(Nie)obiektywna podmiotowość

Author(s): Piotr Piotrowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 36/2016

In this article, I analyze the issue of subjectivity in the form in which it appears in Charles Taylor’s and Richard Rorty’s writings. Positions of these philosophers are generally regarded as contradictory. I will, however, argued that the position on subjectivity represented by Rorty finds its complementation in Taylor’s concept. To do this, I will show firstly that both Rorty and Taylor use the category of contingency, presenting some common thesis about subjectivity. This way I will show that the location of the category of subjectivity and the scope of its use in each of them concept is closely related to the understanding of objectivity accepted by each of them. This will allow then to reconstruct the concept of subjectivity presented by Taylor and Rorty. Next, in the conclusion, I will present such a summary of those two standpoints, which will include justification of the thesis of their complementarity.

A Critical Thinking Approach to Globalisation and Culture

Author(s): Stelu?a Stan / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The diverse and complex cultural consequences of the present time have been subject to various studies. The new non-material digital forms of communication make the global cultural flows to move easier and more freely around the globe, a phenomenon that has been associated with many cultural consequences. Major theses, such as homogenization (standardization around a Western or American pattern), polarization (resistance to cultural conformity or standardization and emergence of cultural alternatives), and hybridization have been used as relevant analysis criteria. Having in mind the final objective (respectful contact with other cultures and successful intercultural communication), the present study, as part of a larger enterprise, is an introduction to a critical thinking approach to cultural awareness and the need for a cultural paradigm shift.

A Note on Tichý’s Paper ‘On Describing’

Author(s): Pavel Cmorej / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2007

P. Tichý finished, and probably also began to write, this paper in 1973. At that time, he was affiliated at the University of Otago, New Zealand, for already three years. From there he sent the paper to Pavel Materna and me. The paper ‘On Describing’ is connected to, in its content, Tichý’s paper ‘An Approach to Intensional Analysis’ which appeared in Noûs 5, 1971, 273 – 297. The former paper was intended by Tichý to make the public familiar with some ideas published in the technically more demanding Noûs paper. In so doing, he pays particular attention to prospects his conceptual apparatus has for solutions of certain philosophical problems. In the second half of the paper, he utilizes a slightly modified language of Chuch’s theory of types (enriched with possible world variables) that Tichý had introduced already in the paper ‘An Approach to Intensional Analysis’. The study ‘On Describing’ is an excellent introduction into Tichý’s work, in particular his semantics. Fundamental intuitive ideas involved in the paper go throughout, in modified forms, all his work.

A PLEA FOR THE PLURALITY OF FUNCTION

Author(s): Tony Cheng / Language(s): English / Issue: 15/2016

In this paper I defend a pluralistic approach in understanding function, both in biological and other contexts. Talks about function are ubiquitous and crucial in biology, and it might be the key to bridge the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” identified by Sellars (1962). However, analysis of function has proven to be extremely difficult. The major puzzle is to make sense of “time-reversed causality”: how can property P be the cause of its realizer R? For example, “pumping blood” is a property of hearts, but a property of hearts cannot be the cause of the presence of hearts, since properties cannot predate their realizers and be causes of them. In section 2 I discuss Wright’s etiological analysis, Cummins’ causal-role analysis, and their critics. In section 3 I defend a version of the “consensus without unity” strategy proposed by Godfrey-Smith from Christopher Boorse’s recent critique (2002). In Section 4 I conclude by reflecting on the relation between functional discourses and physicalism.

A Quasi-fregean Solution to ‘The Concept Horse’

Author(s): MIHAIL-PETRISOR IVAN / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

In this paper I offer a conceptually tighter, quasi-Fregean solution to the concept horse paradox based on the idea that the unterfallen relation is asymmetrical. The solution is conceptually tighter in the sense that it retains the Fregean principle of separating sharply between concepts and objects, it retains Frege’s conclusion that the sentence ‘the concept horse is not a concept’ is true, but does not violate our intuitions on the matter. The solution is only ‘quasi’- Fregean in the sense that it rejects Frege’s claims about the ontological import of natural language and his analysis thereof.

ABOUT PRACTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING

Author(s): Arto Mutanen / Language(s): English / Issue: 89/2016

Knowledge is, by definition, reliable and, hence, it can be applied to a variety of different problems. Nevertheless, in practical problem solving, we do not rely on mere truthful knowledge, but also on information which frames the practical acceptability. We are not looking for truthful solution but an optimal solution. Optimal solution is found out by optimizing some given (practical) parameters. The optimization is both theory based and practice based process. That is, practical problem solving is a human deliberation that interconnects theoretical and practical knowledge. So, the philosophical foundation of practical problem solving interconnects theoretical and practical philosophy. Especially ethical deliberation plays – or should play – central role in practical problem solving. The complexity of the advanced scientific knowledge needed in solving present day practical problems separates the people who know, from the people who do (decide). The situation makes immediate that we need some deeper pedagogical conviction: we need ecological education.

Aksjomatyczna teoria Absolutu Osobowego

Author(s): Edward Nieznanski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/1999

Filozofowie, którzy podejmują się prób argumentacji na rzecz istnienia absolutu, poprzestają zwykle na `wykazywaniu tezy, że byt konieczny jest, tzn. jest realnie, po czym przeskakują – bez argumentacji – do prostego stwierdzenia, quod omnes dicunt Deum.Tymczasem byłoby równie pożądane wykazać, że wyprowadzony filozoficznie absolut jest Bogiem osobowym, wszechmocnym i wszechwiedzącym. To nader złożone zadanie może wyprowadzić niejednego filozofa w pole, wtrącić go do „wieży Babel”, skazując na puste wysiłki myśli w pomieszanych językach.

Alasdair MacIntyre jako krytyk oświeceniowego projektu uzasadnienia moralności (I): Przyczyny kryzysu etyki nowożytnej

Author(s): Sebastian Galecki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13/2016

In the famous “disquieting suggestion” Alasdair MacIntyre has written identifying the hypothetical state of modern ethics as a set of mutually antagonistic, chaotic, irrational and ultimately arbitrary positions. The later work of this extremely popular contemporary Scottish (although for many decades living in the United States) philosopher, sometimes referred to “an interminably long history of ethics”, is devoted mainly two purposes: to prove the arguments put forward in the “disquieting suggestion” and to overcome this crisis. This series of two articles is devoted to the presentation of the first, negative aim of MacIntyre. The eponymous reasons for the crisis of a contemporary moral philosophy, MacIntyre summarizes the three slogans: incommensurability of terms and language, the conceptual incommensurability of rival arguments and the ostensible impersonal, objective rationality. These three elements are a characteristic of all modern ethical theories realising “the enlightenment project of justifying morality.” As an example MacIntyre has shown two post-Enlightenment ethical traditions: liberal individualism (negating the social dimension of the person and the communal base of practical rationality) and emotivism, which is based on the negation of rational discourse, leading to persuasion and propaganda in the moral sphere.

Alice Returns From Wonderland

Ontological Frameworks for Explanation from Contemporary Quantum Theories

Author(s): Mladen Domazet,Mladen Domazet / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2012

Alice returns from Wonderland discusses scientific explanation and its importance for scientific knowledge. The classical ideal of coherence and completeness of physics was shaken in the early 20th century with the appearance of quantum mechanics, and this opened the floodgates of skepticism about the explanatory potential of science. Through extensive examination of principle and constructive approaches to methodology and explanation in quantum theory, Domazet discusses realist and antirealist approaches to scientific enterprise as a whole. The need for modification of the everyday conceptual framework through modification of some foundational units of the realist material ontology arises. The book argues for the reintroduction of the metaphysical component of science; to base explanations of empirical phenomena on ontological commitments. Despite the unfamiliar phenomena like quantum teleportation, imaginary Alice finds a way to hold on to familiar macroscopic objects, as one of many instances of durable generalized objects subjected not only to spatio-temporal constrictions but also to ontologically primitive fundamental laws of temporal evolution.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the Perception of Reality from the Visual Field of the Other: Analysis of the Relation between Ordinary Language Philosophy and Poststructural Critique of Vision

Author(s): Margareta Jelic / Language(s): English / Issue: 9/2016

The first objective of this work is to establish a parallel between the ordinary language philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as the philosophy of Stanley Cavell and poststructuralism and its theories through their apprehension of vision and seeing as conceptual categories. The second objective is the analysis of perception of reality from the visual field of the other (children, women, other civilizations and peripheral parts of society) as a place of position of the subject in the frame of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic poststructural theory, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructivism and psychoanalytic poststructural feminist theories (Irigaray, Kristeva).

An Approach to Abstract Structures of Logistics as a Complex Theory Unifying the Methodology of S-Modelling and the Logic of Science: Initial Steps

Author(s): Boris Chendov / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

In the introduction, following the formulation of the theses (1)on the concept ‘philosophy of science’, (2) on interdisciplinarity in modern science, and (3) on foundational studies in science, and on the bases of their content, (4) a thesis on the interdisciplinary approach to foundations of science is formulated. In accordance with the latter, together with the canonical approach to foundations of science, which consists in an elaboration of the foundations of mathematics, physics and other fundamental canonical sciences, also an interdisciplinary approach to foundations of science is realised, one that consists in the elaboration of four foundational complex sciences containing the most significant productive factors for the elaboration of various interdisciplinary theories: (1) Methodology of S-modelling, (2) Logic of science, (3) Definitics, a complex theory of definite structures, aggregates, processes and systems in reality and in knowledge, (4) Indefinitics, a complex theory of indefiniteness in its various forms in reality and in knowledge. Taking into account the internal connection between the first two complex sciences enlisted above, it is expedient in the process of investigations of their foundations that they be unified in yet another complicated complex science—logistics.

An Examination of Superluminal Motion

Author(s): Argun Abrek Canbolat / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

In this work, the debate between Yuri Balashov and Hud Hudson is reviewed in terms of the views put forward by Tim Maudlin. It seems that Maudlin’s view can shed light on the debate and may ensure new discussions and perspectives. Hudson, posing an interesting thought experiment, says that superluminal motion is possible whereas Balashov argues to the contrary. If we take into account what Tim Maudlin suggests in the first chapter of his book The Metaphysics within Physics, namely, that “laws of nature ought to be accepted as ontologically primitive,” we can interpret Balashov-Hudson debate from a new perspective. It can be said that Balashov would be taking a step forward if we were to take into account Maudlin perspective.

An Introduction to Whitehead’s New View of Learning and Its Relation to Traditional Learning Theories

Author(s): Franz Riffert / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Alfred North Whitehead, although probably known best for his collaborative work with Bertrand Russell on the Principia Mathematica, also developed an original theory of learning and instruction which has much to offer for our times. His theory will be discussed in this paper. In order to do so, two criteria are first developed which in their combination give rise to five categories: radical behaviorism, cognitivism, and radical constructivism, with the intermediary categories of moderate behaviorism and moderate constructivism. A great number of educational researchers are ascribed to one of these five categories. After discussing the shortcomings of the three major philosophical proponents of these three major educational approaches (Hume, Kant, and Berkeley), the basic assumptions of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism are presented, and his assumptions concerning learning and teaching are discussed in view of it. Finally, it is shown that Whitehead’s organismic philosophy is able to offer a frame for integrating Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, thereby solving a long standing scandal of education.

Analitička filozofija istorije

Author(s): Rade Kalik / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 294-295/1983

Filozofija koja nema za cilj postavlianje novih filozofskih stavova, već za svoj osnovni zadatak smatra samoočišćenje od svake metafizike, svodi svoju aktivnost isključivo na filozofsku analizu pojmova. Stoga i filozofija istorije, unutar ove tradicije, postaje jedna u nizu ovih analitičkih aktivnosti, usmerena na značaj i istinitost istorijskih stavova, na njihovo objašnjenje, objektivnost, uzročnost i vrednovanje. Ako samo pogledamo sadržaj jedne od ovakvih filozofija istorije, nailazimo upravo na poglavlja pod ovim naslovima, pa i na sklonost da se i samo ime »filozofija istorije« zameni novim - »objašnjenje istorije«.

Analytic Method

Author(s): Miloš Kosterec / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

This paper proposes a non-trivial definition of the notion of analytic method. Working within the so-called instructional model of method, I distinguish three kinds of instructions which occur in methods: selective, executive, and declarative instructions. I discuss the relation between each of these and the analyticity of a method. Then I define the notions of an analytic use of an instruction and of an analytic instruction, which are at the basis of the proposed definition of an analytic method. Finally, I discuss the issue of circularity in the presented model which arises if we consider a finite agent testing a method for analyticity.

Antynomie teorii mnogości

Author(s): Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4 (92)/2015

The main aim of the study — written by Ajdukiewicz in 1913 in order to fulfil the requirements for a teaching certificate — is to provide a clear classification of set-theoretic paradoxes (Russell’s, Burali-Forti’s, Richard’s, König’s, and Berry’s) and to present a uniform way of framing them, which combines ideas put forward by Grelling, Nelson, and Russell. In the last part of the study, Ajdukiewicz surveys available solutions (Poincaré, Richard, Russell, Frege, Bernstein, Jourdain) and comments on their validity. The edition is based on a typescript.

Anzelmo „Ontologinio Įrodymo“ Logika

Author(s): Audrone Dumciene / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 72/2012

Keeping within the framework of analytic philosophy, the article examines Anselm of Canterbury‘s “ontological proof for God’s existence”, which, according to prevailing view, most clearly reveals specifics of pre-scholastic speculative thought. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the question of the logical validity of this proof is a matter of relevance, but this article highlights the aspect of the proof‘s soundness. After all, as it is known, formally correct reasoning can lead to false conclusions, and truth is an absolute value for philosophy, i.e. “love of wisdom”. The article not only attempts to estimate the compliance of “the ontological proof” with today’s standards of rationality, but also aims to clarify to what extent the approaches of an analytical history of philosophy enables us to reveal the intrinsic reason of Medieval thought.

Argumentativna semantika

Author(s): Oswald Ducrot / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 1/1998

Opći cilj ovog cjelokupnog rada govori o tome da se u semantičkom opisu maksimalno ograniči - i, ako je moguće, čak eliminira - pojam informativnosti. Zapravo, imam dojam da niti jedan dio iskazanog smisla, niti pak smisla jezika, ne sadrži opis stvarnosti, te mi se stoga ne čini da su pojmovi istine i neistine prikladni za opis lingvističkih činjenica. Govoreći ovo, čini mi se da se odvraćam od uobičajenog pojma značenja kakav se sprovodi u samom jezičkom rječniku, tj. pokušavam izgraditi drugačiji pojam značenja negoli je onaj što nam ga sam jezik pokušava nametnuti. Ako hoćete, pokušavam vidjeti jezik drugačije negoli on vidi sebe samog. To je moj opći cilj; sada treba pokušati da se precizira sredstvo kojim kanim postići taj cilj. Dvije teorije mi se čine posebno pogodnim za napredovanje k tom cilju: teorija polifonije i teorija argumentacije.

Argumenty na rzecz nieredukcyjnego ujęcia tożsamości osobowej

Author(s): Mariusz Grygianiec / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 34/2016

In the debate on personal identity many different criteria of identity are proposed and defended. Criteria of identity are usually taken to state necessary and sufficient conditions of identity and are viewed, in their metaphysical interpretation, as providing truth conditions of relevant identity statements. In my paper I argue that this view is misconceived and I present some arguments for the simple view of personal identity, according to which there are no noncircular and informative criteria of identity for persons. In particular, I argue that there are no other facts of the matter than identity itself which would serve as truth conditions of statements concerning numerical identity. I also try to justify the view that in most cases criteria of identity should be interpreted either epistemically as a means for finding out whether identity holds or not or metaphysically as criteria of genidentity, which provide appropriate persistence conditions for objects of a given kind.