The Absolute is a basic and fundamental issue for philosophy as such. I present different concepts of the Absolute (substantialism, energetism, escapism, methodologism). We can say that contemporary European philosophy “orphaned” the neo-Platonic tradition. Thereafter Russian philosophy developed in an intensive and turbulent as well as relatively uniform fashion, in view of the well-established Neo-Platonist context. This makes Russian philosophy not only part of a lasting universally acknowledged tradition; not only has Russian philosophy continued to develop currents of thought abandoned (...) by modern European philosophiers, but it is also heir to a philosophical tradition of particular quality and value in the universal history of thought. (shrink)

The article concerns the problem of master and slave in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Then I compare this problem with the issues discussed in the Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, an interesting book by Susan Buck-Morss, published in 2009.

The paper is a critical review of Leszek Kołakowski’s book Metaphysical Horror. According to Kołakowski, the starting-point of metaphysical horror is the awareness of changeability, transience, contingency and fragility of the world and human existence in face of the overwhelming and abysmal face of Nothingness. According to Kołakowski, the inevitable urge to overcome metaphysical horror leads to the idea of the Absolute, which can appear in two forms: God and cogito.What underlies the present paper is disagreement with Kołakowski’s perspective of (...) metaphysical horror that leads to question about reasons for praise for human mortality and human relationship towards Nothingness, reasons for an acceptance of the awaiting existential horror. (shrink)

I present and argue for twotheses: the first concerns the degree to whichChaadaev''s thought represents a breakthrough inthe development of Russian social philosophyand the second concerns the Hegelian characterof this thinking. I also show that Chaadaev''stheory retained an open character closely tiedto the crisis character of the social realityof his time and that it depended for itsjustification on the further course of thehistorical process, which is impossible topredict. All this leads to an interpretation ofChaadaev''s view according to which the standardopposition (...) of Chaadaev''s two best-known texts,The Philosophical Letters, with theirpredominantly pessimistic picture of Russia,and the Apology of a Madman, whichrefutes this evaluation, is rejected. (shrink)

The article outlines Vladimir Soloviev’s views at the time of his fascination by the theocracy, Christian policy and United Church concepts. His standpoint then was to place the “Godmanhood” idea underlying his philosophy in a realistic, historically and socially factual—hence universalistic—context. This led him to confer a special role in the historical process to the Christian church, which he saw as a dynamic institution adding energy to history. Soloviev considered this energy crucial in the rebirth of Christian unity around the (...) Holy See and the fulfillment of the “social trinity” reflecting the structure of the Divine Absolute and harmoniously uniting three relatively independent seats of social power: clerical, state and prophetic. For Soloviev the fulfillment of this project consisted in a lasting alliance between the papacy and the Tsar’s court, a concept which sounds very eccentric today. (shrink)

This article attempts to answer the question: what has the current migration crisis revealed in relations between Christianity and Islam, two religions with common Abrahamic roots? What conclusions can be drawn about the state of these relations, particularly with regard to ordinary members of the two religions? How should we assess the reaction of Christians in Europe to the inflow of refugees from Muslim countries in the light of the Gospel, the Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Francis?The (...) article consists of four parts. Part I briefly presents Christian-Muslim relationships over the centuries. Part II focuses on the sense of danger occurring in European societies in connection with the influx of Muslims during the migration crisis. Part III presents the teachings of the Second Vatican Council about Islam and Part IV describes Pope Francis’s attitude towards refugees from Muslim countries. (shrink)

This volume explores the range of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy and his relevance to contemporary philosophical traditions.

The class of equivalential logics comprises all implicative logics in the sense of Rasiowa [9], Suszko's logic SCI and many others. Roughly speaking, a logic is equivalential iff the greatest strict congruences in its matrices are determined by polynomials. The present paper is the first part of the survey in which systematic investigations into this class of logics are undertaken. Using results given in [3] and general theorems from the theory of quasi-varieties of models [5] we give a characterization of (...) all simple C-matrices for any equivalential logic C. In corollaries we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the class of all simple models for a given equivalential logic to be closed under free products. (shrink)

Once regarded as cellular ‘debris’ extracellular vesicles (EVs) emerge as one of the most intriguing entities in cancer pathogenesis. Intercellular trafficking of EVs challenges the notion of cancer cell autonomy, and highlights the multicellular nature of such fundamental processes as stem cell niche formation, tumour stroma generation, angiogenesis, inflammation or immunity. Recent studies reveal that intercellular exchange mediated by EVs runs deeper than expected, and includes molecules causative for cancer progression, such as oncogenes (epidermal growth factor receptor, Ras), and tumour (...) suppressors (PTEN). The uptake of oncogenic EVs (oncosomes) by various cells may profoundly change their biology, signalling patterns and gene expression, and in some cases cause their overt tumorigenic conversion. Moreover, EVs circulating in blood and present in body fluids provide an unprecedented access to the molecular circuitry driving cancer cells, and new technologies are being developed to exploit this property as a source of unique cancer biomarkers. (shrink)

This book is both suitable for logically and algebraically minded graduate and advanced graduate students of mathematics, computer science and philosophy, and ...

There exist different kinds of averaging of the differences of the energy–momentum and angular momentum in normal coordinates NC(P) which give tensorial quantities. The obtained averaged quantities are equivalent mathematically because they differ only by constant scalar dimensional factors. One of these averaging was used in our papers [J. Garecki, Rep. Math. Phys. 33, 57 (1993); Int. J. Theor. Phys. 35, 2195 (1996); Rep. Math. Phys. 40, 485 (1997); J. Math. Phys. 40, 4035 (1999); Rep. Math. Phys. 43, 397 (1999); (...) Rep. Math. Phys. 44, 95 (1999); Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 11, 441 (2002); M.P. Dabrowski and J. Garecki, Class. Quantum. Grar. 19, 1 (2002)] giving the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors. In this paper we present another averaging of the differences of the energy–momentum and angular momentum which gives tensorial quantities with proper dimensions of the energy–momentum and angular momentum densities. We have called these tensorial quantities “the averaged relative energy–momentum and angular momentum tensors”. These tensors are very closely related to the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors and they depend on some fundamental length L > 0. The averaged relative energy–momentum and angular momentum tensors of the gravitational field obtained in the paper can be applied, like the canonical superenergy and angular supermomentum tensors, to coordinate independent analysis (local and in special cases also global) of this field. Up to now we have applied the averaged relative energy–momentum tensors to analyze vacuum gravitational energy and momentum and to analyze energy and momentum of the Friedman (and also more general, only homogeneous) universes. The obtained results are interesting, e.g., the averaged relative energy density is positive definite for the all Friedman and other universes which have been considered in this paper. (shrink)

The notion of local deduction theorem (which generalizes on the known instances of indeterminate deduction theorems, e.g. for the infinitely-valued ukasiewicz logic C ) is defined. It is then shown that a given finitary non-pathological logic C admits the local deduction theorem iff the class Matr(C) of all matrices validating C has the C-filter extension property (Theorem II.1).

In the paper we study the class of weakly algebraizable logics, characterized by the monotonicity and injectivity of the Leibniz operator on the theories of the logic. This class forms a new level in the non-linear hierarchy of protoalgebraic logics.

This study investigates performance of portfolios composed of British socially responsible investments (SRI) stocks. Using the ‘Global-100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World’ list (known also as ‘Global-100’) to select the SRI companies, we found that, in the period 2000–2010, the returns of the SRI portfolios were on average higher compared with the corresponding returns of the market indexes. The annual average difference in returns of the SRI portfolios (with dividends) was 5.26 % and 5.69 % relative to the FTSE100 (...) and FTSE4GOOD indexes (the total return versions), respectively, but the differences in returns in the whole period, in individual years and in other sub-periods were in most cases not statistically significant. Positive performance of SRI stocks in the whole sample is, however, evidenced by risk-adjusted measures such as the modified Sharpe ratio (MSR) and certainty equivalent (CEQ) returns, as well as by incorporating various levels of transaction costs. Furthermore, a simple trading strategy relying on selection of SRI stocks from the Global-100 list would beat the market indexes in the whole period 2000–2010, even after inclusion of various levels of transaction costs. We also estimated the Fama–French and Carhart multi-factor models and found that the returns of the SRI portfolios cannot be consistently explained by conventional factors other than the market factor. (shrink)

The main result of the present paper — Theorem 3 — establishes the equivalence of the interpolation and amalgamation properties for a large family of logics and their associated classes of matrices.

The class of equivalential logics comprises all implicative logics in the sense of Rasiowa [9], Suszko's logicSCI and many Others. Roughly speaking, a logic is equivalential iff the greatest strict congruences in its matrices (models) are determined by polynomials. The present paper is the first part of the survey in which systematic investigations into this class of logics are undertaken. Using results given in [3] and general theorems from the theory of quasi-varieties of models [5] we give a characterization of (...) all simpleC-matrices for any equivalential logicC (Theorem I.14). In corollaries we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the class of all simple models for a given equivalential logic to be closed under free products (Theorem I.18). (shrink)

The paper is conceived as a first study on the Suszko operator. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the existence of close relations holding between the properties of the Suszko operator and the structural properties of the model class for various sentential logics. The emphasis is put on generality both of the results and methods of tackling the problems that arise in the theory of this operator. The attempt is made here to develop the theory for non-protoalgebraic logics.

The paper is conceived as a first study on the Suszko operator. The purpose of this paper is to indicate the existence of close relations holding between the properties of the Suszko operator and the structural properties of the model class for various sentential logics. The emphasis is put on generality both of the results and methods of tackling the problems that arise in the theory of this operator. The attempt is made here to develop the theory for non-protoalgebraic logics.

The first known statements of the deduction theorems for the first-order predicate calculus and the classical sentential logic are due to Herbrand [8] and Tarski [14], respectively. The present paper contains an analysis of closure spaces associated with those sentential logics which admit various deduction theorems. For purely algebraic reasons it is convenient to view deduction theorems in a more general form: given a sentential logic C (identified with a structural consequence operation) in a sentential language I, a quite arbitrary (...) set P of formulas of I built up with at most two distinct sentential variables p and q is called a uniform deduction theorem scheme for C if it satisfies the following condition: for every set X of formulas of I and for any formulas and , C(X{{a}}) iff P(, ) AC(X). [P(, ) denotes the set of formulas which result by the simultaneous substitution of for p and for q in all formulas in P]. The above definition encompasses many particular formulations of theorems considered in the literature to be deduction theorems. Theorem 1.3 gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a logic to have a uniform deduction theorem scheme. Then, given a sentential logic C with a uniform deduction theorem scheme, the lattices of deductive filters on the algebras A similar to the language of C are investigated. It is shown that the join-semilattice of finitely generated (= compact) deductive filters on each algebra A is dually Brouwerian. (shrink)

In the first section logics with an algebraic semantics are investigated. Section 2 is devoted to subdirect products of matrices. There, among others we give the matrix counterpart of a theorem of Jónsson from universal algebra. Some positive results concerning logics with, finite degrees of maximality are presented in Section 3.

The class Matr(C) of all matrices for a prepositional logic (, C) is investigated. The paper contains general results with no special reference to particular logics. The main theorem (Th. (5.1)) which gives the algebraic characterization of the class Matr(C) states the following. Assume C to be the consequence operation on a prepositional language induced by a class K of matrices. Let m be a regular cardinal not less than the cardinality of C. Then Matr (C) is the least class (...) of matrices containing K and closed under m-reduced products, submatrices, matrix homomorphisms, and matrix homomorphic counter-images. (shrink)