This paper re-examines the origins, meaning, and application of the notion of evil/detestable human nature in Xunzi’s thought. Commonly considered the crucial factor that determined the premodern fate of Xunzi’s project, it has regained proper scholarly attention in recent years. As part of this interest in a unique approach to moral psychology, this paper will start with a critical re-assessment of Xunzi’s immediate motivation—Mengzi’s arguments in favour of the goodness of human nature. In the subsequent steps, it will revisit Xunzi’s (...) lines of argument regarding the evil/detestable nature, as presented in the 23rd chapter of the Xunzi, Xing e, the only one in which the notion appears. It will argue that its role in Xunzi’s system had been primarily misinterpreted despite contributing to one essential debate in Chinese philosophy. The paper will demonstrate that if only one follows the lines of Xunzi’s argument, it becomes apparent that the notion of evilness/detestability of human nature serves different than a simple denouncement of human moral insufficiency purpose. On the contrary, as rooted in empirical experience of socio-moral reality constatation, the notion of evil/detestable is meant as a tool allowing for embracing the human agency in the Confucian quest for an ethical society. Such a changed perspective on Xunzi’s intention is then hoped to stimulate further research and re-assessment of Xunzi’s thought significance and utility in the context of moral psychology. (shrink)

Die Beiträge dieses Buches untersuchen die Vielfalt der Herangehensweisen an die diversen Erscheinungsformen von Sprache, an das Wort und die Wortsemantik sowie an den Gebrauch von Sprache. Der Band enthält Arbeiten, die linguistische Fragestellungen zu sprachsystematischen Aspekten der Wort-, Satz-, Text- und Diskursebene behandeln sowie Perspektiven eröffnen, um diverse Aspekte von Sprache in einem über diese Domänen hinausgehenden Rahmen zu betrachten. Die Beiträger diskutieren Fragen der lexikalischen Semantik, Pragmalinguistik, Morphologie und der Lexikographie. Das Buch setzt seine Schwerpunkte neben der Wortsemantik (...) auf die Eingebundenheit lexikalischer Bedeutungen in registerspezifische Diskursmuster, öffentliche, interpersonelle und geschäftlich-beruflich orientierte Diskurse. (shrink)

Migration and refugeeism have become widespread phenomena in the contemporary world. They affect both the migrants’ countries of origin, as well as transit and target countries. The contemporary migrant crisis is becoming a challenge not only for politicians, diplomats and economists, but also for sociologists, demographers and philosophers. It is also a challenge for the Catholic Church because it affects millions of Christians to whose countries migrants and refugees are coming. The purpose of this article is to explain the social (...) teaching of the Church in this regard. It contains examples of statements made by the Second Vatican Council and the Popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. (shrink)

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)

Contra both phenomenalists and anti-phenomenalists, I defend the following thesis in this paper: the epistemic power of perceptual experience is grounded in its presentational property that is (i) uniquely possessed by the experience in the good case and (ii) essentially a phenomenal property. In §2, I set the ground for my argument by elaborating on the phenomenalist account of presentational phenomenology. In §3, I argue (against phenomenalism) for the first part of the phenomenal presentation thesis: (i) perceptual experience’s epistemic power (...) is grounded in instances of a presentational property possessed by perceptual experience in the good, but not in the bad case. In §4, I argue (against anti-phenomenalists) for the second part of the phenomenal presentation thesis: (ii) presentational property is essentially a phenomenal property. In §5, I address some potential objections to the phenomenal presentation thesis. §6 concludes. (shrink)

This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning, which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time. The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new (...) solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse. Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries. Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read. (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)

The responsibility that rests with the current generation, which has a duty of preserving the ecosystem for the next generations, has become not only the responsibility of governments of the particular states and politicians, but also managers and companies managed by them since the most serious contamination is a result of the industrial activity. Not negating a need of industrial activities’ development; still, one must consider a change of management’s style itself, which would; apart from the economic growth, take ethics (...) and ecology under consideration. The managers as a organizational and social leaders must learn how to make decisions with the extremely higher caution than it has been done so far. The possibilities that they have, cause that the burden of changes leading to create, propagate, and realize the outlook that allows responsibility for the future is also on their shoulders. Therefore, we need the changes that consist in revaluing the previous anthropocentric stance in ethics into the ethics based on responsibility principle, in which the biosphere might be perceived not only as an object of man’s industrial activity, but first of all as a subject of his responsibility. (shrink)

E. Berti, Arystoteles w XX wieku, tłum. A. Dudzińska-Facca, D. Facca, Warszawa 2015, ss. 270.

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

The article briefly presents the notions of invariance and variance as used with regard to the transfer of three essential codes which we can discern in a literary work, i.e. aesthetic code, lexical­-semantic code and cultural code. The analysis is provided on the basis of four novels by the Austrian author Wolf Haas, whose unique writing style can be demanding for any translator.

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)

Like most goods‐producing sectors in the West, modern health‐care systems have been profoundly changed by globalization and the neoliberal policies that attend it. Since the 1970s, the role of the welfare state has been considerably reduced; funding and management of health systems have been subjected to wave upon wave of reorganization and assimilated to the private sector. At the same time, neoliberal policy has imposed the notion of patient empowerment, thus turning patients into consumers of health. The literature on nursing (...) has accordingly reported on the significant repercussions on all aspects of the profession, from delivery of care and treatment, through training for new nurses, to legislated policy reforms regarding the role and responsibilities of modern nurses. In light of these developments, this paper analyses and theorizes about the way the injection of neoliberal policy is linked to and affects the practice of nursing. Drawing on a number of Nietzschean arguments, we begin with an exploration of the complex effects of neoliberalism, bureaucratization, and technocratization on the health system and the practice of nursing. Our main theoretical point here is that neoliberal policy engenders and promotes a neoliberal tide, which results in the conversion of the values that drive modern nursing practice. We then examine this tide in the light of Nietzsche's concepts. Starting with an analysis based on the ontology of the will to power, we show that nurses are dominated by neoliberal values embedded in technocratic and bureaucratic ideologies. Finally, we argue that the application of neoliberal policy constitutes a form of domestication from which one might potentially be freed through the Nietzschean concept of transvaluation of values. This transvaluation, as its freeing from some of the neoliberal tide, may be accomplished in accordance with a hierarchy of specific life‐affirming values for nursing culture and practice. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to use a formal approach to the Turing test. This approach is based on a tool developed within Inferential Erotetic Logic, so called erotetic search scenarios. First, I reconstruct the setting of the Turing test proposed by A.M. Turing. On this basis, I build a model of the test using erotetic search scenarios framework. I use the model to investigate one of the most interesting issues of the TT setting – the interrogator’s perspective and (...) role in the test. (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)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (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)

The present contribution is an attempt at showing that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcended the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. The author starts by juxtaposing it with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, as Claude Lefort has rightly pointed out, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. (...) He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The article then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Opponents in this discussion seem to be so devoted to demonstrating that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against any threats to liberty, both factual and potential, that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that 'to be free is to be guided by one’s own will' contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant and towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to crucial discussions in contemporary political philosophy. (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)

Analogicity in computer science is understood in two, not mutually exclusive ways: 1) with regard to the continuity feature (of data or computations), 2) with regard to the analogousness feature (i.e. similarity between certain natural processes and computations). Continuous computations are the subject of three methodological questions considered in the paper: 1a) to what extent do their theoretical models go beyond the model of the universal Turing machine (defining digital computations), 1b) is their computational power greater than that of the (...) universal Turing machine, 1c) under what conditions are continuous computations realizable in practice? The analogue-analogical computations lead to two other issues: 2a) in what sense and to what extent their accuracy depends on the adequacy of certain theories of empirical sciences, 2b) are there analogue-analogical computations in nature that are also continuous? The above issues are an important element of the philosophical discussion on the limitations of contemporary computer science. (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)

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)

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)

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)

This paper aims to present and discuss an argumentation against the Turing test (TT), which we shall call the CCSC (Complete Conversation System Claim). Exemplary arguments of the CCSC type include Lem’s “Space Gramophone,” the “machine equipped with a dictionary” proposed by Shannon and McCarthy, Block’s “Aunt Bubbles,” and Searle’s “Chinese Room” argument. CCSC argumentation is constructed to show that the TT is not properly designed and, consequently, is not a good hallmark of intelligence. Based on the original TT rules (...) reconstruction, I argue that CCSC-type argumentation seems to be aimed at a certain interpretation of the TT, which, as I demonstrate, commits the straw man fallacy. In light of the results presented by Łupkowski and Wiśniewski, I also discuss whether a complete conversation system is theoretically possible. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a populational schema of modeling that consists of: a linear AFSV schema, and a higher-level schema employing the genetic algorithm. The basic ideas of the proposed solution are as follows: whole populations of models are considered at subsequent stages of the modeling process, successive populations are subjected to the activity of genetic operators and undergo selection procedures, the basis for selection is the evaluation function of the genetic algorithm. The schema can be applied to automate (...) the modeling of the mind/brain by means of artificial neural networks: the structure of each network is modified by genetic operators, modified networks undergo a learning cycle, and successive populations of networks are verified during the selection procedure. The whole process can be automated only partially, because it is the researcher who defines the evaluation function of the genetic algorithm. (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)

Almost all of the entropy in the universe is in the form of Bekenstein–Hawking (BH) entropy of super-massive black holes. This entropy, if it satisfies Boltzmann’s equation S=logN\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$S=\log \mathcal{N}$$\end{document}, hence represents almost all the accessible phase space of the Universe, somehow associated to objects which themselves fill out a very small fraction of ordinary three-dimensional space. Although time scales are very long, it is believed that black holes will eventually evaporate by (...) emitting Hawking radiation, which is thermal when counted mode by mode. A pure quantum state collapsing to a black hole will hence eventually re-emerge as a state with strictly positive entropy, which constitutes the famous black hole information paradox. Expanding on a remark by Hawking we posit that BH entropy is a thermodynamic entropy, which must be distinguished from information-theoretic entropy. The paradox can then be explained by information return in Hawking radiation. The novel perspective advanced here is that if BH entropy counts the number of accessible physical states in a quantum black hole, then the paradox can be seen as an instance of the fundamental problem of statistical mechanics. We suggest a specific analogy to the increase of the entropy in a solvation process. We further show that the huge phase volume (N\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{N}$$\end{document}), which must be made available to the universe in a gravitational collapse, cannot originate from the entanglement between ordinary matter and/or radiation inside and outside the black hole. We argue that, instead, the quantum degrees of freedom of the gravitational field must get activated near the singularity, resulting in a final state of the ‘entangled entanglement’ form involving both matter and gravity. (shrink)

Paweł Florenski starał się sformułować ontologiczną teorię miłości. Uważał on, że miłość jest nie tylko zjawiskiem psychicznym, lecz zakłada takżejakiegoś rodzaju rzeczywiste zjednoczenie. Florenski proponował, by rozumieć je jako współistotność. Dwa numerycznie różne podmioty mogą stać się czymś jednym dzięki swojej numerycznie tożsamej istocie. Prócz tego Florenski zarysował teorię ontologiczną opartą na odróżnieniu między rzeczami a osobami. Wydaje się, że uznawał on wiązkową teorię przedmiotów i nominalizm tropowy dla kategorii rzeczy i teorię substratu połączoną z realizmem dla kategorii osób. (...) Pogląd Florenskiego można więc uznać za jedno ze stanowisk w dyskusji o zasadzie identyczności nieodróżnialnych. Staram się także pokazać, że można przezwyciężyć pewne poważne problemy filozoficzne i teologiczne ontologii miłości Florenskiegojeśli doda się do niej patrystyczne rozróżnienie między istotą a energią. (shrink)

The paper discusses the problem of diachronic criteria of identity for historic localities. We argue that such criteria are needed not just for the sake of ontological clarity but also are indispensable for database management and maintenance. Our survey of the current research in database management and engineering ontology literature found no satisfactory candidates thereof. Therefore we attempt to search for such criteria in the historic-geographical scholarship by exposing the ontological assumptions the researchers made there and by stating them explicitly. (...) This attempt consisted of us presenting a number of brief scenarios taken from the historical studies whereby localities are claimed to maintain their identity through certain types of change or to be destroyed due to other types of change. Generalising these cases we provide a tentative formulation of the criterion and discuss its limitations. (shrink)

Perceptual experience usually comes with “phenomenal force”, a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light (...) of its rational etiology. (shrink)