S'opposant à la clôture hégélienne de la négativité, c'est-à-dire à l'esclavage intériorisé et affirmé par l'homme posthistorique, Bataille définit l'homme en tant que l'être ontologiquement déchiré, constitué par le conflit incontournable pouvant être enlevé non par un moment quelconque de l'histoire, mais uniquement par la mort. Contrairement à la prise de position hégélienne mystifiée l'homme n'est pas, selon Bataille, exclusivement une conscience tout à fait temporalisée, mais aussi un corps et une impulsion ou bien une emanation personifiée de l'énergie cosmique (...) et solaire. En tant que tel il est une négativité par excellence, une tension notoire entre l'interdit et le projet d'une part et la transgression et le dépense anarchique de l'autre, donc un être convulsif orienté non vers la plénitude positivement défini, mais vers la perte. Plus que par les avantages de la culture rejetant la violence et diminuant une existence devenant plus en plus utilisée et fonctionnalisée, l'homme est instigué, selon Bataille, par le sacré qui détermine originairement la dynamique de la vie. Attiré par le sacré en tant que le revers de l'homogénéité de la culture l'homme se dirige vers l'existence tragique souveraine, aspire à l'impossible. Aux système, savoir, possibilités, histoire et vie miasmatique excluant l'extase qui pour la raison n'est rien ou est par elle au moins tout à fait instrumentalisée dans la stratégie de sa ruse, Bataille oppose l'impossible athéologique et asystématique ou bien le non-savoir en tant que régions où se manifeste la souveraineté de l'homme. La souveraineté paradoxale du point de vue des codes pragmatiques, parce que fondée non sur le choix assidu et avare de l'accumulation et de la durée, mais sur le choix excessif de la perte, rudimentaire pour la vie traitée comme une explosion dionysiaque ou solaire. (shrink)

The dialog that has been conducted for a few years between a group of Christian social thinkers and economists on moral aspects of economic activity has led to the creation of a new science discipline called economic personalism. On the one hand it stipulates the need to express economic processes within ethical categories, on the other hand it perceives the necessity to elaborate a strong economic theory. Economic personalists refer to the works of those thinkers who returned to the basic (...) economic inspiration as a field belonging predominantly to moral philosophy. This school is sometimes called the Austrian School or the School of Classical Liberalism. A significant role in the economic personalism development was performed by its forerunners who noticed what was lacking in the previous interpretations of Catholic social thought. Among the there are John Paul II, Michael Novak, Rocco Buttiglione and the Acton Institute. The intellectual sources of economic personalism are mainly related to concept of personalism developed in Poland. Its specific thesis, seen in the maxim that “each person ought to be affirmed for the sake of it itself” also relates to the economic life. Economic personalists formulate principles that are spokesmen in order to promote a free society built on virtues. They are expressed in the following way: pre-eminence of a human being: economy and human dignity; human capital: creation and creativity; dignity of human work: calling for enterprise, integral development of human being, manufacture and personalism, participation, economic common wealth, helpfulness, market restrictions; preferential option for the poor: solidarity and social equity. (shrink)

Paweł Gładziejewski, Is empathy is mental simulation? Remarks on the representative approach based on the concept of mirror neurons., Diametros 27 This paper draws on the theoretical achievements of analytic philosophy of mind and the empirical results of psychology and cognitive neuroscience in order to understand the nature of empathy and the sub-personal mechanisms upon which it is based. The paper distinguishes two types of empathy, which are often not sufficiently clearly distinguished in the literature, empathy as a kind of (...) social perception and empathy as compassion. The argument attempts show to that neither of these can be identified with a mental simulation process understood as a sub-personal process. Nevertheless mental simulation may play a limited explanatory role with respect to these two types of empathy. (shrink)

Author: Bytniewski Paweł Title: “WHAT IS AN AUTHOR?” ON FOUCAULT’S CONSCIOUSNESS OF AN AUTHORSHIP („Kim jest Autor?” O krytycznej świadomości autorstwa) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2010, vol:.10, number: 2010/1, pages: 73-106 Keywords: FOUCAULT, AUTHOR, LITERATURE, LANGUAGE, EXPERIENCE Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:One of the major obstacles to reconstructing Foucault’s attitude towards an authorship issue is multiplicity of his own roles which as an author he fulfilled. An Authorship as a theme (...) of his texts, as a prefiguration of nonexistent “Man” and his own authorship as a problem, as a way of “detaching myself from myself” – all these are the forms of Foucauldian ideas about an authorship and, at the same time, forms of his consciousness of his own authorship. Foucault historicizes and dissipates an authorship: an author is a function rather than the originator of texts. Writing, in this perspective, is a kind of conversion, decomposition of subjectivity into something else and even explosion. To say “I” doesn’t prove to be an ego. Additionally, Foucault notoriously suggests that his books are fiction. To be an author in this way is a way of being within the discourse and, as a consequence of it, to be trapped in its power. Foucault’s own rewriting of his theoretical biography includes turns and returns: as he repeatedly claims, he wrote in order to transform himself. He uses the processes of writing to simulate production of his subjective identity and, at the same time, to summarize, recapitulate his own oeuvre from current position. To cope with this suggestive and bizarre claims one should employ Roland Barthes distinction: écrivains (authors) et écrivants (writers). When Foucault-écrivain decomposes his ego, his own mode of existence by the use of writing, Foucault-écrivant, in an act of writing, writes himself, as an author. When Foucault-écrivain “writes fictions”, Foucault écrivant, in an act of “self-writing” (l’écriture de soi), establishes the object of a critique – Foucault. (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)

Austere relationalism combines two claims. First, the phenomenal character of perception is at least partially constituted by the perceived items. Second, perception doesn’t consist in representing the perceived items as being a certain way. Recently, Daniel Kalpokas, Avner Baz, and Søren Overgaard have cast doubt on the ability of austere relationalism to account for the peculiar phenomenology of aspect-seeing. I show that this explanatory challenge can be met. Some of the claims made by the critics can be resisted, whereas other (...) can be accommodated into austere relationalism. Most notably, I argue that austere relationalists should acknowledge that aspect-seeing is enabled by unconscious perceptual judgment. This not only allows them to meet the challenge, but also provides the means to reconcile the apparently belief-independent phenomenology of aspect-seeing with the arguably indispensable role that concepts and recognition play in it. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the notion of internal representation has - at least according to some - a fundamental role to play in the sciences of the mind, not only has its explanatory utility been under attack for a while now, but it also remains unclear what criteria should an explanation of a given cognitive phenomenon meet to count as a representational explanation in the first place. The aim of this article is to propose a solution to this latter problem. (...) I will assume that representational explanations should be construed as a form of mechanistic explanations and proceed by proposing a general sketch of a functional architecture of a representational cognitive mechanism. According to the view on offer here, representational mechanisms are mechanisms that meet four conditions: the structural resemblance condition, the action-guidance condition, the decouplability condition, and the error-detection condition. (shrink)

[K. Marciniak, Pro Cicerone poeta. Poezja Marka Tulliusza Cycerona na przestrzeni stuleci, Warszawa 2008].

The author discusses the problem of homosexuality in the Hellenic period. The presented analyses are not only historical as the author shows in detail reviewing the evidence of homosexual behaviour, but he also discusses the forms and meanings of that behaviour. He is specially interested in the axiological context. He tries to recreate the system of evaluations according to which these sexual activities were seen as positive and shows the borderline beyond which homosexuality was condemned.

In the past centuries Maṇḍana Miśra was regarded as the most prominent figure of the advaita school of philosophy, to the extent that the whole system of advaita was frequently described by his name as ‘maṇḍana-matam’ (‘the view of Maṇḍana’). Nowadays advaita is almost exclusively associated, if not identified, with the name of Maṇḍana’s contemporary Śaṅkara. Both thinkers philosophizing along advaita lines, their views on the ultimate being, the highest bliss, ignorance etc. were substantially different. The present paper is intended (...) as a bird’s eye view on the whole of Maṇḍana’s legacy, including his Sphoṭasiddhi, being his contribution to the grammatical tradi­tion of Bhartṛhari. It is also aimed at finding the reason why in the hierarchy of eminent advaita thinkers Maṇḍana was eventually supplanted by Śaṅkara and his œuvre unacknowledged. (shrink)

Semen Frank (1877–1950) was one of the first and most ardent advocates of the ontological argument in the twentieth century. He proposed an original interpretation of the ontological argument based on its analogy to Descartes’ Cogito. Frank believed that it is possible to develop Cogito ergo sum into Cogito ergo est ens absolutum. In this paper, I analyze his version of the ontological argument. First, I propose a simple reconstruction of his reasoning, paying attention to its hidden premise. Second, departing (...) from the classical logical interpretations of Descartes’ argument, I show that for Frank the claim that God exists had the same logical properties as Cogito. As a result, it seems that his argument was formally correct, though based on a premise which could hardly be convincing for a non-believer. This should not be surprising, however, since Frank, as most Russian religious philosophers, was not interested in the project of philosophical theology. His main concern was rather the development of philosophy based on religious premises, which might be called “theological philosophy”. (shrink)

In their work McCulloch and Pitts describe an idea of representing all of nervous activity in terms of propositional logic. This idea was quickly challenged. One of reasons for this challenge was rising believe that logic is unable to describe most of human cognitive processes. In this paper we will analyse premises of original McCulloch and Pitts proposition. Following that, we will ask about ability of symbolic systems to represent human cognition. We will finish by analysing relation between symbolic and (...) subsymbolic computing, in hope of bridging the gap between the two. (shrink)

The paper critically examines the conception of majoritarian democracy. In the second part of the text, the author introduces the definition of majoritarian democracy based on the Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of minimal democracy. The thesis of the paper is that electing the government by universal suffrage is neither necessary nor sufficient as a condition for a democratic regime. The concept of democracy is broader, including the catalogue of democratic values connected with the concept of democratic citizenship, special circumstances of political (...) action and the limitation of government powers. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Studien Jahrgang: 50 Heft: 1 Seiten: 129-162.

In this paper we are focused on the relation between an Ontology (with the capital "O") qua philosophical discipline and an ontology (with the lowercase "o") qua branch of Computer Science. In our view "Ontology" refers to all philosophical groups or schools which take some position on the reality. The meaning of 'ontology' in the second case is not that easy to grasp because of the variety of artefacts which are called 'ontologies' and many activities - aiming at creating the (...) ontologies - called ontological engineering . In general we could state that an ontology is something what is called "ontology" beyond Philosophy, mostly in the Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence, Conceptual Modelling or Ontological Engineering and what refers to an engineering artefact describing certain aspect of reality. So understood ontology is always tied to certain language (preferably a logical one) or more precisely to the set of the sentences of this language. It is said that these sentences constitute an ontology and specify the intended meaning of the terms used in these sentences. The ontologists usually focus on describing their conceptualization of the relevant for them aspects of reality. In their ontologies only these properties of reality are taken into account, which are considered as important for the sake of the application. In this sense ontological engineering may ignore Ontologically essential properties, i.e. the ones important from the purely philosophical perspective. The simplest ontologies are catalogues - the list of terms or numbers denoting certain object, glossaries - containing additionally the definitions of the terms, thesauri - the glossaries in which the hierarchy of the terms appear and taxonomies - in which the primitives are hierarchically structured in order to enabling the properties' inheritance. The most sophisticated ontologies are called formal ontologies and they are logical theories fully axiomatized. Ontologies are also divided on the top-level ontologies concerning very general and mostly abstract entities (e.g. property, agent, time) and the domain ontologies dealing with some small domains (e.g. car's parts). For a better understanding of the wide variety of ontologies we give an example of three ontologies: WordNet (thesaurus-like ontology), Cyc (top-level, formal ontology) and Enterprise Ontology (domain ontology). The Ontology plays an important role in ontological engineering. We notice that the ontological engineers more and more often rely on the philosophical literature looking for the solutions of the ontological problems. It is especially visible in the top-ontologies where many Ontological distinctions have been directly adopted. On the other hand we must sadly stress that philosophers seem to be not interested in the ontological engineering at all. We'd like to introduce ontology to t. (shrink)