A contribution to ongoing debates in the philosophy of science, aiming to reconceptualize the orientation of the subject. Mobilizing the literature, the authors seek to transform their insights into a new epistemological and ontological basis for studying the enterprise of science.

Who and how revised Marxism in Poland? The simple answer is that it was done by young intellectuals seeing themselves as obligated to social and political activity, eager to participate in the process of the constitution of a new postwar Communist society. Marxism was for them a philosophical world-view and a political program rising hopes for a better socio-economic reality. Revisionists were committed Communists and their attitude toward Marxism was almost religious. Marxism, Promethean and scientific at the same time, was (...) supposed to replace religion, for which the radically secular revisionists saw no place in the new society. (See: Mikołajczyk 2013, p. 44-48) After the shock of 1956 they stuck by the slogan: ’socialism–yes, distortions–no,’ they thought that “Marxist socialism was possible without Leninist political forms, that Communism might be attacked within «the framework of Marxism»,” and they “believed for some time ... that Stalinism was curable in the sense that Communism could be restored or «democratized» without questioning its foundations” (Kolakowski 1978, p. 461). They saw themselves in an elitist way, i.e., as true and devoted Marxists fighting with dogmas, orthodoxy, myths, and unfounded faith both within Marxism-Leninism and outside it. They were willing to accept the position of sectarians, heretics, or apostates. Their political and ideological involvement forced them to attack pre-war but still active Polish philosophers of the Lvov-Warsaw School and other nonMarxist thinkers (Roman Ingarden, Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Stanisław Ossowski), who were classified as “bourgeois thinkers” unable to understand and assimilate Marxism. (shrink)

These are the abstracts of papers for the conference, History Unveiled Science Unfettered: A Conference in Celebration of James E. McGuire University of Pittsburgh, January 19, 2002.

This is a response to two reviews of our book "Science Unfettered: A Philosophical Study of Sociohistorical Ontology." We clarify the relationship between the ontological and the ontic, the key phrases: 'being-in-the-world,' the 'facticity' of human existence. We show where the sources of reviewers misunderstandings lie.

The idea that science is historical is almost a cliché nowadays. The historical dimensions of science have begun to be appreciated by philosophers of science, for some through the work of Kuhn, and for others through Popper and Lakatos. Does this mean that contemporary philosophy of science understands the historical nature of science? Let me begin with a provocative negative answer. My reason is not the obvious one, namely, that there are several competing models that address the historical development of (...) science. Rather, it's more substantial: philosophers of science have not adequately reflected on the historical nature of science. There are still at least two barriers blocking a meaningful dialogue between the history of science and the philosophy of science: (1) the normative and evaluative orientation of philosophy of science and (2) its universalist stance toward science, a stance somewhat modified in current literature. No wonder Minerva cannot communicate with Clio; not only do they not speak the same language, but their perspectives and aims differ too. Does this mean that Minerva can't be replaced with Calliope, that philosophy of science will go on "its own way, paying little attention to the naturalist stories told by historians and sociologists, and, in turn, being widely ignored by them?". Does this mean that their only possible relation is lack of relation--their "splendid isolation"--entailing abstention from alliances, even from a "marriage of convenience," or, for that matter, from any other sort of interaction? Does this mean that philosophy of science uses historical episodes simply to find its problems, or appeals to those episodes only to illustrate its claims or to falsify the claims of opposing philosophical views? Well, not necessarily. Interactions and cooperation between the two are possible, but depend, first, on their (in particular, philosophy's) self-definitions, and, second, on how they both relate to philosophy, and, in particular, to the philosophy of history. (shrink)

I present modifications of the notion of the a priori knowledge (beliefs) or justification executed in the recent epistemological conceptions, and discuss difficulties raised in their empiricist criticisms. Next, I discuss a naturalist and a metaphysical extreme approaches to the a priori , and give arguments against the need for the acceptance of the a priori versus a posteriori opposition. My arguments refer to contemporary philosophical processes: the abandonment of the abstract concept of the cognizing subject, the rejection of the (...) concept of language as a logical representational structure, and the demise of the ideal of episteme. (shrink)

Abstract This paper deals with two fundamental assumptions of the Strong programme in the sociology of knowledge and the theoretical (im) possibility of their co?existence with the general relativist tendency of this programme. The first assumption is the realist thesis introduced into the Strong programme through the materialist presupposition that sense experience is reliable and humans are able to learn about the regularities of the non?social world in order to survive. The second assumption is the causal principle. Arguments developed in (...) this paper lead to the conclusion that neither realism nor causalism can be reconciled with relativism. In both cases inconsistency is brought about by a tension between scientific perspective and relativism, between an external approach aiming at objective, universal, and causal explanation of what is studied, on the one hand, and the internal, relativist and reflexive, hermeneutical understanding of the human, on the other hand. The belief that the sociology of knowledge can be at the same time scientific, like the natural sciences, and relativist, like certain philosophies but not the natural sciences, is not sufficiently justified in the Strong programme. (shrink)

We are within nature and culture, conditioned simultaneously by genes and meanings. This form of our self-understanding is the result of fundamental modifications that happened in modern philosophical anthropology and of the impact of the natural Science. In modern philosophy three types of approaches to the human situation were constituted at different times: the idealist, the naturalist, and the culturalist, and the problem of whether humanity is natural (biological) or cultural has begun to take precedence over the issue of human (...) supernatural roots. Both approaches are presented, their presuppositions discussed, and arguments in favor of a version of the culturalist approach. Only the culturalist approach allows us to understand our own self-constitution and, in particular, our self-reflectivity, as well as the naturalist attempts to ignore them and immerse ourselves in nature. (shrink)

Constructing a cultural ontology I reject the primordiality of everydayness, presupposed by Heidegger, in order to reveal the cultural constitution of all ways of being, from everyday life to the most unusual activities of individuals and communities. The cultural constitution of being is displayed with the help of the idea that meanings, i.e., references, senses and values , are structures of all ways of being. In the following exposition the cultural constitution of being is analyzed in its interrelations with the (...) commonality of being, its temporality, and historicity. (shrink)

My project of cultural ontology aims at a specific modification of Heidegger’s ontology of being, which enables the analysis of historical communal being and the cultural nature of all ways of being. In the first part I shall consider: the motives for using an expression ’cultural ontology,’ arguments for the necessity of overcoming phenomenological analysis toward ontological philosophizing, and reasons for going beyond the analytic of Dasein toward ontological analysis of communities and human history. A sociohistorical ontology must be, finally, (...) transformed into a cultural ontology because all ways of being, human and non-human alike, are cultural in their constitution. As a starting point for the ontological exposition of culture I also discuss pre-ontological, e.g. scientific, views of culture and take up the question whether a cultural ontology can be useful for them. (shrink)

I argue that philosophical reflection on cognition and knowledge should not be shaped into an epistemological theory in a strict sense. It ought to be understood as a hermeneutic study of the social and dynamic (historical) nature of cognition.

Punktem wyjścia moich rozważań jest przekonanie, że poznanie nadal wymaga filozoficznego namysłu. Kantowski transcendentalizm i wyrastające z niego bezpośrednio lub pośrednio – filozofie Fichtego, Hegla, Marksa, Nietzschego, Husserla i Heideggera wyznaczają obszar teoretyczny, w którym pytanie o poznanie stawiane jest w nowy sposób, już nie w szacie naturalistycznej czy psychologistycznej. Ze względu na zawartość pojęciową tego obszaru i wypracowany w nim sposób filozofowania, problem poznania staje się w nim zagadnieniem ontologicznym, tzn. możliwe staje się pytanie o to, jaka jest ontyczna (...) struktura poznania. Odpowiedzi na to pytanie mogą być oczywiście różnorodne. W artykule przedstawiona jest jedna z nich. Fundamentalną kategorią.pojęciową proponowanej konceptualizacji, poznania jako fenomenu ontycznego jest pojęcie uspołecznienia. W perspektywie tej kategorii poznanie jawi się jako autodynamiczna historyczność, która ma strukturę interakcji społecznych włączonych w całość ludzkiej działalności. Dzięki uwzględnieniu szerszego kontekstu ontycznego, w którym realizuje się poznanie, możliwe jest wyjaśnienie sposobu uczestniczenia w poznaniu przedmiotów. (shrink)

The fundamental problem of what is explained in science should be considered and clarified since it determines the way of solving the problem of how something is explained as well as the entire view of explanation. In the first section after the introduction, Hempel's models of explanation are criticized for their narrow concern with logical reconstruction. In the next section a broader epistemological approach to explanation is presented, and in the last section an historical example of Newtonian explanation as epistemic (...) activity is discussed. (shrink)

A review of Bruno Latour's "We Have Never Been Modern," characterized as a philosophical study on the world we are living in.