Elżbieta Walerich The Nature of an Idea according to A. Arnauld’s On True and False IdeasIn the work On True and False Ideas Arnauld attacks, above all, the part of Malebranche’s theory which concerns the ontological status of ideas. The French Jansenist claims that in this doctrine the perceiving mind is completely cut off from the real world created by God. The most important aim of the book is to prove, using geometrical method, the falsity of ideas if one (...) understands them as representative beings where the term representative being signifies a representative archetype different from the act of perception. Arnauld also criticizes the doctrine of seeing ideas in God. Nevertheless, he does not attack the representative standpoint in general but rather its radical version. He does not negate the division into an idea understood as mental perception and a physical thing being perceived. Like René Descartes, the French Jansenist thinks that all objects are known by means of perceptions which are modifications of our mind and, moreover, that we have the idea of God and the idea of the soul. Ideas are then our soul’s modifications and are the same thing as our perceptions. These are psychological beings having representative character, they make objects present to our intellect. So there are not two different entities but only one entity in two relations. When Arnauld claims that representative ideas are the same thing as the acts of perception, he means that modifications of our mind stay in relation to our mind which they modify and, at the same time, in relation to objects which they represent. The term perception underlines the ontological status: it is the modification of the mind. And the term idea indicates that it relates to external objects. The acts of perception represent external things but they do not imitate these objects like pictures do; their objective existence in the mind is different from the real existence of physical objects. When a thing is present to the mind in an objective manner, it does not mean that it is present as an object immanent to our mind but that it is known by our intellect, so that it is the object of the act of perception. The thing is present in our mind objectively when it is represented by the act of perception and then it becomes the intentional object of this act. Keywords: idea, perception, representation, representative being, modification of the mind, representationalism, objective existence. (shrink)

The detailed story of the passionate and secret love affair between two of the most prominent philosophers of the 20th century--Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. Drawing on their previously unknown correspondence, Elzbieta Ettinger describes a relationship that lasted for more than half a century, a relationship that sheds startling light on both individuals.

Après avoir présenté la conception spécifique de l'idéologie et de l'utopie qui apparaît chez Ricœur en tant que catégories anthropologiques, je passe aux difficultés liées à la compréhension du concept ricœurien d'utopie. En différenciant les utopies “pratiques” de celles “littéraires,“ Ricœur introduit entre elles également une hiérarchie, puisque les utopies présentées comme irréalisables constituent pour lui une distorsion de la fonction de l'utopie. Or, afin qu'une utopie puisse être conçue comme réalisable déjà au moment de sa rédaction, une nouvelle conception (...) de l'histoire est nécessaire, qui n'apparaît que dans la seconde moitié du 18 ième siècle. Une dimension historique doit donc être incluse dans la conception anthropologique de l'utopie. Finalement, en évoquant les catégories méta-historiques de Reinhart Koselleck, horizon d'attente et champ d'expérience, j'amorce une interprétation de la domination du genre littéraire de l'anti-utopie sur l'utopie au 20 ième siècle. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the epistemological status of testimony and the question of what may confer justification on true testimonial beliefs and enable us to call such beliefs knowledge. In particular, it addresses certain anti-reductionist arguments in the epistemology of testimony and their incompatibility with the grammatical categories of egophoricity (conjunct/disjunct marking) and evidentiality (information source marking) present in the architecture of natural languages. First, the tradition of epistemological individualism and its rationale are discussed, as well as certain attempts (...) within this tradition to include testimony-based beliefs in the body of legitimate and rational beliefs. The next section is concerned with the anti-reductionist approach to testimonial beliefs and some arguments supporting ‘the credulity principle’ grounded in Thomas Reid's philosophy of common sense. The last two sections show how the anti-reductionist argumentation is threatened with an insoluble dilemma when considered in the context of languages with the grammatical categories of egophoricity (conjunct/disjunct marking) and evidentiality (information source marking). Special attention is paid to the justificatory role of egophoric and evidential marking; how these grammatical categories may influence the process of belief formation, and consequently, how this bears upon the nature of justification for testimonial beliefs. The final conclusion of the paper is that the anti-reductionist claim concerning the directness and non-inferential nature of testimonial knowledge is bound to meet objections grounded in the structure of many natural languages. This leads to a paradox: in discussion with reductionism, anti-reductionists do seek support for their arguments in common sense beliefs reflected in everyday language, and, on the other hand, their claims are incompatible with the linguistic data found in a number of natural languages. (shrink)

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that “everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits”. As a result, cultural rights have been understood as inseparable from human rights and require protection mechanisms within particular international legal systems. The European continent is proud to have developed one of the most effective mechanisms of the human rights protection by establishing the Council (...) of Europe and adopting the European Court of Human Rights. The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 reformulated many concepts of access to human rights and possibilities to enjoy freedoms. Even if access to culture has been available online for many years, it is the time of globally occurring lockdowns that forced people to stay home and found themselves in a situation when all of a sudden online access to culture became the only way of access to culture. The article aims to analyze the current situation in Europe by asking questions if and how online access to culture is recognized and protected under the Council of Europe’s mechanisms with special emphasis on the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in this field. (shrink)

Translated here into Polish is Tim Maudlin’s “Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics,” which is a chapter of The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. The author discusses six important metaphysical issues on which quantum physics sheds new light. He shows how differently each of the three main intepretations of quantum theory (von Neumann’s and GRW collapse theory, Bohm’s hidden variable theory, and Everett’s many-worlds theory) views each of them. The issues discussed are determinism, determinateness, the role of the observer, uncertainty and complementarity, (...) quantum logic, and entanglement and non-locality. (shrink)

. Taking vaccine regret and hesitancy seriously. The role of truth, conspiracy theories, gender relations and trust in the HPV immunisation programmes in Ireland. Journal for Cultural Research: Vol. 25, What should academics do about conspiracy theories? Moving beyond debunking to better deal with conspiratorial movements, misinformation and post-truth., pp. 69-87.

COVID-19 pandemic occurred as an unexpected experience affecting all countries around the globe. In addition to the obvious health, economic and political effects, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered immense changes in the social spheres. People and institutions were forced to adjust to the new circumstances, change habits and move most or all of their activity online. In the completely virtual world, pandemic became a fertile ground for the bloom of the conspiracy theories already existing, but struggling for the global attention. The (...) aim of the paper is to present three main conspiracy theories rapidly gaining popularity during the pandemic (the QAnon, anti-vaccination movements and anti-5G movements) and to analyse how they developed since the pandemic had been announced. In particular, the rising activity of the representatives of the movements will be analysed, as well as its acceleration in connection with pandemic and the resulting influence on social and political life. Finally, the paper will try examine whether the rapid development of conspiracy theories within societies has had any relations to the level of trust towards government-made decisions. The thesis being verified hereto is that pandemic accelerated the development of conspiracy theories due to the diminishing level of trust towards governments operating in the most difficult period in recent history. There are variety of reasons for the belief in conspiracy theories and they depend on the specificity of the theory and specificity of group of people it originates from. In general, it can be noted that all kind of conspiracies are developed by either (1) people who actually believe in them and are sharing them with good intentions (to warn other about the dangers hidden behind certain actions or institutions) or (2) malignant individuals whose aim is to discord or discredit an opponent or critic or, alternatively, distract attention from misconduct or lack of competence. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the changes referred to as the “fourth industrial revolution” and the role of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in accelerating the technological revolution in relation to Polish companies. The ongoing economic downturn has different causes and much broader effects than previous crises. Hence the need to analyze trends (megatrends) in the emergence of innovations initiated or significantly accelerated by the pandemic crisis, and consequently, among other things, the intensification of the (...) digital transformation process. The study has a theoretical and empirical character. For the research, the authors used the descriptive method with elements of statistical data analysis. The analysis was based on reports of such institutions as the World Intellectual Property Organization, the European Commission and the Central Statistical Office. (shrink)

Dieser Papst Benedikt XVI. gewidmete Band erschliesst das Thema -Logos und Musik- in systematischer und historischer Hinsicht. Fachkundige Vertreter der Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften aus europaischen und aussereuropaischen Landern bieten ein fassettenreiches Mosaik von Entdeckungen, Einsichten und Uberlegungen, die zur Weiterfuhrung und Vertiefung des Themas anregen konnen. In den Blick kommt sowohl der Logos im geschaffenen Seienden, d.h. in den Naturdingen, sowie im Kunstler und seinem musikalischen Werk, als auch der gottliche Logos, der sich in Jesus Christus inkarniert hat und der (...) die in der Zeit erklingende Musik zum Widerhall einer ewigen Erfullung des Menschen beim himmlischen Vater macht. Er ist zu einem wichtigen Thema der wissenschaftlichen und seelsorgerlichen Tatigkeit des Theologen Joseph Ratzinger in seinem fruheren Kardinals- und heutigen Petrusamt geworden.". (shrink)

In the article the possibility of an access to reality, and thus the possibility of an attainment of truth is discussed. In the contrary of Adam Grobler's claims it is argued that the problem with the relation language-reality is not an interpretation of a language in a way fitting the reality, but a search for an appropriate language, a conceptual frame to grasp recognized phenomena. So a recognition of reality is primary, not a language.

A contemporary analytic philosophy approach to science is discussed. It is pointed out that enthusiasm for language studies in philosophy has been recently grossly exaggerated. A role of experimental science as a source of "profound" questions about the essence of the world should be more appreciated. It is shown that the so-called common intuitions fail to capture the gist of current problems in science and can no longer lead us to faithful solutions. For instance, it is not easy to reconcile (...) with common intuitions a vision of the world as a set of latent potential possibilities which show up themselves only under certain conditions. Therefore, dynamic description of the world is proposed to treat both phenomena and various processes among them. In order to achieve this we ought to focus on fates of allegedly fundamental theories and on a strategy of making science. The latter is thoroughly discussed in this article. Furthermore, three types of reductionism are scrutinized and it leads us to the conclusion that our understanding of the world is more likely based on our ability to explain diversified phenomena than on our capacity to reduce them to the ostensibly fundamental models or theories. (shrink)

The Baltic States – Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia – are democratic states of law that respect human rights. As members of the Council of Europe, they implemented into domestic law the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (known as the European Convention on Human Rights) – an international document for the universal protection of human rights adopted by the Council of Europe. The aim of the paper is to analyze whether and to what extent did Estonian, (...) Lithuanian and Latvian citizens file individual complaints to the European Court of Human Rights over the past thirteen years (2006–2018). The paper is to answer the question if the Baltic Sates’ systems of human rights protection are effective. One of the indicators of effectiveness is the number of complaints brought from the Baltic States to the ECtHR in relation to the number of inhabitants and also in comparison with the total number of complaints from the 47 member states of the Council of Europe as whole. The analysis will cover statistics on the number of judgments in Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian cases before the Court in Strasbourg issued between 2006 and 2018. This will be helpful in determining the degree and the type of violations by the Baltic States of the human rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. (shrink)

The incidence of obesity, defined as the fraction of persons with BMIs exceeding 30·0, was examined in two birth cohorts of 401996 decade obesity increased dramatically among males with trade school education only; concomitant shifts were much smaller or absent in the college-educated groups. The contrast in obesity between the opposite ends of the educational scale has widened markedly in both genders; and the between-gender gap has declined somewhat.

Elżbieta Kałuszyńska argues her anti-representationism (scil. anti-realism).

While all chairs of classics after the war were entrusted to already well-established pre-war professors, female scholars, junior often only by rank, took care of the mind-boggling logistics of setting up the defunct departments and preparing them for the first cohort of students. It was an unusual group composed of various ages and levels of knowledge. Older ones saw their education put on hold during the war or attended underground university classes but did not obtain their degrees. Younger ones completed (...) high school within the same clandestine system. Things began to change during the second post-war decade with women advancing in their careers, obtaining degrees and university positions. The paper discusses the careers of seven prominent classicists: Zofia Abramowiczówna (1906–1988), Leokadia Małunowicz (1910–1980), Daniela Tennerówna-Gromska (1889–1973), Izydora Dąmbska (1904–1983), Anna Maria Komornicka (1920–2018), Iza Bieżuńska-Małowist (1917–1995), and Stefania Światłowska (1914–2009). (shrink)

We are interested in the study of tweets from trial hearings (LTAP) which is a new digital form of the online journalistic genre: a cross over between judicial chronicles and reports. Supported by new technologies, LTAP serves as an intermediary between judiciary and general public. The LTAP falls into a generic subset of discourse which could be called a “discourse substitute”, since it's a discourse representing another discourse. Therefore, LTAP is thus constitutively a part of the representation of the other (...) discourse. Our goal is to characterize LTAP as a genre that "takes the place of" another discourse, while trying to grasp its specificity compared to other genres in this category. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to consider from the perspective of contemporary anthropological linguistics the plausibility of universal, self-evident truths based on innate principles of cognition as they were propounded by Th omas Reid in his philosophy of common sense. The key problem is whether it is possible to trace any innate principles that would underlie common sense, practical knowledge and comprise truths which are selfevident, clear and directly accessible to all members of homo sapiens. Reid’s assumptions are considered (...) in the light of contemporary research on the conceptualization of colour, basic emotions, ethnobotany and spatial cognition. (shrink)

Perception and conceptualization of space are some of the most basic elements of human cognition. It has been long assumed that human spatial thinkingand frames of reference used to grasp and describe the location of an object in relation to other objects are of universal nature and so are projected in naturallanguages in basically the same manner; three principal dimensions in egocentric perceptual space were distinguished: up-down, front-back and left-right, reflecting our biological make-up. If differences in spatial terminology were observed, (...) they were relegated to surface structure phenomena, but were not regarded as differences in perceptual and conceptual representations in the human mind. That belief in the universal perception of spatial relations among humans was ofconsiderable importance for some philosophical theories, also for Husserl’s conception of the Lebenswelt a priori and his defence of the validity of scientificpropositions and of absolute truth. It now appears that the extent of the diversity in spatial thinking has been drastically underestimated (Levinson 2003), but it does not follow that Husserl’s intuitions regarding the existence of universal constituents in incompatible Lebenswelt experiences were necessarily wrong. (shrink)