The article reviews the book Elementy etyki lekarskiej [Issues in Physician Ethics], by Tadeusz Biesaga.

In Dystopia: A Natural History, Gregory Claeys observes that the collectivist ethos is one of the common features of both utopia and dystopia. The crucial difference is that in utopia cooperation is free and voluntary, whereas in dystopia it takes the form of what Leszek Kołakowski has called compulsory solidarity, that is, solidarity imposed by means of coercion and thus deprived of its actual value.1 And yet, just as dystopia and utopia may well be two sides of the same coin, (...) dystopian compulsory fraternity is often counterbalanced by voluntary cooperation within an actual social system or a textual representation thereof. This is precisely what happens in the social science fiction of Janusz A. Zajdel... (shrink)

This book provides an incisive, basic introduction to many-valued logics and to the constructions that are "many-valued" at their origin. Using the matrix method, the author sheds light on the profound problems of many-valuedness criteria and its classical characterizations. The book also includes information concerning the main systems of many-valued logic, related axiomatic constructions, and conceptions inspired by many-valuedness. With its selective bibliography and many useful historical references, this book provides logicians, computer scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians with a valuable survey (...) of the subject. (shrink)

The speech act of inquiry is generally treated as a default kind of asking questions. The widespread norm states that one inquires whether p only if one does not know that p. However, the fact that inquiring is just one kind of asking questions has received little to no attention. Just as in the declarative mood we can perform not only assertions, but various other speech acts, like guesses or predictions, so in the interrogative mood we can also make various (...) speech act types. I propose a speech-act-theoretic account of a distinct kind of question that I label exam questions. According to the proposed account, one performs an exam question p only if (i) one has access to the answer to p, and (ii) one does not officially know whether the hearer knows the answer to p. Exam questions satisfy all the necessary requirements of being a distinct kind of speech act. Additionally, my proposal contributes to the recent expansion of the normative approach to a variety of speech acts. (shrink)

Let Γn be a formula of LPA meaning “there is a proof of φ from PA-axioms, in which ω-rule is iterated no more than n times”. We examine relations over pairs of natural numbers of the kind. ≦H iff PA + RFNn' ⊩ RFNn .Where H denotes one of the hierarchies ∑ or Π and RFNn is the scheme of the reflection principle for Γn restricted to formulas from the class C implies “φ is true”, for every φ ∈ C). (...) Our main result is that. ≦H if n ≦ n' and k ≦ max. (shrink)

Mind transfer is the most important concept of transhumanists. Its tech­nological implementation is to copy and transfer the human mind to a computer, by exact mapping of all neural connections in the human brain and their precise copying in a computer simulation. The idea of mind transfer also brings some dangers, related to the denial of human nature, the placing of hopes for future life in digital spaces and the liberation from the limitations imposed on man by his biological structure. (...) Transhumanists believe that in order to achieve mind transfer, various technologies defined by the acronym NBIC currently available, should be used. The very dynamic development of these technologies in recent years, and in particular the latest AI algorithms seem to be very fast approaching the moment when practical mind transfer will be possible. The paper contains a very brief description of these technical capabilities with the necessary short commentary on their ethical aspects. (shrink)

The widely accepted view states that an intention to deceive is not necessary for lying. Proponents of this view, the so-called non-deceptionists, argue that lies are simply insincere assertions. We conducted three experimental studies with false explanations, the results of which put some pressure on non-deceptionist analyses. We present cases of explanations that one knows are false and compare them with analogical explanations that differ only in having a deceptive intention. The results show that lay people distinguish between such false (...) explanations and to a higher degree classify as lies those explanations that are made with the intention to deceive. Non-deceptionists fail to distinguish between such cases and wrongly classify both as lies. This novel empirical finding indicates the need for supplementing non-deceptionist definitions of lying, at least in some cases, with an additional condition, such as an intention to deceive. (shrink)

I propose an analysis of lying with uninformative speech acts. The orthodox view states that lying is restricted to assertions. However, the growing case for non-assertoric lies made by presuppositions or conventional implicatures challenges this orthodoxy. So far, the only presuppositions to have been considered as lies were informative presuppositions. In fact, uninformative lies were not discussed in the philosophical literature. However, limiting the possibility of lying to informative speech acts is too restrictive. Firstly, I show that standard, uninformative presuppositions (...) can also be lies. Secondly, I extend this picture into uninformative lies made by declarative statements. To implement my proposal, I do not need a new definition of lying. Recently popular commitment-based definitions of lying are able to properly handle uninformative lies. (shrink)

According to the normative approach, speech acts are governed by certain norms. Interestingly, the same is true for classes of speech acts. This paper considers the normative treatment of constatives, consisting of such classes as assertives, predictives, suggestives, and more. The classical approach is to treat these classes of illocutions as species of constatives. Recently, however, Simion (Shifty Speech and Independent Thought: Epistemic Normativity in Context, Oxford University Press, 2021) has proposed that all constatives (i) are species of assertion, and (...) (ii) are governed by the knowledge norm. I defend the classical treatment of constatives and show that Simion’s conclusion is untenable. No taxonomy of speech acts can accommodate such a view. More importantly, we can test whether a particular speech act is an assertion or not. I propose five tests of assertion, the passing of which is a necessary condition for being an assertion. Some constative speech acts fail these tests. Thus, contrary to Simion, not all constatives can be regarded as species of assertion. (shrink)

This paper offers a systematic classification and characterization of speech acts and their norms. Recently, the normative approach has been applied to various speech acts, most notably to constatives. I start by showing how the work on the norms of assertion has influenced various approaches to the norms of other speech acts. I focus on the fact that various norms of assertion have different extensions, i.e., they denote different clusters of illocutions as belonging to an assertion. I argue that this (...) has consequences for theorising about norms of other speech acts and generates certain arbitrary divisions. In the central part, I analyse two groups of speech acts. Firstly, ordinary speech acts, like predictions or retractions. Secondly, I indicate how the normative view can be extended to so-called ancillary speech acts, like presuppositions or implicatures. I end with a discussion of possible extensions of the normative approach, focusing on the debate on lying. (shrink)

Although assertions are often characterised as essentially informative speech acts, there is a widespread disagreement concerning how the informativeness of assertions should be understood. This paper proposes the informativeness norm of assertion, which posits that assertions are speech acts that essentially deliver new information. As a result, if one asserts something that is already commonly known, one’s assertion is improper. The norm is motivated by appealing to unique conversational patterns associated with informative and uninformative uses of assertions, an analogy between (...) assertions and inquiries, and a distinction between assertions and uninformative speech acts. By focusing on the normative approach to speech acts, the paper discusses how particular norms of assertion deal with the data supporting the norm of informativeness. To be informative, the speaker must consider the epistemic position of the audience. Since the majority of norms proposed in the literature are speaker-centred, they fail to explain the submitted data. Looking more broadly, focusing on the informativeness of assertions underscores the crucial role of the audience in construing adequate speech act accounts. (shrink)

The article is primarily concerned with the ambiguities which surround the concept of the person. According to the philosophical tradition taking its roots from Locke's definition, personhood depends on consciousness. Therefore, “personhood” can be ascribed to different entities, and only these entities acquire a moral standing. This can entail that a human being may or may not be considered as a person, as well as higher animals and even artificial machines. Everything depends on manifest personal characteristics. In order to sort (...) out different meanings ascribed to “person,” I distinguish between being a person and acting as a person. Then, I show that a human being is a paradigm of the person and his being always precedes his acting. (shrink)

Genetic engineering promises to change the human condition by changing certain human characteristics. Why not take control of such changes and secure positive outcomes, making use of our progressing knowledge about human genetic make-up and our increasingly sophisticated skills? This paper elaborates the meanings of the word “change,” a cornerstone of the enhancement debate, focusing not on technicalities of genetic engineering but on philosophical implications of its implementation. The paper then turns to some of the complexities and difficulties of the (...) debate. Finally, it takes up a strictly philosophical investigation of what we mean by “change” as far as a basic structure of the human being (the human person) is concerned, and examines what conclusions can be drawn for genetic enhancement. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 723–740. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to apply a general methodology for constructing statistical methods, which is based on decision theory, to give a statistical description of preferential rankings, with a focus on the rankings’ dependence on categorical variables. In the paper, I use functions of description errors that are based on the Kemeny and Hamming distances between preferential orderings, but the proposed methodology can also be applied to other methods of estimating description errors.

The following article begins with my recollection of the only academic conference on Zdziechowski that was organised still under the communist regime in the autumn of 1984 at the Jagiellonian University and ends with a description of the discussion on the genesis and power of evil, with the participation of Czesław Miłosz and Leszek Kołakowski, which was triggered in Poland immediately after the publication of the last edition of On Cruelty in 1993. On Cruelty was first published in 1928 in (...) the journal Przegla̧d Współczesny [Contemporary Review] in Krakow, a second time in 1938 in the volume of articles In the Face of the End, Krakow 1938, and a third – and so far last – time also in Krakow in 1993. On Cruelty, published three times but so far only in Polish, has never been thoroughly analysed or even discussed, which is why this article focuses on discussing it and related questions about the origins and nature of evil, mainly in Europe and Asia, from the earliest times to the present. Zdziechowski was particularly outraged when the cruelty he condemned was justified by religion, especially Christianity (Catholic and Protestant). From these condemnations, he described the activities of the Inquisition, the witch trials, cruelty to animals, and – in the introduction – the “psychology of cruelty.” At the same time, however, he meticulously listed the names of those political and spiritual leaders in Europe and Asia, theologians and thinkers, who, over many centuries, up to the present day, have resolutely spoken out against evil, including cruelty, within and outside the Church. A separate and important issue is Zdziechowski’s attitude to Tsarist Russia and Bolshevism, as outlined in his work On Cruelty. On the one hand, he pointed out that at least two rulers of Russia before 1917 – Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great – had made major contributions to the history of cruelty in Europe and Asia. But Bolshevism, which Zdziechowski condemned in the strongest terms, was in his eyes not a continuation of pre-1917 Russian despotism, but emanated from the depths of Asia. (shrink)

The text describes main US missile defence efforts in the first years of D. Trump’s administration. The analysis of current aspects of BMD (Ballistic Missile Defence) deployments is enhanced by probability analysis examining missile defence reliability. Donald Trump took office in the time of increased military competition between the West and Russia and a dangerous regional crisis related to North Korean nuclear arsenal and its ballistic tests. BMD appeared to bring additional chances to US deterrence options in regional scale, allowing (...) more successful first strike or active defence posture. Notably, D. Trump’s administration managed to raise defence expenditures including BMD spending. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the problem of characterization of strengthenings of the so-called Lukasiewicz-like sentential calculi. The calculi under consideration are determined byn-valued Lukasiewicz matrices (n>2,n finite) with superdesignated logical values. In general. Lukasiewicz-like sentential calculi are not implicative in the sense of [7]. Despite of this fact, in our considerations we use matrices analogous toS-algebras of Rasiowa. The main result of the paper says that the degree of maximality of anyn-valued Lukasiewicz-like sentential calculus is finite and equal to (...) the degree of maximality of the correspondingn-valued Lukasiewicz calculus. (shrink)

Questions about the intrinsic value of nature are not only an abstract philosophical speculation, they have a practical meaning, can inspire and motivate people to act. Environmental ethics attempts to overcome the anthropocentric and personalistic attitude of traditional ethics. It emphasizes the intrinsic value of nature, value, which is independent from humans. Within non-anthropocentric environmental ethics there are individualistic and holistic trends. Biocentric individualism raises problems with resolving conflicts of interests of different organisms, with the hierarchy of beings, while holistic (...) ethics does not count with the well-being of individuals. Ethical holism should be contrasted with practical holism as a methodological postulate. The pragmatic current of ecological ethics acknowledges that the good of people and the intrinsic good of nature coincide. In a pluralistic, liberal society there should be a convergence of radical, biocentric and moderate, anthropocentric concepts of ecological ethics. (shrink)

Pytanie o początki człowieka, stawiane na gruncie nauk biologicznych, jest pytaniem o linię filogenetyczną, wiodącą do pojawienia się gatunku Homo sapiens. Dysponując jakąś hipotezą, dotyczącą przebiegu tej linii, biolog może starać się ustalić, kiedy i gdzie zaszła zmiana na tyle decydująca, że należy ją uznać za równoznaczną powstaniu naszego – prawdziwie nowego – gatunku. Problem polega jednak na tym, że kryteria, pozwalające jednoznacznie odróżnić jeden gatunek od drugiego, wydają się być trudne, a być może nawet niemożliwe do sformułowania. Oznacza to, (...) że samo pojęcie „prawdziwie nowego” gatunku jest w pewnym sensie puste. W artykule zostały ukazane kluczowe problemy metodologiczne, występujące na gruncie antropologii przyrodniczej, mające znaczenie dla jej ustaleń. -------------- Zgłoszono: 12/08/2020. Zrecenzowano: 10/09/2020. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 12/10/2020. (shrink)

This article attempts to investigate the potential resonances between Paul Ricoeur’s and Julia Kristeva’s theories of otherness as applied to the study of poetry by the Northern-Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey. In all of her five poetry books she explores various forms of otherness and attempts to sketch them in verse. She confronts alterity in many ways, approaching such subjects as the relationship with the body and children, encounters with foreigners, and coming to terms with what is foreign within us. This (...) article engages primarily with her experiences of China, which she recorded in the long poem “China” from her third collection, The State of Prisons. Firstly, this article tackles the question of the body, which is interpreted on the basis of Morrissey’s “post-mortem” poems. Their reading prepares the ground for further explorations of otherness, which Morrissey locates at the very heart of human subjectivity. In this way, she also manages to establish a poetic framework for an ethical consideration of otherness. By investigating the working of the human psyche, Morrissey seems to go along the lines of Kristeva and Ricoeur, who claim that otherness is inextricably linked with the formation of human subjectivity. Taking a cue from their philosophical enquiries, the article also attempts to establish where Kristeva’s and Ricoeur’s philosophies overlap. (shrink)

W powieściach Officium Secretum. Pies pański Marcina Wrońskiego i Agent Jego Świątobliwości Karola Kowala bohaterami pierwszoplanowymi są „nietypowi duchowni”. Owa „nietypowość” zasadza się na tym, że dominikanie – ojciec Marek Gliński i ojciec Władysław Klonowiejski – zostali wykreowani przez twórców na agentów tajnych służb watykańskich. W odróżnieniu od innych postaci duchownych z kart literatury najnowszej nie pełnią oni funkcji typowo kościelnych, pastoralnych, lecz są duchownymi-tajniakami. Protagonista z dzieła Wrońskiego to zakonny James Bond, który zwerbowany do Officium Secretum, czyli wewnętrznej służby (...) kościelnej będącej spadkobierczynią Inkwizycji, w okresie PRL służył Kościołowi jako podwójny agent (został funkcjonariuszem Służby Bezpieczeństwa). Agentem specjalnym jest także ojciec Klonowiejski. W książce Kowala jawi się on jako wszechstronnie wyszkolony wywiadowca Świętego Przymierza, który podróżuje przez dziewiętnastowieczną Europę w celu unieszkodliwienia agenta o pseudonimie „Haman”. Czy osadzenie bohaterów w habitach w przestrzeni występku oraz wszelkiego rodzaju zbrodni należy uznać za kontrowersyjną koncepcję artystyczną? Wnikliwa analiza dzieł Wrońskiego i Kowala pozwala na stwierdzenie, że w tym przypadku – podobnie jak w innych powieściach z kapłanem w roli głównej napisanych w ostatnich dwóch dekadach – nie można mówić o desakralizacji kapłaństwa czy chęci niszczenia autorytetu Kościoła. Kreacje zakonników należy uznać za swoisty znak czasów współczesnych, w których zmniejszenie dystansu między przedstawicielami Kościoła hierarchicznego i wiernymi sprawił, że duchowni poznawani są i oceniani za działalność także poza sferą sacrum. W Officium Secretum i Agencie Jego Świątobliwości „niecodzienna” aktywność bohaterów w habitach jest pretekstem do ujawniania przez twórców nie tylko spraw eklezjalnych – tajemnic działania instytucji kościelnych – ale także mechanizmów działania instytucji państwowych oraz istotnych problemów życia politycznego i społecznego. (shrink)

Grzegorz W. Kolodko, one of the world's leading authorities on economics and development policy and a key architect of Poland's successful economic reforms, applies his far-reaching knowledge to the past and future of the world economy, introducing a framework for understanding our global situation that transcends any single discipline or paradigm. Deploying a novel mix of scientific evaluation and personal observation, Kolodko begins with a brief discussion of misinformation and its perpetuation in economics and politics. He criticizes the simplification (...) of complex economic and social issues and investigates the link between developments in the global economy and cultural change, scientific discoveries, and political fluctuations. Underscoring the necessity of conceptual and theoretical innovation in understanding our global economic situation, Kolodko offers a provocative study of globalization and the possibility of coming out ahead in an era of worldwide interdependence. Deeply critical of neoliberalism, which sought to transfer economic control exclusively to the private sector, Kolodko explores the virtues of social-economic development and the new rules of the economic game. He concludes with a look at our near and distant future, questioning whether we have a say in its making. (shrink)

Black Monday and the National Women’s Strike in 2016 caused a new wave of feminist/women’s activists to appear. One of the main determinants of the success of these protests was their geographical distribution: most of the demonstrations took place in small towns and cities. The main aim of this article is to present the civic practices of activists – organizers of the above-mentioned protests – from small towns and cities. On the basis of 24 in-depth interviews the authors intend to (...) present the characteristics of civic practices in provincial Polish cities. The proposed article will present a look at civic practices from a completely new perspective, using the dividing lines so far ignored in research on social movements, especially pro-women’s movements in Poland. (shrink)