Are there things that we must never do, no matter how untypical the circumstances and “unorthodox” our deontic ideas might be? In this essay I try to make evident that acts I call “pure sadist acts” satisfy this description. I discuss several examples of such acts and alert to their being not always easy to distinguish from certain others. Norms prohibiting such acts I call “true”, and I suggest that other, less suggestive, norms might also be (derivatively) true, if the (...) pertinent acts stand in certain relations with the former ones. I incorporate some ideas from Hume, as well as from elementary model theory, to make mine clearer. (shrink)

G.E.M. Anscombe znalazła w Etyce nikomachejskiej Arystotelesa pewną niekonsekwencję: Arystoteles zdaje się twierdzić, że cokolwiek wynika z namysłu, jest wyborem, i że słaby wolą może się skutecznie namyślać, ale i że — z drugiej strony — on nie wybiera. Anscombe znajduje rozwiązanie tej sprzeczności: Arystoteles powinien był, jej zdaniem, zaznaczyć, że by z namysłu wynikał wybór, to, ze względu na co się namyślamy, musiałby sam być przedmiotem uprzedniego wyboru. Badam to rozwiązanie i znajduję jego słabe strony, jak niebezpieczeństwo nieskończonego regresu, (...) trudność prześledzenia genealogii wyborów i nieosiągalność pierwotnego celu. Pomimo to próbuję je ulepszyć, poddając pod dyskusję, czy tego rodzaju pierwotne wybory, jakich wymaga rozwiązanie Anscombe, nie są jednak czasem naprawdę podejmowane i czy ich cele nie są rozkładalne na takie, które można realistycznie mieć nadzieję osiągnąć. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that for sentences of form “A is B” there isa distinction between identity and “mere” predication to be made, and thatLeśniewski’s Ontology puts us in a better position to make this distinctionthan first-order predicate logic. I also gesture at how Ontology could helpus to decide questions of identity. The nub of the matter seems to be a“primordial” sense of the copula that Ontology has at its basis.

In this article the author argues that the 'Liar' Paradox sentence: "This sentence is false" is neither true nor false because it does not express any proposition or "Satz" in the sense of Bernard Bolzano. The difficulty left open is that by a similar line of reasoning also the sentence "This sentence is true" would not express any proposition, yet it is sometimes taken to be true (on the strength of a theorem by Loewe).

This essay attempts to define a value (not «the» value) of what, in it, comes to be called an «eccentric». In a largely standardized and stereotyped society like ours of the present times, a society where a human being can be creative but only within certain predefined limits, diverse groups exert all kinds of pressure on an individual, and with growing geographical as well as social mobility these kinds of pressure, intertwined and superimposed, give rise to overdue stress and situations (...) of psychological and maybe even metaphysical impossibility. One solution is a «no notice» attitude, in which all rules but a few selected ones are more or less dignifiedly flouted. Another solution is an attitude of an eccentric, close to, but not identical with, that of John Henry Newman’s «gentleman». I try to define this attitude and show one of its values: enabling us to evade too much social pressure without estranging us from society. (shrink)

Amongst the entities making up social reality, are there necessary relations whose necessity is not a mere reflection of the logical connections between corresponding concepts? We distinguish three main groups of answers to this question, associated with Hume and Adolf Reinach at opposite extremes, and with Searle who occupies a position somewhere in the middle. We first set forth Reinach’s views on what he calls ‘material necessities’ in the realm of social entities. We then attempt to show that Searle has (...) not identified a sustainable position somewhere between the Humean and the Reinachian extremes. This is because Searle’s position is threatened by circularity, and to steer clear of that danger it must incorporate at least some elements of Reinach’s essentialism. (shrink)

Polskie przepisy prawne formułujące warunki dopuszczalności eksperymentu medycznego, a więc ipso facto wyznaczające jego granice, można różnorako interpretować, zwłaszcza w tym zakresie, w jakim określają wymagany dla przeprowadzenia eksperymentu bilans związanych z nim możliwych korzyści i szkód. W artykułach prawniczych komentujących te przepisy w zasadzie jednak brak prób systematycznego i (na tyle, na ile pozwala na to sam przedmiot analizy) ścisłego wyróżnienia tych interpretacji w języku tzw. teorii racjonalnego wyboru (rational choice theory), teorii szczególnie przydatnej w tym kontekście z uwagi (...) na jej rozbudowany aparat pojęciowy pozwalający badać różnorakie konfiguracje relacji między costs i benefits. Artykuł próbuje wypełnić tę lukę: wyróżnione w nim zostały różne interpretacje przepisów prawnych określających warunki dopuszczalności eksperymentu medycznego; interpretacje te zostały również poddane ocenie. (shrink)

Le Maitre de Claville należy do tradycji moralistycznej klasycyzmu francuskiego i stara się podołać niebagatelnemu zadaniu stworzenia portretu człowieka godnego, honnete homme’a. Usiłując zdefiniować pojęcie cnoty, odwołuje się do własnego smaku estetycznego, subiektywnych emocji radości, zachwytu i rozkoszy wynikających z obcowania z pięknem. Z dużą dowolnością wybiera to, co sam uważa za najdoskonalsze z antyku, Biblii i w najnowszych prądach myślowych swego czasu: m.in. racjonalizmu. Połączenie tych trzech elementow nie jest łatwe. W jego rozważaniach ujawnia się wysiłek moralisty starającego się (...) nadać swej koncepcji kształt logicznie uporządkowanej doktryny, z elementow swobodnie wybranych, nie zawsze ze sobą zgodnych. (shrink)

The introduction of the concept of the field of rationality and its correlates (the field of potentiality and the formal field) by Józef Życiński and Michał (Michael) Heller opened up space for the philosophical explanation of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in capturing regularities built into the physical reality. The presented study is a response to the clear incentive of these authors towards the development of the understanding and applicability of these concepts. It is argued that identifying symmetries within the (...) field of rationality not only helps to articulate the fundamental role of symmetries in physics but also provides a better grasp on the issue of potentialities for the emergence of complexity in the Universe. Additionally, some global properties of this field can be more deeply comprehended. By indicating the drawbacks and limitations of this approach, perspectives for further inquiry into the meaning and usefulness are suggested. (shrink)

Expression of physical motion (e.g., man runs by) shows systematic variability not only between language types (i.e., inter-typological) but also within a language type (i.e., intra-typological). In this study, we asked whether the patterns of variability extend to metaphorical motion events (e.g., time runs by). Our analysis of randomly selected 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) event descriptions from written texts originally produced by German, Polish, and Spanish authors showed strong inter-typological differences in the expression of both (...) event types. German and Polish speakers differed from Spanish speakers in how they packaged manner and path components of a motion event; they also differed in how extensively they expressed each component in their lexicalization of motion. The strong inter-typological differences were accompanied by more modest intra-typological variability: Polish and German writers differed in their packaging and lexicalization of manner and path components of metaphorical—but not physical—motion events. Our results provide evidence for robust inter-typological differences evident in the expression of both physical and metaphorical motion, along with less robust intra-typological differences, largely evident in the expression of metaphorical motion. Our study thus highlights event type as an important factor in determining crosslinguistic variation in motion expression. (shrink)

Traditional martial arts continue to be interesting and inspiring to many people around the globe. Some of their contemporary adaptations attract enthusiasts for whom they are especially important. In this article, the author bases his observations on his own long-term participation. The analysis takes into account the influence of the perspectives of Jigoro Kano and several other creators of modern varieties of Japanese budo. It can be concluded that regular, even daily, practice—cultivating martial arts and internalizing its values—co-creates the lifestyle (...) of instructors and advanced students. (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)

Self-esteem and emotional reactivity may be important personality determinants of human functioning in situations of social exposure. In this study, we compared the levels of these personality variables in a group of professional theater actors and a group of professional illusionists with a control group of participants who were neither actors nor illusionists and had no artistic education. We also examined the correlations between emotional reactivity and self-esteem in the three groups. For emotional reactivity, we found (1) very strong evidence (...) that the level is less for magicians than for controls, (2) substantial evidence that the level is less for magicians than for actors, (3) anecdotal evidence that the level is less for actors than for controls, and (4) decisive evidence that the average score is less for males than for females. For self-esteem, we found (1) anecdotal evidence that the level is higher for magicians than for controls, (2) substantial evidence that there is no difference between actors and magicians, (3) anecdotal evidence against a difference between actors and controls, and (4) anecdotal evidence against a difference between males and females. Based on the entire sample we found a moderate correlation between self-esteem and emotional reactivity (r = -.30, p < 0.001). Our results are compatible with the notion that emotional reactivity – as part of the temperament concept – is a factor influencing the choice of an artistic profession. (shrink)