The aim of the article is to draw attention to an important, though frequently left out, aspect of Miron Białoszewski’s works, namely their spiritual quality. The expression duch (the spirit), dech – tchu (the spirit of breath) and oddech – oddychać (a breath - breathe) frequently or, at least, sporadically appear in the works by the Warsaw poet. After checking the contexts of those words, it turned out that they could be associated with the term spirit found in the Old (...) Testament. A more detailed analysis consists of the following components: 1) the gale, which “lata nad mostami / nad wodami z odnogami (“ blows / over bridges / waters with arms”), like in the first words of the Book of Genesis, 2) breath - being the essence of existence, 3) the spirit of a man - God’s breath; Białoszewski is faithful to Hebraic tradition, which using the word basar, does not differentiate between the body and the soul but considers them a whole (Christian tradition, by contrast, does not know this sort of unity); 4) the spirits in a man. In Miron Bialoszewski’s works air is often the centre of space vibrations, the breath of the universe. Besides, the poet himself stands on the borderland between this and that worlds. The fact that the author of Obroty rzeczy (The Motions of Things) refers to the revelations of Erich von Däniken in this context may be considered a joke or an attempt to mislead the reader. (shrink)

1. Phenomenology is first and foremost about intentionality. As Husserl puts it, “Intentionality is the name of the problem encompassed by the whole of phenomenology”.1 Broadly understood, the phen...

In a small literary gem full of sardonic wit, brilliant insights, and provocative criticism Witold Gombrowicz discusses Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Heidegger in six "one-hour" essays—and addresses Marxism in a "fifteen-minute" piece. "Who hasn't wished for a painless way to find out what the big shots of philosophy—Hegel and Kant, Nietzsche and Sartre—thought of the human condition? It has never been easy reading such formidable thinkers, and most explainers and textbooks either get it wrong or massacre the (...) language. So imagine my pleasure in opening Witold Gombrowicz's _Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes_, an exceptional effort at summarizing concepts in bold, declarative sentences.... [This book] is like the course in philosophy you wish you had taken."—David Lehman, _Bloomberg News_ "A must for every reader of Gombrowicz."—Denis Hollier, New York University. (shrink)

Most discussions of the reproducibility crisis focus on its epistemic aspect: the fact that the scientific community fails to follow some norms of scientific investigation, which leads to high rates of irreproducibility via a high rate of false positive findings. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there is a heretofore underappreciated and understudied dimension to the reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience that may prove to be at least as important as the epistemic dimension. This is (...) the communication dimension. The link between communication and reproducibility is immediate: independent investigators would not be able to recreate an experiment whose design or implementation were inadequately described. I exploit evidence of a replicability and reproducibility crisis in computational science, as well as research into quality of reporting to support the claim that a widespread failure to adhere to reporting standards, especially the norm of descriptive completeness, is an important contributing factor in the current reproducibility crisis in experimental psychology and neuroscience. (shrink)

This volume is written jointly by Witold Marciszewski, who contributed the introductory and the three subsequent chapters, and Roman Murawski who is the author of the next ones - those concerned with the 19th century and the modern inquiries into formalization, algebraization and mechanization of reasonings. Besides the authors there are other persons, as well as institutions, to whom the book owes its coming into being. The study which resulted in this volume was carried out in the Historical Section (...) of the research project _Logical Systems and Algorithms for Automatic Testing of Reasoning,_ 1986-1990, in which participated nine Polish universities; the project was coordinated by the Department of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the Bia??l??ystok Branch of the University of Warsaw, and supported by the Ministry of Education 1987). The major part of the project was focussed on the software for computer-aided theorem proving called Mizar MSE ) due to Dr. Andrzej Trybulec. He and other colleagues deserve a grateful mention for a hands-on experience and theoretical stimulants owed to their collaboration. (shrink)

This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect. Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on a methodological (...) procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive-psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland. (shrink)

Studies on music in the area of cognitive sciences – quite varied despite their short history – meet with scepticism. The author of this introduction, presenting some spectacular examples of research on musical improvisation, tries to demonstrate that they enrich rather than reduce our understanding of this phenomenon.

The paper is devoted to the question of the principle of individuation in Bl. John Duns Scotus. This question is found in his commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics, namely the Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis VII, qu. 13. The first part of the paper discusses problems connected with the chronology and structure of the text, whereas the second one is presented as Scotus’s teaching on individuation. S. Dumont and T. Noone argue today on the traditional thesis about the origin of this (...) question and the remaining philosophical writings from the juvenile stage of Scotus’s philosophical work. They claim that some questions from the In Metaph., including also qu. 13 from the book, were written later or in the same time as the commentaries to Peter Lombard’s Sentences. The authors support their views by indicating the following: 1) the text the In Metaph. is better organised, 2) the vocabulary used with reference to the principle of individuation, especially the term haecceitas, is employed twice in the text In Metaph., 3) the quotations from the later works of Scotus and the works of authors who wrote somewhat later than that date of the In Metaph. hitherto presumed, 4) some stylistic terms indicate that the author of the text was a mature person. The traditional thesis is defended by I. Modrić on behalf of the Scotistic Commission. Having made a detailed analysis, Modrić rejected all the arguments from the introduction to the critical edition of the In Metaph. The author of this paper agrees with Modrić’s view. Therefore as long as we do not have a thesis to the contrary we shall hold the traditional opinion about the earlier origin of the In Metaph. in comparison to Peter Lombard’s commentaries on the Sentences. Scotus opens his lecture on individuation with a discussion of various standpoints on this issue. He divides them into positive and negative theories of individuation. This ordering ensures a clear exposition of various views without unnecessary repetitions and vagueness. Eventually, Doctor Subtilis rejects all hitherto views and provides his own solution. The principle of individuation is for him an individuating entity, the ultimate reality of the individual being. In combination with common nature it determines the most individual of possible characterisation of the individuum. This positive individuating entity is called an individual form (forma individualis) in the In Metaph., a degree of entity (gradus entis) and haecceitas. The latter became a technical term to define the Scotist principle of individuation. (shrink)

In 2006 Tomasz F. Bigaj published in English a book "Non-locality and the Possible Worlds. A Counterfactual Perspective on Quantum Entanglement". He considered the question whether a satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics in the standard form should include the assumption of a non-local, immediate influence of one part of a specific quantum system (like two electrons in the singlet state) on the other, spatially separated part of that system. Bigaj - following H. Stapp - chooses as conceptual instruments of his (...) analysis counterfactual conditional statements and possible-worlds semantics of such statements. After thorough examination of different Stapp's arguments, he reaches the conclusion "that no matter what available interpretation of counterfactuals we decide to follow, there is no need in standard quantum mechanics for measurement-included non-locality". My critique concerns mainly Bigaj's selection of conceptual tools: the counterfactuals and possible-worlds semantics. I point to the fact that such selection assumes the "necessitarian" interpretation of laws of nature in the domain of micro-objects (e.g. for systems like two electrons in the singlet state). The different, "regularist" interpretation of physical laws in that domain is possible as well, and counterfactual arguments are not valid for such interpretation. (shrink)

Without an exaggeration we can adapt an expression “from a manifesto to progress” as a motto for neurophenomenology. As the manifesto can serve an article: “Neurophenomenology – a methodological remedy for the hard problem”. The aim of the research program initiated by the late Francisco Varela was to naturalize phenomenology in the frame of neurobiology, and to apply it to the different areas of theory and practice in science and philosophy. It meets certain challenges like the explanatory gap or the (...) problem of clarity and credibility of the subjective reports. (shrink)

For a free filter F on $$\omega $$ ω, endow the space $$N_F=\omega \cup \{p_F\}$$ N F = ω ∪ { p F }, where $$p_F\not \in \omega $$ p F ∉ ω, with the topology in which every element of $$\omega $$ ω is isolated whereas all open neighborhoods of $$p_F$$ p F are of the form $$A\cup \{p_F\}$$ A ∪ { p F } for $$A\in F$$ A ∈ F. Spaces of the form $$N_F$$ N F constitute the (...) class of the simplest non-discrete Tychonoff spaces. The aim of this paper is to study them in the context of the celebrated Josefson–Nissenzweig theorem from Banach space theory. We prove, e.g., that, for a filter F, the space $$N_F$$ N F carries a sequence $$\langle \mu _n:n\in \omega \rangle $$ ⟨ μ n : n ∈ ω ⟩ of normalized finitely supported signed measures such that $$\mu _n(f)\rightarrow 0$$ μ n ( f ) → 0 for every bounded continuous real-valued function f on $$N_F$$ N F if and only if $$F^*\le _K{\mathcal {Z}}$$ F ∗ ≤ K Z, that is, the dual ideal $$F^*$$ F ∗ is Katětov below the asymptotic density ideal $${\mathcal {Z}}$$ Z. Consequently, we get that if $$F^*\le _K{\mathcal {Z}}$$ F ∗ ≤ K Z, then: (1) if X is a Tychonoff space and $$N_F$$ N F is homeomorphic to a subspace of X, then the space $$C_p^*(X)$$ C p ∗ ( X ) of bounded continuous real-valued functions on X contains a complemented copy of the space $$c_0$$ c 0 endowed with the pointwise topology, (2) if K is a compact Hausdorff space and $$N_F$$ N F is homeomorphic to a subspace of K, then the Banach space C(K) of continuous real-valued functions on K is not a Grothendieck space. The latter result generalizes the well-known fact stating that if a compact Hausdorff space K contains a non-trivial convergent sequence, then the space C(K) is not Grothendieck. (shrink)

The article explores two phenomenologies of image consciousness that were formulated by Ingarden and Blaustein, both of whom were students of Husserl. Both philosophers analyze image consciousness in the context of the phenomenon of contemplating a painting. The article is divided into seven sections. Section 1 presents the historical background of Blaustein’s and Ingarden’s explorations. In Section 2, Ingarden’s description of a painting as different from an image is reconstructed. In Section 3, Ingarden’s analysis of Husserl’s image consciousness is discussed. (...) Section 4 concerns Blaustein’s theory of intentionality, which was formulated in a critical elaboration of Husserl’s philosophy. Section 5 discusses the detailed components of Blaustein’s theory of intentionality, i.e., his theory of psychic representations. This theory is then used in Section 6 in an analysis of Blaustein’s reading of § 111 of Husserl’s Ideas I. Section 7 summarizes both theories in order to draw parallels and differences between Ingarden and Blaustein. In this regard, it is argued that both philosophers refer to different theoretical contexts when discussing Husserl’s idea of image consciousness. (shrink)

„Obcość” i „inność” nie są synonimami. Oba określenia znajdują zastosowanie zarównow świecie ludzi, jak i w obrębie rzeczywistości pozaosobowej. Jednak kategoria obcości stosowanajest częściej w odniesieniu do rzeczywistości interpersonalnej niż do rzeczywistościskładającej się z obiektów pozaosobowych. „Obcość” bywa rozumiana jako określenie radykalniejszeniż „inność”. Posiada też negatywny wydźwięk emocjonalny. W przypadku gdyokreśla człowieka, sygnalizuje nie tylko jego inność, ale też sugeruje negatywny charakternaszego stosunku wobec niego. Paradoksalnie to właśnie obcość, a nie inność – pod warunkiemże zostanie przezwyciężona – odsłania etycznie rozumianą (...) Twarz drugiego człowieka.Dopiero przezwyciężenie obcości, a nie inności, pozwala rozpoznać bliźniego. (shrink)

The paper describes the origins and structure of artificial poetry, i.e. poetry created by programs (nowadays mainly bots based on artificial neural networks). It points out the difficulties involved in detecting human authorship of poems and the development of detection strategies in new research on artificial poetry. Author claims that traditional methods of text analysis are not sufficient to demonstrate human authorship. However, we must take into account, firstly, the embarrassing secret of poetic bots: indistinguishability is the result of human (...) intervention in the editing process of artificial poems; secondly, the fact that poetic Turing tests carry the dubious assumption of the existence of a pattern of human poeticity. (shrink)