The hole argument concludes that substantivalism about spacetime entails the radical indeterminism of the general theory of relativity (GR). In this paper, I amend and defend a response to the hole argument first proposed by Butterfield (1989) that relies on the idea of counterpart substantivalism. My amendment clarifies and develops the metaphysical presuppositions of counterpart substantivalism and its relation to various definitions of determinism. My defence consists of two claims. First, contra Weatherall (2018) and others: the hole argument is not (...) a blunder resulting from a mistaken view on how mathematical physics works, and requires a developed (meta)metaphysical response. Second, contra Melia (1999) and others: one can be content with a notion of determinism for GR which is not sensitive to merely haecceitistic differences. (shrink)

Pod pewnymi względami niezaawansowany stan badań wirtualności w naukach informatycznych wskazuje na konieczność zgłębienia podstawowych kwestii jej dotyczących, tj. kwestii ontologicznych. Dopiero ich rozstrzygnięcie pozwoli rozwiązać zagadkę tworzenia i istnienia obiektów wirtualnych. Rozpatrzenie tych kwestii utrudnia fakt usuwania z dziedziny zainteresowań współczesnej filozofii metafizyki, a wraz z nią ontologii. Dlatego z powodów merytorycznej trafności odwołuję się do koncepcji ontologicznych oraz epistemologicznych, które mogą być wykorzystane do konstrukcji ontologicznych, wypracowanych dawniej w filozofii, które przez analogie lub inspiracje – jak wykazuję – (...) są obiecującymi kandydatami do zgłębienia zagadnień powstawania i istnienia obiektów wirtualnych. W artykule przedstawiam w skrótowej ekspozycji alternatywne rozstrzygnięcia tych dwóch problemów oraz status istnienia obiektów wirtualnych. Ujęcia te są inspirowane głównie przez relewantne poglądy Platona, Arystotelesa, Franza Brentano i Karla Poppera oraz zbiór koncepcji reprezentacji. (shrink)

Peter Millican and Branden Thornhill-Miller have recently argued that contradictions between different religious belief systems, in conjunction with the host of defeaters based on empirical research concerning alleged sources of evidence for ‘perceived supernatural agency’, render all ‘first-order’, that is actual, religious traditions positively irrational, and a source of discord on a global scale. However, since the authors recognise that the ‘secularisation thesis’ appears to be incorrect, and that empirical research provides evidence that religious belief also has beneficial individual and (...) social effects, they put forward a hypothesis of a ‘second-order religious belief ’, with Universalist overtones and thus free of intergroup conflict, and free of irrationality, since supported (solely) by the Fine-Tuning Argument. While granting most of their arguments based on empirical research and embracing the new paradigm of the atheism/religion debate implicit in their paper, I contend that Millican’s and Thornhill-Miller’s proposal is unlikely to appeal to religious believers, because it misconstrues the nature and grounds of religious belief. I suggest that their hypothesis may be refined by taking into account a view of axiologically grounded religious belief that I refer to as ‘agatheism’, since it identifies God or the Ultimate Reality with the ultimate good (to agathon). (shrink)

Morawski sine dubio ex illis est, qui activitate sua scriptisque non parvas habuerunt partes in promovenda cultura in Polonia XVII saeculi. Nomen sibi promeruit maxime qua philosophiae ac theologiae professor per multos annos multorumque textuum auctor, sermone tam latino quam patrio-polono, quorum nonnulli etiam sequente saeculo non semel in lucem prodierunt - aliqui etiam 20 vicibus. Quod ex philosophicis reliquit, non est magnae amplitudinis. Uno solum volumine 300 paginarum continetur, attamen non parvam in sui saeculi animis commotionem excitasse creditur, nam (...) ad eins editionem opportuna visa est Romana textus censura seu sententia ei favens a generalibus in Societate Jesu librorum revisoribus prolata. Doctrinalem eins auctoritatem commendabant iteratae eins editiones - quattuor ad minimum - in patria nec non Lugduni in Gallia - et quidem factae, quando Auctor noster philosophiam non iam docebat. (shrink)

Contemporary concepts of development (the process of globalization, sustainable development) can be diversified according to their relation to axioms, natural law, values and paradigms. The subcategories obtained constitute the ground for business ethics. Ethics in business is always needed, however, it can be implemented at-source (as a component of management) or as an end-of-pipe measure. In Poland, constitutional regulations guarantee, indirectly at least, business ethics as a component of management.

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

The paper is a response to recent criticisms of agatheism, a new pluralistic interpretation of religious belief put forward by Janusz Salamon with the aim of accommodating the epistemological challenge of religious diversity. Agatheism is an axiologically grounded religious belief which identifies God, the Absolute or the ultimate reality religiously conceived with the ultimate good as the ultimate end of all human agency and thus an explanation of its irreducibly teleological character and a source of its meaning. Janusz (...) Salamon argues that this grounding of religious belief in the human axiological consciousness makes it immune to falsification by any future science. Replying to the concerns of the critics about about irrationality of doxastic commitment to a particular religious tradition, Janusz Salamon argues that to the extent the fundamental agatheistic religious belief is presupposed in such tradition as its doxastic core, its belief system - if internally coherent and aligned with a worldview that is consistent with undisputed scientific findings - may be considered rational, despite there being a plurality of such belief systems. (shrink)

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)

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)

In this paper I argue that from the point of view of a theist, inclusivism with respect to the issue whether adherents of different religious traditions can have veridical experience of God (or Ultimate Reality) now, is more plausible than the Alstonian exclusivism. I suggest that mystical inclusivism of the kind I imply in this paper may contribute to the development of cross-cultural philosophy of religion, as well as to the theoretical framework for inter-religious dialogue, because (1) it allows for (...) the possibility of veridical experience of God in a variety of religious traditions, but (2) it avoids the radical revisionist postulates of Hickian pluralism and (3) it leaves open the question whether the creed of any specific tradition is a better approximation to the truth about God than the creeds of other traditions. (edited). (shrink)

(1990). “Mitteleuropa”—Does it still exist, or Is it a mere geopolitical abstraction? World Futures: Vol. 29, The Future of European Integration, pp. 218-226.

W maju 1998 roku odbyła się w Monachium międzynarodowa konferencja poświęcona zagadnieniu racjonalności teizmu. Temat to szeroko dyskutowany w ostatnich czasach, stąd wydawać by się mogło, że zorganizowanie jeszcze jednej sesji, która przyciągnęłaby uwagę środowiska filozofów religii, będzie przedsięwzięciem wyjątkowo trudnym. Tymczasem monachijska debata zasłużyła sobie na miano wydarzenia. O jej atrakcyjności zadecydował fakt, że została pomyślana jako próba ożywienia dialogu pomiędzy filozofami nawiązującymi do tradycji kontynentalnej z przedstawicielami filozofii analitycznej. Tego rodzaju ekumeniczne inicjatywy nalezą w tej dziedzinie do rzadkości. (...) Ten swoisty izolacjonizm ma wiele przyczyn, a kością niezgody jest między innymi stosunek do Kanta. Postkantowska kontynentalna filozofia religii, kładąca nacisk na epistemologię i fenomenologię doświadczenia religijnego, postrzega anglosaski renesans badań nad klasycznymi problemami teodycealnymi jako nawrót do przedkrytycznego dogmatyzmu. Z kolei niektórzy analityczni filozofowie religii zdają się uprawiać swą dyscyplinę w taki sposób, jak gdyby kopernikański przewrót Kanta uważali za niebyły, a czasem nazywają expressis verbis epoką nowożytną okresem błędów i wypaczeń. Epistemologiczne zagadnienie racjonalności religii należy do kręgu zainteresowań obydwu wymienionych tradycji, stad możliwe jest tu połączenie wysiłków w celu uporządkowania tematyki i oceny aktualnego stanu refleksji. (shrink)

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)

Paul Edwards' October 1989 essay, ‘Heidegger's Quest for Being’ illustrates the wisdom of the dictum that the only legitimate criticism of a philosopher's position is a constructive criticism. His negative critique amounts to no more than expressions of distaste, dislike, and displeasure, and nothing of philosophical interest follows from his assertions, as the discourse is primarily an argument ad hominem . He grossly misinterprets Heidegger on some elemental and fundamental matters as well. In particular, he sorely misinterprets what he refers (...) to as the ‘Quest for Being’, which only further contributes to the objectionable character of the essay. (shrink)