The article reviews the book Granice pojęciowe metafizyki [The Conceptual Boundaries of Metaphysics], by Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk.

ABSTRACTThe purpose of my paper is to determine the consequences of including an education for forgiveness in the context of developing prudence. I aim to answer two questions: what is prudent forgiveness; what constitutes education for prudent forgiveness? I present my analyses in six parts. After introduction, I point to the advantages and doubts concerning forgiveness. Then, I present prudence as a basic virtue guiding human actions. I draw mainly on the approach proposed by Thomas Aquinas, who argued that prudence (...) refers to the perfection of the command. The fourth part addresses the question of the mechanisms of prudent forgiveness. I note that a decision to forgive cannot be made in haste; that it is a decision concerning some good that the victim wants to attain in the future; finally, that forgiveness is prudent in its achievement. In the last part, I transfer prior analyses to the pedagogical level. (shrink)

It, is shown that Birkhoff –von Neumann quantum logic (i.e., an orthomodular lattice or poset) possessing an ordering set of probability measures S can be isomorphically represented as a family of fuzzy subsets of S or, equivalently, as a family of propositional functions with arguments ranging over S and belonging to the domain of infinite-valued Łukasiewicz logic. This representation endows BvN quantum logic with a new pair of partially defined binary operations, different from the order-theoretic ones: Łukasiewicz intersection and union (...) of fuzzy sets in the first case and Łukasiewicz conjunction and disjunction in the second. Relations between old and new operations are studied and it is shown that although they coincide whenever new operations are defined, they are not identical in general. The hypothesis that quantum-logical conjunction and disjunction should be represented by Łukasiewicz operations, not by order-theoretic join and meet is formulated and some of its possible consequences are considered. (shrink)

This project envisages a study of Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) and of the role played by metaxy in his vision of political philosophy. Metaxy already defined by Plato as the "in-between" matrix of the human condition is for Voegelin a powerful notion that symbolizes the intermediate state in which man experiences diverse and opposing tensions such as the ones between immanence and transcendence or mortality and immortality. The metaxy constitutes the realm of the divine-human mutual participation (methexis), and its locus resides (...) in human consciousness (nous), there where the divine reality manifests itself as the origin of being. Being the field of intermediation between opposing forces, man has to keep the balance of consciousness in order to differentiate the noetic and pneumatic dimensions and so attune his life to the divine ground of being. This project claims that for Voegelin metaxy shapes the possibility of the philosophical, historical, political and religious orientation in life. Indeed, Voegelin's approach deserves recognition as an option adequate for addressing the intellectual challenges engendered by modern and postmodern philosophies. (shrink)

New conjunctionlike and disjunctionlike operations on orthomodular lattices are defined with the aid of formal Mackey decompositions of not necessarily compatible elements. Various properties of these operations are studied. It is shown that the new operations coincide with the lattice operations of join and meet on compatible elements of a lattice but they necessarily differ from the latter on all elements that are not compatible. Nevertheless, they define on an underlying set the partial order relation that coincides with the original (...) one. The new operations are in general nonassociative: if they are associative, a lattice is necessarily Boolean. However, they satisfy the Foulis-Holland-type theorem concerning associativity instead of distributivity. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to review the historically existing types of demonstration of mathematical theorems. The author shows how the notion of mathematical proof has changed through the time from the moment when mathematicians realised (thanks to the philosophical method) the necessity to justify their theses until a precise notion of proof has appeared in the framework of the formal method. Next, the author considers the possibility of modifying the notion of mathematical proof under the influence of the development (...) of computer sciences. (shrink)

Thomas von Aquin geht davon aus, dass Gott die erste und einzige Ursache der Wirklichkeit ist, und somit alle Vollkommenheiten der geschaffenen Seienden in Gott auf eminente und vollkommene Weise zu finden sind. Deswegen ist die Weisheit aufgrund der Analogie als Eigenschaft Gottes zu verstehen, und zwar als Wesenseigenschaft. Diese Weisheit besteht in der Erkenntnis, mit der Gott sich selbst erkennt. Die Weisheit bezieht sich auch auf die zweite Person der Trinität, die als das gezeugte Wort die Weisheit des Vaters (...) ist. Betreffs des Schöpfungswerkes ist Gott als Schöpfer nicht nur causa efficiens der Seienden, sondern auch causa exemplaris und causa finalis. Mit der causa exemplaris ist die Weisheit Gottes gemeint. (shrink)

Referring to basic Weberian notions of rationalization and secularization, I try to find a more accurate sense of the term “secularization”, intending to describe adequately the position of religion in modernity. The result of this query is—or at least should be—a new, original conceptualization of religion as one of finite provinces of meaning within one paramount reality of the life-world, as defined by Alfred Schutz. I proceed by exposing a well known, major oversimplification of the Weberian concept of secularization, very (...) well outlined in Peter Berger’s The sacred canopy, in order to point to the genuine, much more differentiated position of Max Weber in this matter (especially from the period of Foundations of social economic and Economy and society), and, consequently, to return to the roots of Berger’s thought: phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, an attempt to assure the philosophical foundations of Weber’s sociological theory. At a closer glimpse, transformation of religion in the modern process of rationalization does not consist—according to Weber—in eliminating religion and thus depriving society of the religious source of meaning, but in parallel emancipation of many different domains of rationality, including religion itself. Using Schutz’s analysis of the social world as a complex structure of many different final provinces of meaning, I describe religion as such a province and show what does the process of rationalization of this province consist and what it should consist in: a complex, ongoing exchange of cognitive relevances and contents, combined with growing autonomy of many different sub-worlds. Schutz’s theory of symbol, rooted in Edmund Husserl’s description of constitution of complex objects in mono- and polythetic acts of consciousness, moves the analysis to the epistemological level, pointing to a chance of intensifying our cognitive relation to reality through increasing interpenetration of various sub-universes of meaning. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Polish hospital chaplaincy, because of the unique political and sociological context in which it finds itself, presents a sort of triple beholdenness. It carries particular loyalties to the state, to Catholic doctrine, and above all, it is called to be faithful to the unique suffering person. In this article, I argue that the biggest challenge for Polish chaplaincy resides within the domain of loyalty to the patient, where the profound and immediate need for robust formation of individual Christian conscience through (...) catechesis is needed. Although hospital chaplaincy’s involvement in catechesis and instructing the faithful might not be clearly evident for the reader, nevertheless I prove my point by bringing a story from my practice as a chaplain in one of Poland’s hospitals. (shrink)

At the turn of 1960s and 1970s, Stanisław Lem devoted some of his non-fiction writing to a discussion and considerations of semiotics. Most of them were expressions of a critical approach mainly directed against structuralism. However, Lem also formulated some positive statements although they were not developed systematically. The article offers an analysis of Lem’s semiotic ideas from the perspective of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc, mainly considering its two main components: contextualism and typological approach. Special attention is paid to (...) the latter because both Pelc and Lem proposed some original solutions in this respect. What is meant here is the multidimensional typology of symbolic uses of signs developed by Pelc and Lem’s multidimensional typology of the situations of the reception of texts. Although they are independent form each other, these proposals show some convergence both in their ways of construction and roles they are supposed to perform. Henceforth, one can say that Lem was a crypto-functionalist. (shrink)

The uniqueness of Poland’s experience with the 2020 coronavirus lays in the interplay of two factors: the decisive governmental response to the pandemic, and the overlap of the pandemic with the country’s presidential election scheduled on May 10, 2020. The government’s fast reaction, combined with the citizens’ discipline, resulted in the suppression of the virus’s spread. The ratings of the current President Duda skyrocketed well above 50% needed for re-election in the first round. However, the expectation was that they would (...) be going down with the pandemic and lockdown fatigue. For almost two months, the government tried to organize the elections under the normal schedule while the opposition tried to block them. Finally, the opposition won, and the elections were rescheduled on June 28, with the President Duda’s ratings substantially lower. Nevertheless, in the runoff on July 11, Duda won. Our conclusion goes against the common opinion that electoral engineering is always one-sided. The reconstruction of the pre-electoral political maneuvers shows that many independent players were simultaneously involved in complex engineering, and that the final outcome was hard to predict until almost the very end. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of Tischner’s last and little-known essays on the issues concerning work in the era of free market and the hegemony of the laws of economic calculation. In a discussion with Dominique Méda and André Gorz, Tischner diagnoses various threats to contemporary forms of work. Tischner criticizes above all the one-sided—that is, only objective—conception of today’s work. Referring to his own and original anthropologico-ethical project of work, the Polish scholar draws the reader’s attention to the need (...) to promote the subjective model of work to be construed as interhuman dialogue. In work, thus construed, Tischner discerns a guarantee of the moral order of contemporary societies. His anthropological-ethical concept of work successfully inscribes itself in some of the models of work of the future, which are very much promoted today. (shrink)

Dotychczasowe, nie tylko polskie, opracowania filozofii człowieka, z którymi spotykamy się w dziełach Ferdynanda Ebnera i ks. Józefa Tischnera, jedynie sporadycznie sygnalizują znaczenie antropologiczne i metafizyczne związku słowa i miłości. Tymczasem, w moim przekonaniu, związek ten jest bardzo ważny w przedstawionym przez tych dwóch filozofów źródłowym rozumieniu ludzkiego istnienia jako wydarzania się prawdy bycia człowieka. Dlatego w niniejszym opracowaniu koncentruję się właśnie na opisie tego związku, na tym, jak on funkcjonuje w myśleniu dialogicznym tych dwóch filozofów. Z filozoficznego punktu widzenia (...) jest on godny uwagi przede wszystkim z tej racji, że pokazuje jak tętni życiem filozofia człowieka w swym metafizycznym wymiarze. Inaczej mówiąc, więź słowa i miłości pokazuje, jak istnieje dialogicznie ugruntowana metafizyka człowieka w jej wydarzeniowym charakterze. Słowo i miłość żyją w człowieku jak obiektywne, a zarazem subiektywne, czyli podmiotowe wyrazy jego duchowego życia. Poświęcając uwagę tej problematyce, wskazałem nie tylko na podobieństwa antropologii tych dwóch filozofów, lecz wykazałem przede wszystkim, że wyeksponowana przez nich więź słowa i miłości stanowi ważny klucz do odnowienia źródłowego myślenia o człowieku w dobie zachwiania się pewności tego, co najbardziej podstawowe w jego życiu. (shrink)

W artykule podjęto kwestię dotyczącą tożsamości filozofii przyrody w kontekście trzech współcześnie wymienianych charakterystycznych cech tej dyscypliny, a mianowicie jej różnorodności metodologicznej, interdyscyplinarności oraz swoistej dynamiki rozwojowej. Analizowane są zagrożenia dla tożsamości filozofii przyrody, wynikające z takiego zestawu cech, w szczególności z różnorodności metodologicznej filozofii przyrody. Jednocześnie podjęto próbę obrony wymienionych cech jako powodujących nie tylko zagrożenia, ale również wzmacniających tożsamość filozofii przyrody. Całość analiz odnosi się do metafilozoficznej charakterystyki dziedziny filozofii. --------------- Zgłoszono: 13/08/2021. Zrecenzowano: 06/09/2021. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 14/10/2021.

Jak i dlaczego powstał Wszechświat? Problem z naukowym wyjaśnieniem istnienia Wszechświata polega na tym, że zakłada ono pewną fizyczną przyczynę jego istnienia. Ale jakakolwiek fizyczna przyczyna Wszechświata musi być częścią Wszechświata, którego zaistnienie ma wyjaśnić. Z tego powodu każde czysto naukowe wyjaśnienie istnienia Wszechświata jest skazane na zapętlenie. Być może żadna teoria naukowa nie może przerzucić mostu pomiędzy absolutną nicością a istniejącym już Wszechświatem.Okazuje się jednak, że gdy metafizyczne pytanie typu: dlaczego istnieje Wszechświat? zamienimy na „bardziej naukowe”: w jaki sposób (...) powstał Wszechświat?, to mamy szansę na gruncie fizyki przedstawić współczesną wersję „historii” powstania Wszechświata. Kosmolog Lawrence M. Krauss twierdzi, że w tym celu wystarczy porzucić mętne – z punktu widzenia fizyki – pojęcie absolutnej nicości i za punkt wyjścia uznać fizyczną próżnię. Ponieważ – jak wynika z mechaniki kwantowej – kwantowa próżnia to dalece nie to samo co nicość metafizyczna, możliwe jest – w świetle naszej współczesnej wiedzy – powstanie Wszechświata z „niczego”. (shrink)

This paper discusses the notion of the ‘phenomenological world’ and the problems it generates in the ‘hard’ paradigm of Husserl’s phenomenology, such as the lack of universality and intersubjectivity of this world, its closure and privacy, and its being only the personal world of a subject. Also, an attempt was made to show some of the sources of this problematic situation and the impossibility of solving it in a fundamentalist paradigm. It is only in the last period of the development (...) of Husserl’s phenomenology (the so-called period of the Crisis) that these problems find their satisfactory solution. (shrink)