The aim of this paper is to propose foundations for a formal model of representation and numerical evaluation of a possibly broad class of arguments, including those that occur in natural discourse. Since one of the most characteristic features of everyday argumentation is the occurrence of convergent reasoning, special attention should be paid to the operation ⊕, which allows us to calculate the logical force of convergent arguments with an accuracy not offered by other approaches.

The discussion around dignity in nursing philosophy has been underway for many years. The literature still lacks philosophical arguments that would justify the thesis that all people have dignity. Scholars who defend dignity as an intrinsic value most often refer to Kant. However, Kant does not seem to be the most suitable candidate to defend the thesis that all human beings possess dignity. In this paper, I attempt to show that Aristotle's and Aquinas's views can help justify this thesis. To (...) this end, I distinguish between actual dignity, potential dignity, and existential dignity. I state that all human beings have existential dignity or potential dignity. (shrink)

This paper centers around the notion that internal, mental representations are grounded in structural similarity, i.e., that they are so-called S-representations. We show how S-representations may be causally relevant and argue that they are distinct from mere detectors. First, using the neomechanist theory of explanation and the interventionist account of causal relevance, we provide a precise interpretation of the claim that in S-representations, structural similarity serves as a “fuel of success”, i.e., a relation that is exploitable for the representation using (...) system. Then, we discuss crucial differences between S-representations and indicators or detectors, showing that—contrary to claims made in the literature—there is an important theoretical distinction to be drawn between the two. (shrink)

The novel "Mephisto" is one of the most well-known texts by Klaus Mann. Its fame results not only from its literary virtuosity, but also and primarily from the enormous media attention which was caused by the novel’s publication. The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, in which it dealt with the relationship between freedom of art and other constitutionally guaranteed rights of individuals, launched the unprecedented career of this novel. This article describes Klaus Mann’s political views and their development in (...) the 1920s during the time when the National Socialist movement was strengthening and the writer made the decision to emigrate. The essay deals with the circumstances of creating the novel considering both biographical and political issues. The novelist is described from the perspective of the reality of the 1930s during the National Socialist regime and the time after his emigration. The concern of the article is not a literary analysis of the novel, but to take a look at the novelist’s development up until the moment of finishing his work as a protest against National Socialism. Another goal of the essay is to analyze the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, which regards the balance between freedom of art and other basic rights. Considering the synergy of both methodological approaches and the interdisciplinary view on the problem, the article represents a novel attempt to give a complex view on the relationship between art and the reality of a totalitarian state and between the relationship art–state in the conditions of a democratic state. (shrink)

This editorial complements the editorial opening Philosophies eight years ago. The success of the original vision of the journal has been confirmed by the high quality of published works and its institutional recognition. The journal Philosophies evolves, but this evolution is an adaptation to the conditions of better realization of its original mission to promote the reintegration of fragmented by specialization knowledge guided by philosophy. In contrast to the editorial published at the time of the opening of the journal presenting (...) general philosophical principles guiding its early development which are equally valid today as eight years ago, the present editorial focuses on philosophical but also more practical aspects of its operation and its role in the academic community together with an extensive clarification of their misunderstanding in decisions regarding submission of contributions. (shrink)

The fall of the nineteenth century abounded in discoveries of natural laws, that is, strict and unequivocal rules of the development of life. These laws stated for example that ontogeny of individuals repeats, or recapitulates, phylogeny of the species; that big and specialized forms originate in evolution from small and unspecialized ones, while the reverse is not true; that endothermic animals are larger-sized and more compact in cool than in warm climates, and so on. Louis Dollo, a Belgian palaeontologist, proposed (...) the so-called law of irreversibility of evolution which stated that an organic structure lost in evolution cannot reappear with all the peculiarities of its design. This law seems indeed to be true but not particularly original. It was Heraclitus who first observed that one could not enter the same river twice. Dollo's law says essentially the same thing. The flow of evolutionary events combines so many processes in so many ways that past evolutionary events cannot recur exactly. “What is done, is done forever”. Time itself introduces asymmetry into the evolutionary process. (shrink)

The author argues that behind the apparent randomness of interactions between cabdrivers and their fares in Warsaw is a temporal structure. To capture this temporal structure, the author introduces the notion of a linking ecology. He argues that the Warsaw taxi market is a linking ecology, which is structured by religious time, state time, and family time. The author then focuses on waiting time, arguing that it too structures the interactions between cabdrivers and their fares. The author makes a processual (...) argument that waiting time has been restructured by the postsocialist transformation, but only because this transformation has been continually encoded through the defensive and adaptive strategies of cabdrivers responding to the repetitive and unique events located across the social space. The author concludes with the claim that linking ecologies are a recurring structure of the social process and that they form the backbone of globalization, financialization, and mediatization. (shrink)

Application of either the harm principle or the best interest standard to medical decision making conflicts with some types of pediatric research that pose elevated risk without the reasonable prob...

In the paper we investigate Birkhoff’s conditions and. We prove that a discrete lattice L satisfies the condition ) if and only if L is a 4-cell lattice not containing a cover-preserving sublattice isomorphic to the lattice S*7. As a corollary we obtain a well known result of J. Jakub´ık from [6]. Furthermore, lattices S7 and S*7 are considered as so-called partially cover-preserving sublattices of a given lattice L, S7 ≪ L and S7 ≪ L, in symbols. It is shown (...) that an upper continuous lattice L satisfies if and only if L is a 4-cell lattice such that S7 ≪/ L. The final corollary is a generalization of Jakubík’s theorem for upper continuous and strongly atomic lattices. Keywords: Birkhoff’s conditions, semimodularity conditions, modular lattice, discrete lattices, upper continuous lattice, strongly atomic lattice, cover-preserving sublattice, cell, 4-cell lattice. (shrink)

W 1983 roku Benjamin Libet wraz ze współpracownikami po raz pierwszy wykazał, że w prostym działaniu dobrowolnym świadoma intencja nie pełni funkcji inicjującej. Czasowy przebieg tego typu działania wskazuje również, że intencja oraz samo działanie to produkty procesów nieświadomych. Na podstawie wyniku Libeta oraz wybranych koncepcji psychologicznych Daniel Wegner zaproponował teorię pozornej mentalnej przyczynowości, w ramach której intencja to rodzaj konstruktu umożliwiającego agentowi zrozumienie własnego zachowania w kategoriach przyczynowych, gdzie jego stan mentalny (intencja) jawi mu się jako przyczyna, a działanie (...) jako skutek. Ujęcie Wegnera rodzi jednak pytanie, jaka jest faktyczna relacja pomiędzy intencjami, a celami kształtującymi nasze decyzje. Biorąc pod uwagę wyjaśnienie amerykańskiego psychologa, nie możemy być pewni, że te dwa elementy mają ze sobą jakiś związek. Może to prowadzić do zaskakującego wniosku, że nasza świadoma wola jest w gruncie rzeczy iluzją. Korzystając z wyników badań Read’a Montague nad mechanizmami ustanawiania i osiągania celów wskazuję na alternatywną możliwość rozumienia roli intencji. Zgodnie z analizą Montague, możemy postulować, że przynajmniej w wybranych przypadkach treść intencji działania oraz przebieg zachowań celowych oparte są na tej samej abstrakcyjnej reprezentacji. Znaczy to, że interpretacja świadomej woli, jako przydatnej iluzji jest za szeroka, gdyż znamy (wskazane w tekście) przypadki, kiedy treść intencji jest tożsama z reprezentacją pełniącą rolę nagrody w systemie ustanawiania i osiągania celów. (shrink)

In the paper I try to define some basic ideas and sketch a style of Marek Siemek’s epistemological reflection and its influence on the notion of do called “meaning of history”. I referee some elements of his interpretation of Kant and Hegel as a background to paradox of “meaning of the history”—the paradox of its necessary transcendence and immanence, the contradiction between a history as an eschatology, and history as a “project”, a dialectic of sense and non-sense. The conclusion is (...) following: the “history” for Siemek is the becoming of self-sufficiency of the “modern spirit” and therefore a tragicomedy in the Hegelian sense. It excludes any transcendent point of view or any utopia. (shrink)

Artykuł jest zaproszeniem do ponownego namysłu nad nienową i niekoniecznie oryginalną kwestią — rolą metafory w pisarstwie naukowym. Bezpośrednim pretekstem jest metafora kompasu, mapy i treningu, a w innym planie „starych bukłaków, do których wlewa się młode wino”. Figur tych używa Sebastian Gałecki jako swoistego zwieńczenia swojej rozprawy Etyka chrześcijańska dla postchrześcijańskiej epoki, konfrontującej koncepcje: etyki sprawności charakteru (cnoty) (Alasdair MacIntyre), sumienia (John Henry Newman) i nowej teorii prawa naturalnego (John Finnis). Pozostawiając na uboczu istotę treści rozprawy, próbuję rozpoznać kilka (...) kwestii i zagrożeń związanych ze stosowaniem przez autorów metafor. Uchodzą one, w nomenklaturze Umberto Eco, za „gorące” i metodologicznie podejrzane elementy tak samej refleksji, jak i sposobu pisania w nauce. Mimo wątpliwości i zastrzeżeń wobec metafory jako figury „nienaukowej”, chciałbym bronić prawa do jej poprawnego używania w filozofii, szczególnie – etyce. Za przykład takiego właśnie użycia uważam ich zastosowanie w książce Sebastiana Gałeckiego. (shrink)

We compared the processing of natural language quantifiers in a group of patients with schizophrenia and a healthy control group. In both groups, the difficulty of the quantifiers was consistent with computational predictions, and patients with schizophrenia took more time to solve the problems. However, they were significantly less accurate only with proportional quantifiers, like more than half. This can be explained by noting that, according to the complexity perspective, only proportional quantifiers require working memory engagement.

A child’s objection, refusal and dissent regarding participation in non-beneficial biomedical research must be respected, even when the parents or legal representatives have given their permission. There is, however, no consensus on the definition and criteria of a meaningful and valid child’s objection. The aim of this article is to clarify this issue. In the first part we describe the problems of a child’s assent in research. In the second part we distinguish and analyze two models of a child’s objection (...) to research: the capacity-based model and the distress-based model. In the last part we present arguments for a broader and unified understanding of a child’s objection within regulations and practices. This will strengthen children’s rights and facilitate the entire process of assessment of research protocols. (shrink)

We present the propositional logic LEC for the two epistemic modalities of current and stable knowledge used by an agent who system-atically enriches his language. A change in the linguistic resources of an agent as a result of certain cognitive processes is something that commonly happens. Our system is based on the logic LC intended to formalize the idea that the occurrence of changes induces the passage of time. Here, the primitive operator C read as: it changes that, defines the (...) temporal succession of states of the world. The notion of current knowledge concerns variable components of the world and it may change over time. We represent it by the primitive operator k read as: the agent currently knows that, and assume that it has S5 properties. The second type of knowledge, symbolized by the primitive operator K read as: the agent stably knows that, relates to constant components of the world and it does not change. As a result of the axiomatic entanglement of C, K and k we show that stable knowledge satisfies axioms of S4.3. K and k modalities are not mutually definable, stable knowledge implies the current one and if the latter never changes, then it comes to be stable. The combination of K and k with the idea of an expanding language allows questioning of the so-called perfect recall principle. It cannot be maintained for both types of knowledge just because of changes in the vocabulary of the agent and possibly the growing spectrum of possible states of the world. We interpret LEC in the semantics of histories of epistemic changes and show that it is complete. Finally, we compare our logic with selected epistemic logics based on the concept of linear discrete time. (shrink)

The logic of change formulated by K. Świętorzecka, has its motivation coming from the Aristotelian theory of substantial change which is undrstood as a transformation consisting in the disappearing and becoming of individual substances. The transition: becoming/disapearing (and conversely) is expressed in by the primitive operator C, to be read: it changes that …, and it is mapped by the progressively expanding language. We are interested in attributive changes of individual substances. We consider a formalism with two non-normal and not (...) mutually definable operators of possible and necessary change, inspired by Aristotelian distinction of accidental and essential attributes. From we adopt the idea that temporal concepts are defined via change operators, and the idea of an expanding language. In what follows, We axiomatise our new logic and describe its semantics, giving the proof of its completeness. We compare our formalism with selected modal logics. (shrink)

Using known facts we give a simple characterization of the distributivity of lattices of finite length.

The essay critically examines the main claim of the book Religia jako idolatria [Religion as Idolatry] by Ireneusz Ziemiński, according to which religion is necessarily idolatry. The author argues that the thesis is insufficiently justified and points out several topic that require further discussion.

The starting-point of my essay is conviction of wide-spread crisis of western civilization. The analysis of this crisis was achieved basing on the Horkheimer's theoretical settlements which are leading to show typical of Plato character of western culture. Basing on the example of 'solar myth' presented by Plato in "Politeia", it is shown totalitarian and captivating human-beings paideia model, which is being realized till the present day in the Mediterranean culture region. Dictatorial, anti-humanistic and oppressing elements of Platonism and related (...) to it civilization, are shown from the G. Bataille's settlements point of view. In his project, ones are suspecting the chance of liberation of human-being. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to describe possible e-learning activities that a university can develop. Examples of projects carried out in Warsaw School of Economics have been presented with conclusions and experience gathered during their implementation. In the last part, trends for the future of academic e-learning have been discussed.

In early March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the situation of thousands of higher education institutions around the world. The spreading virus not only imposed remote education, but it also brought tremendous changes in university management. The introduction of new educational and administrative solutions was a huge logistical and financial challenge for public and private universities. It was not easy for students either. It also posed a problem for the faculty. Remote learning generated many problems even in highly developed countries. (...) Therefore, the number of students was expected to slowly decline. It was a surprise that private universities saw an increase in interest in their offer right after the outbreak of the pandemic. The article presents the situation of private universities in Poland, the complex problems related to the management of the academic environment in the absence of proper preparation for on-line education as well as for remote management of higher education organizations. (shrink)

The Steprāns forcing notion arises as quotient of the algebra of Borel sets modulo the ideal of σ-continuity of a certain Borel not σ-continuous function. We give a characterization of this forcing in the language of trees and use this characterization to establish such properties of the forcing as fusion and continuous reading of names. Although the latter property is usually implied by the fact that the associated ideal is generated by closed sets, we show that it is not the (...) case with Steprāns forcing. We also establish a connection between Steprāns forcing and Miller forcing thus giving a new description of the latter. Eventually, we exhibit a variety of forcing notions which do not have continuous reading of names in any presentation. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical analysis of the research program for formalizing informal logic proposed by Douglas Walton and Thomas Gordon. Since their proposal is based on employing the Carneades Argumentation System, this paper aims at answering two questions: what are main benefits of applying CAS as means for formalizing informal logic, and what are possible extensions of Walton and Gordon’s research program and modifications in employing CAS?

Dialectical fallacies are typically defined as breaches of the rules of a regulated discussion between two participants. What if discussions become more complex and involve multiple parties with distinct positions to argue for? Are there distinct argumentation norms of polylogues? If so, can their violations be conceptualized as polylogical fallacies? I will argue for such an approach and analyze two candidates for argumentative breaches of multi-party rationality: false dilemma and collateral straw man.

Since 1989, clinical ethics consultation in form of hospital ethics committees was established in most of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Up to now, the similarities and differences between HECs in Central and Eastern Europe and their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe have not been determined. Through search in literature databases, we have identified studies that document the implementation of clinical ethics consultation in Central and Eastern Europe. These studies have been analyzed under the following (...) aspects: mode of establishment of HECs, character of consultation they provide, and their composition. The results show that HECs in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe differ from their western-European or U.S. counterparts with regard to these three aspects. HECs were established because of centrally imposed legal regulations. Little initiatives in this area were taken by medical professionals interested in resolving emerging ethical issues. HECs in the transition countries concentrate mostly on review of research protocols or resolution of administrative conflicts in healthcare institutions. Moreover, integration of non-professional third parties in the workings of HECs is often neglected. We argue that these differences can be attributed to the historical background and the role of medicine in these countries under the communist regime. Political and organizational structures of healthcare as well as education of healthcare staff during this period influenced current functioning of clinical ethics consultation in the transition countries. (shrink)

We present the logic$${\mathsf {LCB}}$$LCBwhich is expressed in a propositional language constantly enriched by new atomic expressions. Our formal framework is the propositional doxastic logic$${\mathsf {KD45}}$$KD45with the belief operator$${\mathcal {B}}$$B, extended by the$${\mathcal {C}}$$Coperator, to be readit changes that.... We describe the changing beliefs of an agent who uses progressively expanding language. The approach presented here allows us to weaken pragmatic objections to the so-called principle ofnegative retrospectionaccepted in$${\mathsf {KD45}}$$KD45and the problem oflogical omniscience. In what follows, we present the expanding (...) propositional language used in our formalism, interpreted using an epistemic version of Kripke semantics. Next, we give a syntactic characterization of logic$${\mathsf {LCB}}$$LCBand prove the soundness and completeness of$${\mathsf {LCB}}$$LCBin respect to our semantics. Finally, we compare the idea of expanding language with the notion ofagent awarenessand we relate our formalism to two epistemic temporal logics. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that some aspects of cognitive phenomena cannot be explained computationally. In the first part, I sketch a mechanistic account of computational explanation that spans multiple levels of organization of cognitive systems. In the second part, I turn my attention to what cannot be explained about cognitive systems in this way. I argue that information-processing mechanisms are indispensable in explanations of cognitive phenomena, and this vindicates the computational explanation of cognition. At the same time, it has (...) to be supplemented with other explanations to make the mechanistic explanation complete, and that naturally leads to explanatory pluralism in cognitive science. The price to pay for pluralism, however, is the abandonment of the traditional autonomy thesis asserting that cognition is independent of implementation details. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on a problem related to teleological theories of content namely, which notion of function makes content causally relevant? It has been claimed that some functional accounts of content make it causally irrelevant, or epiphenomenal; in which case, such notions of function could no longer act as the pillar of naturalized semantics. By looking closer at biological questions about behavior, I argue that past discussion has been oriented towards an ill-posed question. What I defend is a (...) Very Boring Hypothesis: depending on the representational phenomenon and the explanatory question, different aspects might be important, and it is difficult to say a priori which ones these might be. There are multiple facets to biological functionality and causality relevant for explaining representational phenomena, and ignoring them will lead to unmotivated simplifications. In addition, accounting for different facets of functionality helps dispense with intuition-based specifications of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

A formal language is positional if it involves a positional connecitve, i.e. a connective of realization to relate formulas to points of a kind, like points of realization or points of relativization. The connective in focus in this paper is the connective “R”, first introduced by Jerzy Łoś. Formulas [Rαφ] involve a singular name α and a formula φ to the effect that φ is satisfied relative to the position designated by α. In weak positional calculi no nested occurences of (...) the connective “R” are allowed. The distribution problem in weak positional logics is actually the problem of distributivity of the connective “R” over classical connectives, viz. the problem of relation between the occurences of classical connectives inside and outside the scope of the positional connective “R”. (shrink)

A novel account of semantic information is proposed. The gist is that structural correspondence, analysed in terms of similarity, underlies an important kind of semantic information. In contrast to extant accounts of semantic information, it does not rely on correlation, covariation, causation, natural laws, or logical inference. Instead, it relies on structural similarity, defined in terms of correspondence between classifications of tokens into types. This account elucidates many existing uses of the notion of information, for example, in the context of (...) scientific models and structural representations in cognitive science. It is poised to open a new research program concerned with various kinds of semantic information, its functions, and its measurement. (shrink)

We consider the notion of everyday language. We claim that everyday language is semantically bounded by the properties expressible in the existential fragment of second–order logic. Two arguments for this thesis are formulated. Firstly, we show that so–called Barwise's test of negation normality works properly only when assuming our main thesis. Secondly, we discuss the argument from practical computability for finite universes. Everyday language sentences are directly or indirectly verifiable. We show that in both cases they are bounded by second–order (...) existential properties. Moreover, there are known examples of everyday language sentences which are the most difficult in this class (NPTIME–complete). (shrink)

The focus of this special issue of Theory & Psychology is on explanatory mechanisms in psychology, especially on problems of particular prominence for psychological science such as theoretical integration and unification. Proponents of the framework of mechanistic explanation claim, in short, that satisfactory explanations in psychology and related fields are causal. They stress the importance of explaining phenomena by describing mechanisms that are responsible for them, in particular by elucidating how the organization of component parts and operations in mechanisms gives (...) rise to phenomena in certain conditions. We hope for cross-pollination between philosophical approaches to explanation and experimental psychology, which could offer methodological guidance, in particular where mechanism discovery and theoretical integration are at issue. Contributions in this issue pertain to theoretical integration and unification of psychology as well as the growing importance of causal mechanistic explanations in psychological science. (shrink)

Herbert A. Simon is well known for his account of bounded rationality. Whereas classical economics idealized economic agency and framed rational choice in terms of the decision theory, Simon insisted that agents need not be optimal in their choices. They might be mere satispcers, i.e., attain good enough goals rather than optimal ones. At the same time, behaviorally as well as computationally, bounded rationality is much more realistic.

The article aims to show how the acceptance of non-monotonic logic enables arguments to be held between science and religion in a way that does not exclude either of these two spheres. The starting point of the analyses is the idea of the 13th century Danish philosopher, Boethius of Dacia, who states that it is both acceptable that: a natural scientist negates that the world had a beginning, and a Christian theologian asserts that the world had a beginning, because each (...) of them is basing their statements on the principles of their respective discipline: the first on the principles of nature, and the latter on knowledge supplemented by divine revelation. What is more, analogically: a metaphysician, when limited to his principles, cannot settle the issue, as he takes into account supranatural beings and their powers, but cannot know what God or another powerful supranatural would have decided in a such a case. The paper shows that Boethius’s approach: violates the rule of monotonicity, cannot be finally interpreted in terms of classical logic and assumes certain non-monotonic logic as its inference framework. Other presented examples of arguments between religious beliefs and the statements of natural science are resolved in the same way. Thus, it is shown how non-monotonic thinking allows us to seriously treat both scientific and religious inference as compatible. (shrink)

Dialectical approaches traditionally conceptualize argumentation as a discussion in which two parties debate on “two sides of an issue”. However, many political issues engender multiple positions. This is clear in multi-party online deliberations in which often an array of competing positions is debated in one and the same discussion. A proponent of a given position thus addresses a number of possible opponents, who in turn may hold incompatible opinions. The goal of this paper is to shed extra light on such (...) “polylogical” clash of opinions in online deliberation, by examining the multi-layered participation in actual online debates. The examples are drawn from the readers’ discussions on Osama bin Laden’s killing in online versions of two British newspapers: The Guardian and The Telegraph. As a result of the analysis, a distinction between sides, positions, and cases in argumentative deliberation is proposed. (shrink)

This article presents the works of great Polish philosopher, Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, whose creative output can be applied to professional nursing practice. Krąpiec's philosophical heritage is extensive and encompasses many philosophical fields: metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of law, philosophy of culture, philosophy of politics and philosophy of language. Krąpiec created an original philosophical synthesis characterized by a realistic approach. In this paper, I present only one of several original philosophical concepts developed by Krąpiec: the theory of the person based on (...) seven essential characteristics, that is the ability for cognition, love, freedom, religion, legal subjectivity, completeness and dignity. I attempt to show how these personal characteristics correspond to various patient needs. I argue that the qualitative deficit of any personal characteristics indicated by Krąpiec corresponds to a patient's real need that must be satisfied. I also stress that the skilful diagnosing of all—not only selected—qualitative deficits of characteristics can be defined as holistic care in the nursing profession. (shrink)