems to be caused by a disruption of the corporeal Self.
90. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Douglas Ian Campbell Against Lewis on ‘Desire as Belief’
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David Lewis describes, then attempts to refute, a simple anti-Humean theory of desire he calls ‘Desire as Belief’. Lewis’ critics generally accept that his argument is sound and focus instead on trying to show that its implications are less severe than appearances suggest. In this paper I argue that Lewis’ argument is unsound. I show that it rests on an essential assumption that can be straightforwardly proven false using ideas and principles to which Lewis is himself committed.
91. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Bogna Choińska Following Desire as the Ethical Postulate of Psychoanalysis
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One of the most controversial theses of Jacques Lacan is his conviction that a very specific relationship links ethics and desire. The aim of the article is to present what this new relationship consists in, and, further on, to outline the weaknesses of this concept, which does not take into account the existence of the sovereign good as a category available to cognition. According to my thesis, Lacan believes that the ethics of Supreme Good, or simply traditional ethics of goods, leads the human subject to remain, voluntarily (and perhaps thoughtlessly), within the Imaginary dimension. The idea of the ethical postulate will be treated here not so much as something applied during psychoanalysis, but as a general clue as to how people should behave.
92. 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.
93. 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.
94. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Dale Jacquette Denying the Liar Reaffirmed
95. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
Jan Woleński Notes on Books
96. 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.
97. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 2 > Issue: 1
John Barker Undeniably Paradoxical: Reply to Jacquette
98. 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.
99. 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.
100. 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.