The book by professor Stanisław Kowalczyk, renowned scholar in the field of social philosophy, is, without doubt, one of the most important studies on the idea of freedom. The concept of freedom is as old as mankind. It has many meanings and has been interpreted in many different ways. For instance, we also have the word „liberty," which means „freedom or right" and is synonymous with the word freedom, which means „the condition of being free." The author indicates that (...) in our times the notion of freedom is most frequently used; however, it is often misused or deceptive. Mass media and people of all walks of life talk of liberty; everyone talks of freedom and, for many, it is the highest value. Longing for freedom is rooted in the heart of every human being, for freedom is an existential correlate and the fulfilment of the rational human being. The semantic confusion about the notion of freedom leads to many misuses of the concept. Personalism, as a philosophical concept in which a person stands in the centre of all discussion, serves as a framework for the author's delineation on the concept of freedom. He further states that the appropriate understanding of this value is possible in the context of the personalistic interpretation of a human being. This is the focus of this informative and insightful book. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Philosophia Vitam Alere. Prace dedykowane Profesorowi Romanowi Darowskiemu SJ z okazji 70-lecia urodzin, edited by Stanisław Ziemiański S.J.

Decision-making is a complex action requiring efficient information processing. Specifically, in movement in which performance efficiency depends on reaction time, e.g., open-loop controlled movements, these processes may play a crucial role. Information processing includes three distinct stages, stimulus identification, response selection, and response programming. Mainly, response selection may play a substantial contribution to the reaction time and appropriate decision making. The duration of this stage depends on the number of possible choices an individual has to “screen” to make a proper (...) decision. Given that reaction time is crucial in many sports, the possibilities of reducing it through practice are very tempting. The information processing and its relationship to the manner an individual is practicing are discussed. Especially the variability of practice issues will be explored. In variable practice conditions, an individual has to react to one or more stimuli and has to produce one of the many variations of the same movement or different movements they learned. One has to identify a stimulus appropriately and has to select a response optimally, i.e., choosing from as few choices as possible to reduce the reaction time. On the other hand, in constant practice conditions, an individual can be exposed to one or many stimuli. Still, there is only one variation of the movement that can be executed in the presence of a learned stimulus. Based on the information processing theory and the results of the research focusing on variability of practice, I discuss how the practice conditions may affect reaction time and, as a result, the decision-making process. I conceptually frame the possible implications of practice conditions on decision making related to information processing. In this review, a possible mechanism and relationship between practice conditions and decision-making are presented. Future research directions are presented. (shrink)

We show that for every enumeration degree $a there exists an e-degree c such that $a \leq c , and all degrees b, with $c \leq b , are properly Σ 0 2.

Sport plays today an eminent role in man's life and in societies. Various sciences have made it the subject-matter of their reflection, i.e. psychology, sociology, the natural and humanistic sciences, art, philosophy, and theology. The present work seeks to answer some fundamental questions connected with the phenomenon of sport: what is it for man? whether and when does it serve the social integration of a community? what are the premises and principles of the ethics of sportive activity? what is the (...) aesthetic dimension of sport? what are the relations between sport and religious faith? The philosophical profile is dominant in the book, taking into consideration various aspects of sport: anthropological, social, axiological, and theological. (shrink)

Author: Czerniak Stanisław Title: CAN WE RIGHTLY SPEAK ABOUT “KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN’S PHILOSOPHY”? (SOME REMARKS CONCERNING THE PUBLICATION POZNAWANIE KAZIMIERZA HOFFMANA) (Filozofia Kazimierza Hoffmana? Refleksje na marginesie książki Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.15, number: 2011/4, pages: 1038-1046 Keywords: KAZIMIERZ HOFFMAN, IDEA OF DIVINE, EXISTENCE, POETRY Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article shows the philosophical background of Kazimierz Hoffman’s poetry. The author points to Hoffman’s idea of the (...) Divine, which creates all possible objects in the world and incessantly sustains their existence, treating it as the crucial point of his philosophical stance. Another question is devoted to a possible relationship between Hoffman’s philosophical views and the traditions of the philosophy of life and phenomenology. Worth examining are also some similarities between Hoffman’s concept of donation and the ethical standpoint of E. Lévinas. In conclusion to those considerations one could claim that in Hoffman’s poetry we experience an interesting kind of mysticism uniting the contemplation of the absolute order with the aesthetic, perfectionist attempts to write the “ideal poem” and to connect the metaphysical insight with the experimental form. In the article the author quotes extensively the most important hermeneutic conclusions contained in the book Poznawanie Kazimierza Hoffmana (“The Understanding of Kazimierz Hoffman”). (shrink)

There have been many papers on the Jesuit relationship with the State and with the civil powers in the Western Countries. But there are no such elaborations concerning Poland. However, it was not a central aim, the Jesuits had to engage in the political situation of the country where they did His apostolic work though they did not commit themselves personally in the policy. The Jesuits had their own concept of the State and the state policy. And they showed great (...) caution in preparing the policy treaties in order to save impartiality. (shrink)

For many believers, encounters with evil trigger a deep desire to understand the divine reasons for permitting evil, that is, a desire for theodicy. Very often, however, attempts to find a theodicy fail—a phenomenon called the inscrutability of evil. Skeptical theists attribute this failure to our cognitive limitations as creatures. In this paper, I argue that the clash between the common desire for theodicy and the inscrutability of evil should be analyzed using the concept of absurdity, famously explored by Albert (...) Camus and some contemporary philosophers studying the meaning of life. I then propose that a loving God would not subject human beings to the experience of absurdity, so He would not create a world in which our cognitive limitations prevent us from finding a theodicy. This conclusion has important implications for the plausibility of the skeptical theist’s position. (shrink)

Aspect-perception is a phenomenon described in detail by L. Wittgenstein in part XI of Philosophical Investigations. The most famous example is the duck-rabbit figure, which can be viewed either as a duck or a rabbit, but the phenomenon extends well beyond visual Gestalt pictures and permeates various fields of human life, including aesthetic, moral and linguistic experience. Recently there have been attempts to apply the notion of aspect-perception to religious faith. It has often been observed that religious faith involves a (...) particular way of ‘seeing’ different objects and events (recall the famous phrase from the hymn Amazing Grace, ‘I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see’). For this reason, the attempt to use the category of aspect-seeing to analyze religious faith may appear promising. My aim in this paper to analyze critically one such attempt, made by N. K. Verbin in ‘Religious Belief and Aspect seeing’ and ‘Can Faith be Justified?’. In these papers Verbin argues for two closely related theses regarding religious belief. The first is conceptual; she proposes that we should understand ‘certain kinds of religious beliefs which we view as central to a person having a living faith’ as ‘a type of aspect-seeing’. The second follows from the first: we should modify accordingly the way we construe justification for religious belief. In what follows I expound Verbin’s conceptual claim and present arguments against equating religious belief with seeing religious aspects. Basing myself on examples of people who see religious aspects but do not reach religious belief, I conclude that the two categories should not be conflated. Although I reject Verbin’s overall claim, however, I concede that aspect-seeing does play a significant role in justifying religious belief, although not in the way Verbin proposes. (shrink)

The essay aims to reconstruct Gernot Böhme’s “end of the Baconian age” concept in the context of the main theses of the “finalization in science” idea which he developed in the 1970s and 80s. Böhme has since retreated from some parts of his theorem, arguing their invalidity in light of the “twilight” of the Baconian era in science begun by Francis Bacon’s methodological and philosophical program. Böhme polemizes with Bacon’s claim that the evolution of empirical science automatically enhances civilizational progress, (...) and lists some contemporary negative sides of scientific progress which he criticizes from the position of philosophy of science by suggesting its cognitive “alternatives”. (shrink)

As the title suggests, the treatise concerns the philosophical approach to the question of God. It is a sort of theology, the doctrine on God, proceeding from visible world, interpretated with the power of natural reason. The main ground for the interpretative reasoning is the classical methaphysics. God is conceived as the last and most profound fundament of all things that have not sufficient ground of existence in themselves.

`On Usury`, the treaty by Martin Smiglecki SJ, was the first strictly scientific attempt to show the economic and social background of the bourgeois and peasant social stratum in Poland and Lithuania at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The author, being an excellent logician, expressed his views in a very precise way, limiting his technical language to a minimum, so that his treatise would be understandable to readers from a range of social positions and circumstances. Its careful (...) analysis of the socio-economic situation and clear formulation of its postulates enabled it to function, over the course of two centuries, as a practical manual imparting guidance to the ruling class as they sought to maintain a just and fair stance in their dealings with the burghers and peasants. Smiglecki’s ideas have become a reference point for many generations of professors of moral philosophy and folk preachers seeking to raise social issues in their own works. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to interpret and criticize the theory of theistic natural signs, formulated by Charles S. Evans. TNS are characteristic experiences or features of the world which cause the person who encounters them to form certain basic beliefs about the existence and nature of God. I propose two interpretations of how TNS work, using the categories of perception and indirect perceptual recognition. I also present two arguments against the theory of TNS. First, I point out that (...) the theory does not explain adequately why TNS are ambiguous, i.e., can be read in different ways. Second, I observe that certain experiences may be taken to be „atheistic natural signs”. Their existence gives one a reason to suspect that God is a deceiver. (shrink)

La chronique dite de Monemvasie se divise en deux parties : la première présente le peuple slave qui a envahi le Péloponnèse et qui y est resté pendant 218 ans de la fin du 6e siècle jusqu'au début du 9e siècle, la seconde relate le contrôle du Pélopponèse par Byzance. Elle décrit notamment la construction de l'église de Patras.

An essay, translated from the Polish by Marian Hillar and Claire S. Stelter, extolling a system of values which we develop through a rational and analytical approach to reality both natural and ahuman.

The article consists of the following thematic threads: a) an overview of three interpretations of the term “ideology” in subject literature; b) a reconstruction of Max Horkheimer's ideology conception, presented in the first half of the 1930s in writings published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung [Social Research Journal]; c) an attempt to answer the question to what degree this conception was paradigmatic for the early Frankfurt School (here, for comparative purposes, the author cites writings by Leo Löwenthal and Paul Landsberg, (...) which were also published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung). (shrink)