In recent years there has been growing interest in adapting virtue ethics to the ethics of technology. However, it has most typically been invoked to address some particular issue of moral importance, and there is only a limited range of works dealing with the methodological question of how virtue ethics may contribute to this field. My approach in this paper is threefold. I start with a brief discussion of Aristotelian virtue ethics, with a view to constructing a framework in which (...) to then address at least some of the aspects of the growing technicization of life that call for scrutiny. I subsequently proceed further by outlining three possible models of virtue-theoretical analysis within the ethics of technology, giving special attention to those changes in human agency where technicization can be seen to exert a significant influence. Finally, I focus on the third such possibility, the extended virtue model, as a basis for calling for a more inclusive account of moral agency. (shrink)

The paper deals with reconstruction of the unique reductivecounterpart of the deductive logic. The procedure results in the deductivereductive form of logic. This extension is illustrated on the base of intuitionistic logics: Heyting’s, Brouwerian and Heyting-Brouwer’s ones.

How should ethical standards be maintained within engineering and engineering education? The present paper addresses this question with relation to the dominant models of engineering ethics (EE) to show that their limits might be overcome by incorporating the vocabulary of neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. On the basis of the MacIntyrean concept of practice, the secondary role of engineering is highlighted which echoes similar debates concerning education. This similarity is picked up to argue that the role of the engineer in relation to (...) the end-users of their projects should be understood as on a par with the teacher-student relationship. This enables us not only to redefine the internal good of engineering and the ground for EE, but also to indicate the key virtues and educational models for engineering that they should be key parts of. (shrink)

Niniejszy tom _Roczników Filozoficznych Ignatianum _jest poświęcony problematyce transhumanizmu. W sposób szczególny zawarte w tym numerze teksty koncentrują się na szeroko rozumianych kwestiach bioetycznych, które są przedmiotem dyskusji transhumanistów. Refleksja bioetyczna wokół transhumanizmu jest obecna przede wszystkim w anglojęzycznej literaturze przedmiotu, a gros debat dokonuje się przy udziale prominentnych badaczy z obszaru angloamerykańskiego. Coraz mocniej problematyka ta jest widoczna także w obszarze języka niemieckiego. Natomiast w Polsce dopiero wchodzi ona w sferę zainteresowań bioetyków wywodzących się z rożnych środowisk naukowych i (...) badawczych. Ostatnie lata obfitowały w publikacje, w których podejmowano rozmaite zagadnienia związane z transhumanizmem. (shrink)

Résumé L’article décrit le statut jurilinguistique des animaux qui découle des codes civils polonais et français. Le but est de vérifier si la législation de ces deux pays suit les changements sociaux liés à l’attitude des humains envers les animaux. L’étude s’appuie sur la méthodologie de l’image linguistique du monde — l’auteur essaie de reconstruire la définition d’_animal_ à partir des emplois de ce nom dans les deux actes normatifs. L’analyse sémantique des dispositions juridiques démontre que, dans les deux codes, (...) les animaux fonctionnent tout d’abord comme objet de différents droits et obligations, comme une partie du patrimoine, une chose qui dépend entièrement de l’homme et lui appartient. L’animal n’est pas considéré comme une catégorie distincte, mais il est soumis au régime des biens. En effet, les droits civils polonais et français tendent à réifier les animaux, en leur refusant un statut juridique différent de celui des choses et en restant indifférent aux changements sociaux contemporains. (shrink)

Artykuł traktuje o relacjach ateizmu i sekularyzmu. Podstawowym problemem rozważanym w tekście jest pytanie o to, czy trzeba być ateistą, żeby być sekularystą. Pojęcia sekularyzmu i ateizmu przedstawiamy na tle historycznym, a następnie analizujemy w taki sposób, by uzyskać możliwie pełną odpowiedź na nasze pytanie. Analizie poddane zostały teoretyczne możliwości kształtowania relacji religii i państwa, a także konsekwencje, jakie wypływają z poszczególnych form kształtowania tych relacji. Sądzimy, że o ile rozumieć ateizm jako niewiarę w Boga/bogów, a sekularyzm jako nieużywanie teologicznych (...) uzasadnień w decyzjach politycznych, o tyle nie trzeba być ateistą, by być sekularystą, z drugiej zaś strony warto być sekularystą będąc człowiekiem religijnym, bo to sekularyzm jako zasada polityczna gwarantuje prawo do wyznawania i praktykowania religii. (shrink)

The human influence on the earth’s ecosystem has become so destructive that we need a new vision of the world that will offer hope. The article is an attempt to create a new interdisciplinary way that takes into account the role of symbiosis in the functioning of life on Earth. Australian scholar Glenn Albrecht postulates the conceptual framework for the new epoch and calls it the Symbiocene. which will be characterized by replicating symbiotic life processes in human activities. At the (...) same time, science clearly states that the relationships among organisms are predominantly cooperative and symbiotic in nature. The article focuses on three selected phenomena in which close multilateral cooperation plays a significant role. These are: the life of lichens, the functioning of mycelium with plants, especially the role of Mother Trees over young stands, and permaculture as an example of symbiotic agriculture. We take these examples as a training in collective imagination in good interspecies living and draw on selected literary texts. We believe that the idea of the Symbiocene, an inclusive and integrative philosophy of life, has great potential to become a new direction not only in the natural sciences, but also in the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

The Middle English Pearl is known for its mixture of genres, moods and various discourses. The textual journey the readers of the poem embark on is a long and demanding one, leading from elegiac lamentations and the erotic outbursts of courtly love to theological debates and apocalyptic visions. The heterogeneity of the poem has often prompted critics to overlook the continuity of the erotic mode in Pearl which emerges already in the poem’s first stanza. While it is true that throughout (...) the dream vision the language of the text never eroticizes the relationship between the Dreamer and the Pearl Maiden to the extent that it does in the opening lines, the article argues that eroticism actually underlies the entire structure of the vision proper. Taking recourse to Roland Barthes’s distinction between the erotic and the sexual to explain the exact nature of the bond which connects the two characters, the argument posits eroticism as an expression of somatic longing; a careful analysis of Pearl through this prism provides a number of ironic insights into the mutual interactions between the Dreamer and the Maiden and highlights the poignancy of their inability to understand each other. Further conclusions are also drawn from comparing Pearl with a number of Chaucerian dream visions. Tracing the erotic in both its overt and covert forms and following its transformations in the course of the narrative, the article outlines the poet’s creative use of the mechanics of the dream vision, an increasingly popular genre in the period when the poem was written. (shrink)

The article investigates the canonical plays of William Shakespeare—Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest—in an attempt to determine the nature of Shakespeare’s position on the early modern tendency to demonize fairy belief and to view fairies as merely a form of demonic manifestation. Fairy belief left its mark on all four plays, to a greater or lesser extent, and intertwined with the religious concerns of the period, it provides an important perspective on the problem of religion in (...) Shakespeare’s works. The article will attempt to establish whether Shakespeare subscribed to the tendency of viewing fairies as demonic agents, as epitomized by the Daemonologie of King James, or opposed it. Special emphasis will also be put on the conflation of fairies and Catholicism that one finds best exemplified in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. The article draws on a wealth of recent scholarship on early modern fairies, bringing together historical reflection on the changing perception of the fairy figure, research into Shakespeare’s attitude towards Catholicism and analyses of the many facets of anti-Catholic polemic emerging from early modern Protestant discourse. (shrink)

The articles in this collection focus on philosophical approaches to proper names. The issues discussed include abstract names, empty names, naming and name-using practices, definite descriptions, individuals, reference, designation, sense and semantics. The contributions show the importance and lasting influence of theories proposed by John Stuart Mill, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Individual chapters assess traditional analyses and modern controversies, and contribute to the debate on proper names in contemporary philosophy of language.

This two-volume collection showcases a wide range of modern approaches to the philosophical study of language. Contributions illustrate how these strands of research are interconnected and show the importance of such a broad outlook. The aim is to throw light upon some of the key questions in language and communication and also to inspire, inform, and integrate a community of researchers in philosophical linguistics. Volume one concentrates on fundamental theoretical topics. This means considering vital questions about what languages are and (...) how they relate to reality, and describing some of the key areas of thought in linguistics and the philosophy of language. Contributors also discuss how philosophy influences related fields such as translation, pragmatics, and argumentation. (shrink)

It seems that nonmonotonicity of our reasoning is an obvious truth. Almost every logician not even believes, but simply knows very well that a human being thinks in a nonmonotonic way. Moreover, a nonmonotonicity of thinking seems to be a phenomenon parallel to the existence of human beings. Examples allegedly illustrating this phenomenon are not even analyzed today. They are simply quoted. Nowadays, this is a standard approach to nonmonotonicity. However, even simple analysis of those “obvious” examples shows that they (...) illustrate various problems of our thinking, among which none concerns nonmonotonicity. (shrink)

Celem artykułu jest krytyczna analiza wybranych badań empirycznych z zakresu neuroestetyki. Neuroestetyka to nowa interdyscyplinarna dziedzina naukowa zmierzająca do opisu funkcjonowania mózgowia w kontekście reakcji na dzieło sztuki. W artykule przedstawiam i analizuję wyniki badań na temat mózgowych korelatów preferencji estetycznej i percepcji piękna. Pomimo wątpliwości natury interpretacyjnej, wyniki te potwierdzają hipotezę o specyfice reakcji estetycznej w stosunku do innych typów reakcji kognitywnych człowieka.

This paper, which in its subject matter goes back to works on strongly nite logics , is concerned with the following problems: Let Cn1; Cn2 be two strongly nite logics over the same propositional language. Is the supremum of Cn1 and Cn2 also a strongly nite operation? Is any nite matrix axiomatizable by a nite set of standard rules? The rst question can be found in [9] . The second conjec- ture was formulated by Wolfgang Rautenberg, but investigations into this (...) problem had been carried out earlier in works of many logicians . Moreover, Stephen Bloom [1] posed a conjecture stronger than that: the consequence de- termined by a nite matrix is nitely based, i.e. it is the consequence generated by a nite set of standard rules. This hypothesis was, however, disproved by Andrzej Wronski [10] . In the present paper it is shown that neither nor holds true. The negative answer to can be viewed as a generalization of the result given by Andrzej Wronski [10]. (shrink)

In the paper, several data reduction techniques for machine learning from big datasets are discussed and evaluated. The discussed approach focuses on combining several techniques including stacking, rotation, and data reduction aimed at improving the performance of the machine classification. Stacking is seen as the technique allowing to take advantage of the multiple classification models. The rotation-based techniques are used to increase the heterogeneity of the stacking ensembles. Data reduction makes it possible to classify instances belonging to big datasets. We (...) propose to use an agent-based population learning algorithm for data reduction in the feature and instance dimensions. For diversification of the classifier ensembles within the rotation also, alternatively, principal component analysis and independent component analysis are used. The research question addressed in the paper is formulated as follows: does the performance of a classifier using the reduced dataset be improved by integrating the data reduction mechanism with the rotation-based technique and the stacking? (shrink)

The article focuses on the anti-naturalism of Menger and Mises. It presents a methodological approach formulated by both scholars as stemming from epistemological anti-naturalism and demonstrating similarities to social phenomenology. The article also discusses the development of the anti-naturalistic perspective on the basis of Hayek’s conception of sensory order. The latter allowed addressing the problem of validity of methodological dualism and established a sound foundation for the methodological approach of the Austrian School of Economics.

This paper offers a critical review of the notion of a “singular cognitive role”, which is central to some recent theories of singular thought. According to those theories, whether a thought is singular depends on the role it plays in the subject’s cognitive activity. We compare the two most developed accounts of this type: Crane’s :21–43 2011, The Objects of Thought2013) and Jeshion’s. Both theories aim to capture the notion of a singular cognitive role in terms of mental files. We (...) argue that Jeshion’s theory is much more promising as it provides a more detailed and non-circular characterization of the mental files responsible for singular thinking. We examine the prospects for enhancing that account in light of three major concerns about it present in the literature. First, we discuss whether the weakest aspect of the whole proposal, i.e. the condition for the initiation of mental files, can be replaced without debilitating the rest of the theory. Second, we examine Goodman’s : 437–461 2014, The Philosophical Quarterly2015) argument against mental file theories of singular thought and show that it does not affect Jeshion’s account. Third, we argue against Sawyer :264–283 2012) that Jeshion’s notion of a singular cognitive role is in strong opposition to acquaintance-based theories of singular thought and cannot be incorporated into any of them. Thus, the paper concludes that Jeshion’s proposal, despite its shortcomings, is currently the most promising account of a singular cognitive role. (shrink)

As shown in (Łukowski, Gensler, 2013), the paradox of the stone is a failed attempt to show that “omnipotence” is a contradictory concept. An element of the argument presented there is that God, while unable to lift the stone, can nevertheless annihilate it. This work considers the amplification of the paradox of the stone to the form generated by the question: can God create a stone which He will not be able to lift, nor, once created, will He be able (...) to destroy. (shrink)

Advertising is one of the commonly visible elements of the urban landscape (real and virtual). It also does not require proof that advertisements of cities as such are also part of their “cityscape.” Since at least the nineteenth century, cities have advertised themselves as attractive places to live, visit, or do business. Therefore, the following research question can be asked: How do Polish cities present themselves in advertisements one can find in the landscape? The study assumes that each advertisement should (...) clearly identify the sender and indicate its specific characteristics, distinguishing itself from its competitors. Polish cities began to use logos and slogans as a mecha­nism of description and distinction after 1990, when socioeconomic changes started. There are quite a few studies on this activity, but most of them are single case studies. Therefore, the authors decided to examine a relatively large sample of Polish cities, which allows for statistical analysis. Analysis of the logo and slogan content allows the authors to examine the desired image or the projected identity of Polish cities. The methods were chosen because they admit qualitative and quantitative analysis, especially when there is a sufficiently large sample. Therefore, the survey covered all towns and cities with more than 20,000 inhabitants in Poland. There are 218 such towns in total. The analysis was carried out in the first half of 2021. In conclusion, the authors find that the advertising of Polish cities is embedded in the past, promotes resources (substance), sometimes geographical location, but rarely refers to famous characters and human potential. And such a picture of these cities one may find on outdoor advertisements, which sometimes produce dissonance when accompanying modern buildings or new transport solutions in the city. (shrink)

Main object of present work is to analyze thought embodied by Nietzsche’s aphorism from fourth part of Beyond Good and Evil: “The thought of suicide is a strong means of comfort: it helps get us through many an evil night” as potential tool to restore control over one’s own life during the strong existential crisis. An idiographic approach is assumed. There are proposed three theoretical cases which are the results of author’s direct life experiences and reflections. These cases of applying (...) Nietzsche’s thought are considered from an interdisciplinary perspective. Three possible effects of implementing Nietzsche’s thought discussed in this paper indicate that the power of his words may bring relief to an individual in times of suffering. Their potential real impact may result from liberation from framework of good and evil as well as experience catharsis-like state with use of the mechanism of aversive stimulus. (shrink)

The paper is a continuation of A deductive-reductive form oflogic: general theory and intuitionistic case and considers the problem of definability of modal operators on the intuitionistic base. Contrary tothe classical case, it seems that the fact whether the connective is Heyting’sor Brouwerian is essential for the intuitionistic logic. The connective of possibility has the classical interpretation, i.e. w |= ✸α iff ∃t, if it is defined on the base of the logicwith Brouwerian connective of coimplication.

There is a long-standing dispute among scholars concerning Berkeley’s supposed commitment to an emotivist theory of meaning as the very first (and an early modern) instance of non-cognitivism. According to this position, the domains of religious and moral language do not refer to facts about the world, but rather express the emotional attitudes of religious or moral language users. Some scholars involved in the dispute argue for taking Berkeley to be an emotivist (non-cognitivist), while others hold that we should not (...) do so. This paper puts forward an interpretation that lends support to the non-cognitivist reading of his stance, but in expressivist rather than emotivist terms. It argues that the label “expressivism” does more justice to the textual evidence concerning his understanding of moral language, as what is distinctive where this philosopher is concerned is his interest in explaining the nature of our practice of employing moral language (i.e. how we come to formulate moral statements as expressions of our non-referential attitudes, and the meta-level considerations pertaining to morality associated with this), rather than whether morality is just a matter of our emotions or feelings (i.e. such first-order considerations about morality as whether moral rightness and wrongness correspond merely to our emotional states). (shrink)

The ancient paradox of Protagoras had the opinion of an unsolved problem. The two solutions proposed in the 20th century by W. Lenzen and L. Aqvist are considered to be the best. In fact none of them may be treated as proper. In the paper we show that both of authors avoid contradiction solely by means of mere neglect. However quite a simple solution seems to be feasible when the paradox is approached as an amphibolic construction, thus an ambiguity.

The paper seeks to understand the proper motivation of John McDowell’s interest in both Kant and Hegel. It reconstructs his arguments in favour of the Hegelian notion of conceptualized experience, and shows how it affects his reading of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. It concludes with a comparison of McDowell’s position on experience with Hegel’s by pointing out the most important difference regarding the notion of factivity.

This paper considers the alleged pragmatism of Berkeley’s philosophy using the two Sellarsian categories of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images of the world and human beings. The ‘manifest’ image is regarded as a refinement of the ordinary way of conceiving things, and the scientific image is seen as a theoretical picture of the world provided by science. The paper argues that the so-called Berkeleian pragmatism was an effect of Berkeley’s work towards a synthesis of ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images through the creation (...) of one unified synoptic vision of the world and was a part of a new conceptual framework within which these two images could be combined. (shrink)

Lay perceptions of lying are argued to consist of a lie prototype. The latter was found to entail the intention to deceive, belief in falsity and falsity. We proposed and found that the perceptions of the benefits of others are also an important factor that influences the extent, to which an act of intentional misleading someone to foster a false belief is labeled as a lie. Drawing from the intuitionist model of moral judgments we assumed that moral judgment of the (...) behaviour would mediate the relationship. In Study 1 we analyzed data coming from a crosscultural project and found that perceived intention to benefit others was negatively related to lie labeling and that this relationship was mediated by the moral judgment of that act. In Study 2 we found that manipulating the benefits of others influenced the extent, to which an act of intentional misleading in order to foster a false belief is labeled as a lie and that, again, this relationship is mediated by the moral judgment of that act. (shrink)

The critique of Robert K. Merton in terms of the criteria relevant for the history of methodology is misdirected. Merton has never been a methodologist, and his influential notion of middle-range theories has been merely a polemical position taken both against pure abstract, conceptual constructs, and narrow fact-finding. It helped sociology to sustain fruitful directions of research, free from abuses of "grand theory" as well as pure empiricism. Merton's true and many "arrivals" (read: contributions to sociology) have been substantive and (...) not meta-theoretical. Because of them he is a classic of twentieth-century sociology. Key Words: middle-range theory • history of methodology • sociological theory. (shrink)