_The dynamic development of medical technologies, i.e. the use of medicinal products and medical procedures, requires reflection on the ways to ensure the safety of patients and people using such methods of treatment (medical professionals) in legal and ethical terms. This applies in particular to the currently observed influence of the media on the actions taken in the health care system in Poland as well as individual decisions of patients on the use of the offered drugs and other medical procedures._ (...) _The article presents selected legal provisions defining the conditions for the use of medicinal products (drugs) and experimental medical procedures. The basic element of the considerations is to indicate the legal conditions for this type of use of medical technologies understood in this way, also in a broader context – with the characteristics of ethical conditions for „the media message”, including ensuring its proper quality for the protection of public health._. (shrink)

The following text is a voice in the discussion around normative problems of innovative therapies. It particularly refers to legal and ethical problems related to the advertisement of experimental medicinal products and medical procedures, also discussed in this issue in the article by Paweł Lipowski "Advertisements of experimental medicinal products and medical procedures in the light of Polish law and media ethics.".

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)

In September 1999 "Nature" magazine announced that atomic orbitals were di-rectly observed. Opposing it, Eric Scerri, editor-in-chief of "Foundations of Chemistry", claimed that what could be observed in the experiment was electron density, not orbitals. The main purpose of this paper is to consider philosophical and methodological aspects of the above controversy. Especially, the problems of direct observability and reality of theoretical entities are taken under detailed discussion. From the point of view of quantum mechanics there are not any reasons (...) to believe that orbitals exist. However, realistically treated orbitals are very effective tools in the laboratory practice of chemistry. (shrink)

Formal Ontology in Information Systems is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications. Its interdisciplinary research focus lies at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science, as well as in the applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, knowledge management, information-systems development, library and information science, scientific research, and semantic technologies in general.As in previous years, FOIS 2014 was a nexus of interdisciplinary research and communication. The current proceedings (...) is divided into four main sections, dealing with: foundations; processes, agency and dispositions; methods and tools; and applications. The last of these covers a broad spectrum of areas, including in particular biology and medicine, engineering, and economy. For the first time in its history, the conference hosted a special track: an ontology competition, the aim of which was to encourage authors to make their ontologies publicly available and to allow them to be evaluated according to a set of predetermined criteria. Papers discussing these ontologies can also be found in this volume.The book will be of interest to all those whose work involves the application of ontologies, and who are looking for a current overview of developments in formal ontology. (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)

Our conscious experience seemingly involves the subjective sense or feeling of the passage of time. However, in recent years, several authors have denied that such an aspect or feature of experience can be found. If the experience of the flow of time exists, it remains elusive and intangible. My aim here is to try to pin it down. For this purpose, I will investigate acute disturbances of normal temporal experience that accompany deep meditative and psychedelic states. I will argue that (...) these experiences of altered temporality provide phenomenal contrast cases to ordinary passage phenomenology, allowing us to establish the existence of the latter and making it amenable to theorizing. (shrink)

Modernity and What Has Been Lost comes out of a conference held at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw̤, Poland, on June 4-5, 2009 that sought to identify Leo Strauss's intellectual background in re: the repudiation of a modern idea of homogenous, universal state (considered as an illegitimate synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, i.e., the claims of Reason and Revelation). The world we live in, molded by science and historical relativism, may be described as hostile to human dignity or perfection, or (...) abhorrent to those who love the search for wisdom. Straussian teaching consisted in the steady effort to reopen "the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns," and refers to the esoteric way of writing practiced by the most profound thinkers of the past which has been apparently forgotten in the last three centuries. Strauss binds the concept of natural right with the question of maintenance of conditions for philosophizing, and it probably seems to him that such defense of philosophy is the highest task in our times. However, one must be well aware that philosophizing always means a perilous way of life. Indeed, it may be destructive of the city (polis) itself as far as the city exists due to some crucial beliefs the philosopher might put in doubt. Reflecting on those issues, Strauss engaged in several highly important debates with his contemporaries, in an open way with, e.g., Carl Schmitt, Karl Lw̲ith and Alexandre Kojv̈e, and more tacitly with Martin Heidegger"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

A survey of the modern theories of explanation leads us to conclude that it is J. Woodward\'s conterfactual approach that seems to set out a promising agenda for setting up a satisfactory model of explanation. Such a model would need to come to terms with two stipulations, i.e. to reflect causal asymmetry and be empirically adequate. To meet the latter I modify the counterfactual model of explanation to require a class of observationally equivalent (Bayesian) causal models instead of the true (...) causal model. For in most cases empirical adequacy of causal models, i.e. their identifiability and consistency with observed distributions, would neither grant the stronger conclusion Woodward embeds in his conterfactual account of explanation nor license metaphysical naturalism. (shrink)

In this article, apart from a brief review of the relationship between mythos and logos, the author, who has based his study on the Freudian category of the social unconscious and Durkheim’s category of social consciousness, presents the characteristics of three modes of social memory: unconscious memory, interconscious memory and conscious memory. Based on Gilbert Durand’s mytho-analytical tool, the structure of the triad of memory: THE UNCONCIOUS – AWAITING – THE CONSCIOUS is shown as the memory of the Father, Son (...) and Mother. The mythological aspect of elapsing, past, reminiscence, living memory and anticipation is captured on the examples taken from Postmodern (the global society), Modern and even Pre-Modern). In this way, the author concludes that the contemporary transformation of memory into hallucinations means the beginning of anticipation for the End of History. (shrink)

According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...) the sense that it postulates that our cognitive contact with the world is mediated by internal representations. However, the exact sense in which PCT is representational remains unclear; neither is it clear that it deserves such status—that is, whether it really invokes structures that are truly and nontrivially representational in nature. In the present article, I argue that the representational pretensions of PCT are completely justified. This is because the theory postulates cognitive structures—namely action-guiding, detachable, structural models that afford representational error detection—that play genuinely representational functions within the cognitive system. (shrink)

This paper presents Michael Heller’s notion of “philosophy in science” and re-introduces Michael Heller’s classical text that first presented this concept of philosophy entitled How is “philosophy in science” possible?. The paper discusses the historical context of Heller’s idea as it emerged from the discussions and works of the Krakow philosophical scene and discusses the basic tenants of this philosophy, its analytic character, the role of intellectual tradition in the development of this philosophy, and the critical role played by an (...) interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, science, and theology. Despite the idea of philosophy in science having emerged about 40 years ago, this concept still inspires and fuels innovative research. The notion of “philosophy in science” lies at the foundations of the philosophy published in two journals: Philosophical Problems in Science and Philosophy in Science. (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)

ABSTRACTThe present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for one week, participants provided measures of their daily rumination and psychological adjustment. Multilevel analyses found that attention to dysphoric and threat-related words was positively related to daily rumination and attention to threat-related (...) words was negatively related to daily adjustment. These findings suggest that the impaired ability to disengage from negative words is positively related to rumination in daily life and is negatively related to well-being, as defined in terms of Beck’s Triad. (shrink)

In den philosophischen Diskussionen, die bereits im Vorfeld der Postmoderne unter dem Titel Jenseits des Subjekts stattfinden, geht es um eine radikale Infragestellung des Subjektbegriffs, eines der wesentlichen Konzepte der Philosophie der Neuzeit und der Moderne. Die Grundlage der Problematisierung des Subjekts ist eine kritische Diagnose, die der modernen Welt gestellt wird. Postmoderne Theorien vermitteln den Eindruck, in einer Welt zu leben, in der sich der Mensch aus dem Zentrum ins Ungewisse bewegt. Die «nachkopernikanische Welt» befindet sich in der Krise: (...) Individuen sehen sich unkontrollierbaren anonoymen Prozessen ausgeliefert und als Subjekte entmachtet. Zivilisations-, Kultur- und Technikkritik prägen das Weltbild, in dessen Zentrum die Kritik der Subjektivität steht. Die Kritik richtet sich gegen die als illusionär behauptete Selbstherrschaft des Subjekts. In den Beiträgen zu diesem Band geht es um die Frage, inwiefern eine derart radikale Infragestellung des Subjekts philosophisch gerechtfertigt werden kann. (shrink)

The article deals with the issue of turning in the thought of Martin Heidegger. I show that, in Being and time the question of being posed from the perspective of a distinguished being as Dasein has led to the objectification of being, thus rather reproducing instead of overcoming, the so far way of thinking that Heidegger named “metaphysical”. The turning in Heidegger’s thought consists in his effort to make being independent from human being, i.e. he tries to go beyond the (...) transcendental and subjectivist point of view of Dasein by placing historicality of Dasein against the background of the very existence of being. It is not Dasein who designs being, but on the contrary, being designs understanding for Dasein. In this context, I show that the thinking of being postulated by Heidegger takes the form of thinking the very process of historical presencing of the historic types of interpretation of being. (shrink)

This study was designed to determine the quality of service through the evaluation of hospitalized patients. An analysis of hospitalized patients’ subjective feelings towards service quality was carried out, in the context of the application of the SERVQUAL method. The pilot study was conducted in a Silesian hospital in a group of 29 young patients diagnosed with kidney disease. The study used a standard sheet of 22 SERVQUAL statements and an analysis of the significance of the 5 areas of quality (...) material important for the patient. According to the respondents, the most important of the 5 features that influence the quality of life is the ability of the ward staff to provide adequate medical services The least important were the aesthetics and ergonomics of rooms. Service quality gaps were seen in all the five dimensions as well as in the overall service quality. Hence, the following conclusions could be made: 1. The SERVQUAL method helps to identify discrepancies between perceptions of patients’ expectations in all the dimensions of quality of medical services. 2. For patients, the least important is the material dimension, whereas the one most affecting them is the dimension associated with the reliability of medical services. 3. An improvement of the level of satisfaction with the quality of medical services requires proper planning and effectiveness of implementation of health care services. 4. Research should be conducted on a larger population of patients. (shrink)

As formulated by Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell, epistemological disjunctivism is the claim that perceptual experience can provide the subject with epistemic justification that is reflectively accessible and externally grounded at the same time. Pritchard calls this thesis ‘the holy grail of epistemology’, since it reconciles two traditionally rival theories of justification, namely epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism. The main objection against epistemological disjunctivism thus understood is that it does not do justice to the well-known internalist intuitions expressed in The (...) New Evil Demon and Brain-in-a-Vat scenarios. I defend epistemological disjunctivism from this objection by indicating that those who apply to such scenarios commit themselves to implausible views in the philosophy of mind. I conclude that epistemological disjunctivism accurately expresses the epistemological attitude of a non-reductive materialist regarding the body-mind problem. (shrink)

The first aim of this paper is to remind the reader of a very original theory of meaning which in many aspects has not been surpassed by subsequent theories. The theory in question is Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning. In the first section I present a version of this theory which, I trust, retains the gist of the original but loses its outdated language. In the second section I analyze some problematic consequences of the directival theory and show how (...) they can be addressed. The second aim of this paper is exploiting some of the similarities between the directival theory and later theories of meaning. In the third section I argue that using the directival theory as an interpretative tool enables us to create explications of some of the notoriously vague notions which contemporary theories of meaning employ. (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)

Are perceptual experiences epistemically appraisable? In this paper, I argue, contra Siegel (Rationality of perception, Oxford 2017) that they are not (§§ 2–3). I also show how the problem of hijacked experience can be solved without endorsing the view that perceptual experience is epistemically appraisable (§§ 4–5). A key idea behind my proposal is a disjunctivist view on rationalising and epistemic powers of perceptual experience.

Debunking arguments aim to undermine common sense beliefs by showing that they are not explanatorily or causally linked to the entities they are purportedly about. Rarely are facts about the aetiology of common sense beliefs invoked for the opposite aim, that is, to support the reality of entities that furnish our manifest image of the world. Here I undertake this sort of un-debunking project. My focus is on the metaphysics of ordinary physical objects. I use the view of perception as (...) approximate Bayesian inference to show how representations of ordinary objects can be extracted from sensory input in a rational and truth-tracking manner. Drawing an analogy between perception construed as Bayesian hypothesis testing and scientific inquiry, I sketch out how some of the intuitions that traditionally inspired arguments for scientific realism also find application with regards to proverbial tables and chairs. (shrink)

According to unconscious perception hypothesis (UP), mental states of the same fundamental kind as ordinary conscious seeing can occur unconsciously. The proponents of UP often support it with empirical evidence for a more specific hypothesis, according to which colours can be seen unconsciously (UPC). However, UPC is a general claim that admits of many interpretations. The main aim of this paper is to determine which of them is the most plausible. To this end, I investigate how adopting various conceptions of (...) colour and perceptual phenomenal character affects UPC’s resilience to objections. This brings me to the conclusion that the most plausible reading of UPC is the one according to which the phenomenal character of colour perception (i) is constituted by colours qua primitive mind-independent qualities of the environment and (ii) is not essentially tied to consciousness. My conclusion not only identifies the most plausible interpretation of UPC, but also highlights and supports an unorthodox version of the relational theory of perception, which is a perfectly viable yet so far overlooked stance in the debate about unconscious perception. (shrink)

Psychedelic substances elicit powerful, uncanny conscious experiences that are thought to possess therapeutic value. In those who undergo them, these altered states of consciousness often induce shifts in metaphysical beliefs about the fundamental structure of reality. The contents of those beliefs range from contentious to bizarre, especially when considered from the point of view of naturalism. Can chemically induced, radically altered states of consciousness provide reasons for or play some positive epistemic role with respect to metaphysical beliefs? In this paper, (...) I discuss a view that has been underexplored in recent literature. I argue that psychedelic states can be rationally integrated into one’s epistemic life. Consequently, updating one’s metaphysical beliefs based on altered states of consciousness does not have to constitute an instance of epistemic irrationality. (shrink)

The paper discusses the thesis of virtual realism presented by David Chalmers in his paper “The Virtual and the Real” (2017). Here, I suggest an even stronger version of the claim that I call “virtual physicalism”. According to this view, virtual objects are not only real but physical as they are identical to the physical states of computers that run VR software. I suggest that virtual objects should have a similar ontological status to toys—they should be treated as models or (...) simplifications of ordinary objects. Just like toys, virtual objects can sometimes be good enough to be used instead of their ordinary counterparts. In these cases, virtual objects start to be treated as instantiations of the same kind. In the last part of the paper, I use Johan Huizinga’s notion of a “magic circle” to suggest how different objects could be successfully “virtualized”, that is, moved into a digital realm while remaining objects of the same kind as their non-virtual counterparts. I suggest this will happen once virtual reality becomes permanent and causally connected with non-virtual reality. I finish the paper by looking at examples of natural kind objects and individuals, which seem to be the hardest cases for successful virtualization. (shrink)

N. Cartwright's recent results on invariance under intervention and causality (2003) are reconsidered. Procedural approach to causality elicited in this paper and contrasted with Cartwright's apparently philosophical one unravels certain ramifications of her results. The procedural approach seems to license only a constrained notion of intervention and in consequence the "correctness to invariance" part of Cartwright's first theorem fails for a class of cases. The converse "invariance to correctness" part of the theorem relies heavily on modeling assumptions which prove to (...) be difficult to validate in practice and are often buttressed by independently acquired evidence. (shrink)

Sprawozdanie z działalności OBI: VIII Krakowska Konferencja Metodologiczna, Sympozjum w Pasierbcu, Festiwal Nauki, Działalność wydawnicza, OBI w Internecie.

W artykule została przedstawiona recepcja filozofii platońskiej dokonana przez jednego z ważniejszych polskich myślicieli renesansu, Wawrzyńca Goślickiego. Filozof w swoim traktacie De optimo senatore argumentował, że państwem powinien rządzić senat złożony z filozofów. Inspiracją dla Goślickiego były koncepcje Platona przedstawione w Państwie. Polski myśliciel utrzymywał, że filozofowie są predystynowani do kierowania państwem jako jedyni, którzy potrafią połączyć praktykę z namysłem filozoficznym. Potwierdzeniem słuszności poglądów autora było jego życie. Połączył bowiem wykształcenie filozoficzne z funkcją senatora. Wizja, w której to filozofowie-senatorowie powinni (...) rządzić państwem była nowatorska w stosunku do koncepcji, jakie powstawały w tym czasie na terenie I Rzeczpospolitej. Dlatego w niniejszym artykule poglądy Goślickiego zostały skonfrontowane z wizją roli senatorów przedstawioną w pismach dwóch największych staropolskich pisarzy politycznych – Stanisława Orzechowskiego i Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego. (shrink)

This article presents the evolution of philosophical and methodological considerations concerning empiricism in computer/computing science. In this study, we trace the most important current events in the history of reflection on computing. The forerunners of Artificial Intelligence H.A. Simon and A. Newell in their paper Computer Science As Empirical Inquiry started these considerations. Later the concept of empirical computer science was developed by S.S. Shapiro, P. Wegner, A.H. Eden and P.J. Denning. They showed various empirical aspects of computing. This led (...) to a view of the science of computing - the science of general scope. Some interesting contemporary ways towards a generalized perspective on computations were also shown. (shrink)