Wojciech Torzewski What Kind of ‘History’ are We? – the Historicity of Human from Ethical PerspectiveThis article presents the ethical aspect of the concept of narrative identity, especially in relation to the concept of Charles Taylor. The author makes also attemption to reconstruct the two main objections that can be drawn at this concept. Namely, firstly, the complaint relativization of the ethical and, secondly, the complaint absolutizing ethical perspective. Both objections to the concept of narrative identity shall be regarded (...) as irrelevant. Keywords: ethics, narrative identity, historicity, history. (shrink)

We propose a non-standard interpretation of Alternating-time Temporal Logic with imperfect information, for which no commonly accepted semantics has been proposed yet. Rather than changing the semantic structures, we generalize the usual interpretation of formulae in single states to sets of states. We also propose a new epistemic operator for ?practical? or ?constructive? knowledge, and we show that the new logic (which we call Constructive Strategic Logic) is strictly more expressive than most existing solutions, while it retains the same model (...) checking complexity. Finally, we study properties of constructive knowledge and other operators in this non-standard semantics. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new account of Richard Rorty’s interpretation of Michel Foucault, which demonstrates that in the course of his career, Rorty presented several diverse (often mutually exclusive) criticisms of Foucault’s political thought. These give different interpretations of what he took to be the flaws of that thought, but also provide different explanations as to the sources of these flaws. I argue that Rorty’s specific criticisms can be divided into two overall groups. Sometimes he saw Foucault’s rejection (...) of bourgeois democracies and bourgeois utopias as a specific case of his general critique regarding the structures of social life as inherently oppressive. At other times he seemed to attribute to Foucault a view that—while not all forms of social life are inherently oppressive—bourgeois democracies certainly are, in a very specific and radical way. In conclusion I show that Rorty’s interpretation of Foucault should be understood in the context of his approach toward the ‘American Cultural Left.’. (shrink)

Early twelfth-century logicians invoked past-tensed statements with future-oriented contents to undermine the assumption that every proposition ‘about the past’ is determinate. In the second half of the century, the notion of future-dependence was used to restrict the scope of necessity per accidens. At some point, this idea began to be applied in theology to solve puzzles surrounding predestination, prescience, prophecy, and faith. In the mid-1160s, Magister Udo quotes some thinkers who insisted that the principle of the necessity of the past (...) should exclude dicta that ‘relate to the future’, such as that he has been predestined. Peter of Poitiers adopted this ‘Ockhamist’ strategy around 1170. We find similar accounts in Simon of Tournai and Alan of Lille, who invoked it in other contexts as well. By the time of Praepositinus of Cremona, Hubert of Pirovano, and Stephen Langton, the restricted principle became something of a common view at Paris. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur declares that “being-entangled in stories” is an inherent property of the human condition. He introduces the notion of narrative identity—a form of identity constructed on the basis of a self-constructed life-narrative, which becomes a source of meaning and self-understanding. This article wishes to present chosen instances of life writing whose subjects resist yielding a life-story and reject the notions of narrative and identity. In line with Adam Phillips’s remarks regarding Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975), such works—which I (...) refer to as fragmentary life writing—emerge out of a profound scepticism about any form of “fixing” oneself and confining the variety and randomness of experience to one of the available autobiographical plots. The primary example of the genre is Joe Brainard’s I Remember (1975)—an inventory of approximately 1,500 memories conveyed in the form of radically short passages beginning with the words “I remember.” Despite the qualified degree of unity provided by the fact that all the recollections come from the consciousness of a single person, the book does not arrange its content in any discernible order—chronological or thematic; instead, the reader is confronted with a life-in-fragments. Although individual passages could be part of a coming-of-age, a coming-out or a portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man narrative, Brainard is careful not to let any of them consolidate. An attempt at defining the characteristics of the proposed genre will be followed by an indication of more recent examples of fragmentary life writing and a reflection on its prospects for development. (shrink)

Przemiany społeczno-ekonomiczne, kryzysy polityczne, zmiany w kulturze, nauce i technice mogą postawić prawnika oraz „zwykłego” obywatela nie tylko przed koniecznością odpowiedzi na pytanie, „co jest zgodne z konstytucją?”, ale również przed kwestią, „czym jest sama konstytucja?”.Prezentowana monografia poświęcona jest dwóm teoriom konstytucji, których analiza pozwala uwydatnić dwa aspekty jej pojęcia. Konstytucja bowiem z jednej strony stanowi tzw. prawo wyższe, a z drugiej realizuje określoną ideę polityczną. Rozważania zawarte w niniejszej książce rozpoczynają od analizy odpowiedzi Immanuela Kanta na pytanie, w jaki (...) sposób w pojęciu konstytucji łączą się kwestie jej prawnej ważności oraz normatywnej słuszności. Następnie autor przechodzi do zbadania dwóch teorii, które wyrastają z Kantowskiej filozofii: czystej teorii prawa Hansa Kelsena i liberalizmu politycznego Johna Rawlsa. Pierwsza jest nastawiona na deskrypcję norm pozytywnych. Druga formułuje idee o charakterze normatywnym. Pierwsza chce opisywać, druga wyznaczać ustrojowe maximum, do którego powinniśmy zmierzać. W obydwu teoriach konstytucja zajmuje szczególne miejsce. Zawarta w niniejszej monografii ich interpretacja podporządkowana jest zagadnieniu istoty demokratycznej konstytucji, która w formie prawa wyższego wyraża demokratyczną treść.Na ich podstawie następuje próba odpowiedzi na pytanie o naturę demokratycznej konstytucji. (shrink)

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from (...) both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

There is much to indicate that the German scholars began a real, global revolution. I have become convinced that, apart from a very few exceptions, everyone in the last century, including world-renowned academics, put their trust in them. How is this possible? I am far from repeating the words: credo, quia absurdum, but it turns out that, up to the present, Diels’ and Kranz’s proposal has never been verified by anyone. This is clearly reflected as well in LSJ. It seems, (...) then, that Zeller, Diels and Kranz aliique permulti bear full responsibility for – ut ita dicam – the “ambiguities” that have since accumulated and piled up, layer on layer, all around B67. I cannot connect ὀνομάζεται with <πῦρ> because of three clamant facts: (1) the absence of the relative pronoun ὅ between <πῦρ> and ὁκόταν (ut supra, passim); (2) the audacious attempt to give the phrase καθ’ ἡδονήν a sense that it never possessed; (3) the context in which fragment B67 was quoted. These are, in my opinion, real impediments to the road chosen by Zeller, Diels, Kranz, Kirk, Marcovich, Conche and countless others. I cannot circumvent them or pass them by in silence. Why was this so difficult for me, while for others it was so easy…? Yes, I understood that, in order to somehow justify associating ὀνομάζεται with <πῦρ>, one must: (1) insert <ὅ> between <πῦρ> and ὁκόταν, and then (2) fit the word ἡδονή to <πῦρ>. But at the same time I realised that, unfortunately, the matter is not so simple, especially when one seeks at all cost to give the rather uncertain, and not the only, conjecture <πῦρ> some kind of name – whatever name, in fact – not according to someone’s pleasure, but according to the scent of those roots with which πῦρ was supposed to be mixed during sacrificial offerings. The whole enterprise is really perilous when we consider that for fire mixed with roots we have no name whatsoever attested by tradition, and that the context in which Hippolytus quoted B67 in no way indicates either the making of sacrifices or the smells associated therewith. -/- Wojciech Wrotkowski: Pleasure. New Research on Fragment B67 of Heraclitus of Ephesus, pp. 143-145. (shrink)

Warsaw Wild Captive Pisula Stryjek rats - Establishing a breeding colony of Norway Rat in captivity It is believed that the history of laboratory rat dates back to 1820-ies, which is about 300 generations. This relatively short evolutionary distance, drastically different environment and selective breeding could have caused differences in behaviour between the laboratory rat and his wild counterpart - Norway rat. The vast majority of research concerning differences between wild and laboratory rats was conducted over 30 years ago. The (...) knowledge acquired as a result of that research seems far from being complete. Over a quarter of a century could have deepened the described differences. Nowadays the change in experimental approach, in favour of low stress conditions, can give a new insight into this problem. This article describes process of establishing a laboratory line of wild Norway rat, which will take part in a broad series of comparative studies. 16 wild rats were trapped in 5 distant parts of Warsaw. Most of wild rats successfully adapted to captive conditions, mating successfully and producing litters, which have survived to adolescence. (shrink)

The late Richard Rorty has sometimes been described as a controversial, or even outrageous, thinker. Yet the reasons that stand behind such a reputation are obviously quite different from in the ca...

This paper presents an experimental study on definite descriptions. According to the classical views, a definite description, i.e., a phrase of the form “the F”, has – roughly speaking - purely descriptive semantics, that is, it designates the object which uniquely (opt. uniquely in a context) satisfies the description. However, as several philosophers including Keith Donnellan have argued, there are uses of definite descriptions on which these expressions do not seem to designate objects which satisfy the descriptions. Namely, a description (...) may refer in some circumstances to an object which does not have the property from the description. This argument is called “the Argument from misdescription” and it is raised against the classical views on the semantics of definite descriptions. In our paper, we present an experimental study on misdescription and explored reactions of ordinary users of language to various statements involving misdescriptions. The results of our research indicate that the intuition of ordinary speakers is consistent with the prediction expressed in the Argument from misdescription. We argue that the most common pragmatic explanation of misdescription, appealing to Gricean distinction between saying and meaning, is unconvincing. We vote for an alternative semantic account of definite descriptions, on which a description “the F” designates an object being F, which is at the same time the most salient individual according to a contextually established ranking of salience. (shrink)

Author: Torzewski Wojciech Title: HERMENEUTICS AND THE QUESTION OF REASON (Hermeneutyka a kwestia rozumu) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2010, vol:.11, number: 2010/2, pages: 29-40 Keywords: HERMENEUTICS, RATIONALITY, INTERPRETATION Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:This article is an expression and an attempt to justify the belief that hermeneutic philosophy is an interpretation of the rationality’s concept. Although hermeneutics itself is a critique of a certain form of rationalism, and therefore falls under (...) charges “irrationality”, the concept of reason is an essential component of its identity as a philosophy. (shrink)

We discuss the logic of pregroups, introduced by Lambek [34], and its connections with other type logics and formal grammars. The paper contains some new ideas and results: the cut-elimination theorem and a normalization theorem for an extended system of this logic, its P-TIME decidability, its interpretation in L1, and a general construction of (preordered) bilinear algebras and pregroups whose universe is an arbitrary monoid.

The paper presents a new model of the structure of basic arithmetical representa-tions encoded in minds which enable them to solve simple story-tasks. According to the dominating paradigm the process of acquiring basic counting abilities culminates in encoding the exact number line in mind. This linear number representation enables the mind to solve simple story-tasks which do not require any mathematical mastery knowledge comprising laws, definitions and theorems. Some researchers try to show that the process of encoding the exact number (...) line stems from transformations of the approximate number line (the mental number line) whereas others model this process as being dependent on the linguistic and logical resources of mind. (shrink)

Response to spatial and nonspatial change in wild and Wistar rats The purpose of the experiment was to investigate the effects of domestication on exploration in rats. The comparison was made between wild Warsaw-Wild-Captive-Pisula-Stryjek rats and Wistar laboratory rats. The study used a purpose-built maze divided into zones connected with a corridor. Objects were placed in two out of four zones. Their location and shape were subject to experimental manipulation. Transporter used to move rats to the maze provided the opportunity (...) for spontaneous exploration of the experimental arena. Rats were subjected to a series of 10 sessions, followed by a spatial or nonspatial change in the experimental arena, after which another 5 experimental sessions were conducted. The study revealed that wild rats had much higher exploration latency than their laboratory counterparts. At each analyzed stage, WWCPS rats spent much more time in the transporter than Wistar rats. Wistar rats spent much more time during the experiment on object interaction in the experimental arena. In post-manipulation sessions, however, it was wild rats that explored object zones relatively longer than laboratory rats. No differences in the animals' behavior depending on the type of change were observed. Results suggest that wild rats tend to explore much more cautiously than laboratory rats and are more sensitive to changes in their environment. The underlying cause of these differences is likely to be the higher level of stress in wild rats, resulting from threats in their natural habitat. (shrink)

Głównym celem książki jest rekonstrukcja teorii retorycznej, wyłożonej przez Bartłomieja Keckermanna (1572–1609), profesora filozofii w Gdańskim Gimnazjum Akademickim, w obszernym traktacie pod tytułem System retoryki (Systema rhetoricae, Hanau 1608). Opierając się na przejrzystej metodzie, u której podstaw leżała zasada podziału dychotomicznego, wywiedziona wprost z pism logicznych Arystotelesa (Organonu), Keckermann przeprowadził systematyzację sztuki przemawiania. Dzięki twórczemu wykorzystaniu koncepcji Stagiryty, Cycerona i Kwintyliana, a także współczesnych sobie teoretyków wymowy, głównie Rudolfa Agricoli, Erazma z Rotterdamu, Filipa Melanchtona i Piotra Ramusa, stworzył on summę (...) renesansowej wiedzy o retoryce. Retoryka ujmowana paradoksalnie (oksymoronicznie) jako antystrofa dialektyki, ukazująca się nam w figuratywnym przebraniu wiernej służebnicy albo nieodłącznej, choć często niepożądanej, towarzyszki logiki (filozofii), została skrojona na miarę ludzkich zdolności i słabości. Jako względnie autonomiczna forma racjonalności (a więc zgodnie z intencją Arystotelesa) i model dyskursywności zbudowany wokół amplifikacji i figuratywności (czyli zgodnie z koncepcją Keckermanna) stanowi apologię niemal powszechnej niekonkluzywności dyskursu, sprzeciwu wobec supremacji intelektu w dziedzinie praktyk sensotwórczych i zgody na brak ostatecznego wyjaśnienia. Mimo tego ma być ona lekarstwem uśmierzającym chroniczną niepewność poznania i środkiem przynoszącym wytchnienie podczas gorączkowego poszukiwania sensu. Dlatego w zależności od potrzeb chwili i celu perswazji retoryka staje się lekarką serc i dusz ludzkich, twórczynią zmysłowych i wielobarwnych obrazów rzeczywistości, a także rewelatorką prawd doskonale już znanych. Za każdym razem zjawia się przed nami pod postacią figury przekształcającej prostą mowę litery w wieloznaczną sekwencję znaków, symboli i obrazów. Przemawiając we własnym imieniu na gruncie teorii wymowy (nawet tej najbardziej metodycznej i usystematyzowanej), retoryka nie może mówić inaczej, jak tylko retorycznie, ożywiając zastygłe w dyskursie toposy i budząc uśpione w języku figury. (shrink)

We characterize all finitary consequence relations over S4.3, both syntactically, by exhibiting so-called passive rules that extend the given logic, and semantically, by providing suitable strongly adequate classes of algebras. This is achieved by applying an earlier result stating that a modal logic L extending S4 has projective unification if and only if L contains S4.3. In particular, we show that these consequence relations enjoy the strong finite model property, and are finitely based. In this way, we extend the known (...) results by Bull and Fine, from logics, to consequence relations. We also show that the lattice of consequence relations over S4.3 is countable and distributive and it forms a Heyting algebra. (shrink)

Recenzja: Mark van Roojen, Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction, New York and London, Routledge, 2015.

Teoria własności intelektualnej Kennetha E. Himmy ma na celu uzasadnienie prawa naturalnego do intelektualnej "zawartości" dzieł sztuki i wynalazków. Uważa się przy tym dość powszechnie, że ową zawartość stanowią obiekty abstrakcyjne. Himma proponuje modyfikację znanego argumentu Johna Locke'a z uwzględnieniem koncepcji wartości. Utrzymuje, że nawet jeśli obiekty abstrakcyjne istnieją przed ich rzekomym "stworzeniem", to ich "konsumpcja" nie jest możliwa, dopóki wynalazca lub artysta nie wykona określonej pracy. Praca ta ma jego zdaniem być niezbędna dla zapewnienia dostępu do tychże obiektów. Himma (...) interpretuje ten akt jako "tworzenie wartości" które uzasadnia przyznanie wynalazcom i artystom praw własności intelektualnej. W niniejszej pracy założenia na których opiera się teoria Himmy poddane są krytycznej analizie. Argumentuje się, że ludzka praca nie może zwiększyć dostępności obiektów abstracyjnych oraz że pojęcie wartości nie ma do nich zastosowania. Spostrzeżenie to podważa zasadność proponowanej teorii. Ponadto rozważana jest zasadność postulowanych przez Himmę praw. Argumentuje się, że prawa te są niemożliwe do wyegzekwowania w odniesieniu do obiektów abstrakcyjnych i nie implikują praw do kontroli nad obiektami materialnymi. (shrink)