In this article Aristotleś conception of moving principle of human action is described. The author is interested in Aristotleś way of combining cyclical moving of effective causes with entelecheia, a direction to highest good or happines, as a purposive cause of human action. This idea can be illustrated as a cycle of effective causes centralised around the purposive cause. This reconstruction of Aristotleś conception of causation of human action can be useful in process of contemporary syntetisis human action theories. Acending (...) to the author, Aristotleś idea that the essence of rationality lies in human action is a first step to solving the problem of nature of human being, and his conception of moving principles of human action is congenial anticipation of some aspects of contemporary theories of rational action and choice. (shrink)

The author of the article seeks to find an answer to the question whether it is possible to determine a priori the truth value of the statement „M = N“ where „M“ and „N“ are proper names of the same particular. He analyses the argumentation of the conception defending the positive answer to the question and tries to present arguments in favour of the opposite view. Let us suppose that the individual I is named by „M“ at time t1 and (...) by „N“ at time t2. If the individual changes considerably during the interval or presents us from quite different sides at t1 and t2, respectively , we will be unable to find out a priori, without certain empirical knowledge, whether M = N, although there were any doubts about the identity of the baptized individual neither at t1 nor at t2. (shrink)

Historical Narrative: A Dispute Between Constructionism and Scientific Realism An intense discussion about the issue of historical narrative arose during the time when the naïve realism of classical historiography was being critiqued and led to a dispute, in the last century, between constructionism and critical or scientific realism. We can distinguish between constructionism and noetic constructivism. According to ontological constructionism all facts are human constructions; according to noetic constructivism, our notions and theories are constructs with objective meaning (sense and reference); (...) they refer to objective reality. Scientific realism recognizes the existence of noetic construction but does not regard facts as our constructions, as pure fictions. The point of contention is the question over whether historical narrative is merely a discursive construction or whether it is also a scientific reconstruction of the past. Resolving the dispute over whether historical narrative can be objectively true, or whether it is subject to empirical control or not, is dependent on finding the answer to this question. (shrink)

The paper is a critical analysis of Kant´s concept of practical reasoning. It is based upon an analysis of Kant´s understanding of a man as a sensual-oversensual human being. The author focuses in an analysis of lawmaking of a practical reason. He concerns in Kant´s differentiation of cathegorical and hypothetivcal imperatives, or pure and ordinary will, respectively. Based on this analysis he consequently reconstructs Kantś understanding of a practical reasoning. He characterizes its basic types based on a technical imperative and (...) pragmatic advice, on cathegorical and hypothetical imperative. (shrink)

The paper offers an analysis of ongoing disputes on freedom, democracy, justice and ecological sustainability of contemporary capitalism, which became even more topical due to the global financial and economical crisis of the latter. The author’s focus is on several methodological aspects of these disputes. He shows how freedom and democracy are reduced to mere political freedom and democracy, while the distributive justice is reduced to mere redistribution of pre-distributed revenues. If social sciences are to resolve the theoretical problems of (...) the 21st century society, these reductions have inevitably to be eliminated. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper, the author analyzes several unacceptable views of properties of physical objects and justifies the familiar explication, according to which properties of physical objects are certain functions defined on the set of all couples w,t, where w is a possible world and t is a moment of time . On the background of the indicated understanding of properties, the author demonstrates that there exist empirical essential properties. An empirical property is understood as a property, (...) the extension of which cannot be identified without applying experience. He distinguishes two kinds of essential properties: purely essential and partially essential. A purely essential property has the same extension at every world-time couple. The extension of a partially essential properties changes in the logical space, but there exists a non-empty set of objects which is a subset of their extension at every world-time couple. Every partially essential property is empirical. The author pays special attention to the essential properties expressible by means of expressions of the form ∨ Q) where P, Q are non-essential empirical properties that are allied through some objects X1, ..., Xn - i.e., the property ∨ Q) belongs to the objects X1, ..., Xn at every world-time couple. In the last part of the paper, the author demonstrates that every empirical property of the type where ”<” denotes the relation of being a part of, and ”I” stands for any physical object, is purely essential. The assumption that the extensions of these properties are changeable, entails unacceptable consequences. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to analyse and explicate the meanings the word „identification“ has in common language, philosophy of language and in P. Tichý’s theory of constructions. The author distinguishes acts of identification performed by a man from identification carried out by some expressions. He tries to argue that in case of expressions identifying is the same as referring and in case of Tichý’s constructions identifying means constructing.

Speaker’s reference is an intentional act directed, via an expression, at an object – an intentional object. The author of the paper tries to find an answer to the following question: What does a speaker refer to when he does not know what a description or a proper name used refers to? He argues that, if the speaker uses such a description, his reference is not directed at the referent of the description but at its meaning. If the speaker uses (...) a proper name whose meaning is not known to him, he can refer neither to the referent nor to the meaning of that name. (shrink)