-/- Medytacje filozoficzne, Fundacja na Rzecz Myślenia im. Barbary Skargi, Warszawa 2015. -/- Publikacja współfinansowana przez Muzeum Łazienki Królewskie w Warszawie. -/- Zbiór tekstów powstałych na podstawie wykładów, które zostały wygłoszone w ramach cyklu "Medytacje filozoficzne w Łazienkach" w latach 2013-2015. -/- -/- Spis treści: -/- Cezary Wodziński, Premedytacja Krzysztof Pomian, O wyjątkowości człowieka Zygmunt Bauman, O miłości i nienawiści… Tropami Barbary Skargi Tadeusz Sławek, Ciemne liturgie. Język, historia i gest błogosławieństwa Lech Witkowski, Rozprawa z autorytetem: w strone autorytu (...) przejścia Władysław Stróżewski, Doświadczenie czasu, doświadczenie istnienia Juliusz Domański, „Pradawna waśń filozofów z poetami” a kłopoty z dziedzictwem antycznym Serhij Żadan, Wolność jako odpowiedzialność Marcin Poręba, Co to jest rzeczywistość? Szymon Wróbel, Co to jest historia filozofii? Magdalena Środa, Moralność życia publicznego Kostiantyn Tyszczenko, Po co językoznawstwu metateoria? (shrink)

The aim of the article Different faces of old age as perceived by the students of Polish studies is to present how old teachers perceive old age. The exemplification material consists of three texts: Winter tale. An essay on the old age of Ryszard Przybylski, “The Old Man’s Route”. An attempt at old age politics by Tadeusz Sławek and Lala Jacek Dehnel. Hermeneutical reading allowed for the creation of several images of autumn of life: a painful, marked by suffering (...) attempts to overcome and suffering in a creative act; old age as a possibility of a deeper look at the spiritual dimension of human existence and old age reconciled with the laws of transiting the events immersed in the act of memorization. (shrink)

This is a new edition of the manual published in 1974 and 1984. Compared with those earlier editions it is revised, enlarged and more precise in its argumentation. In its beginnings the manual aimed at meeting the didactic needs to present students of the Faculty of Christian Philosophy at the ATK a complete handling of Christian ethics. The author, who wrote his manual in difficult times of communist ideology, decided to include in one work, besides a positive exposition of Christian (...) ethics, a critical discussion with other ethical systems as well as his own explicit theory on Augustinian and Thomistic ethics, which he endeavoured to develop. Thus the work interlocked the didactic objectives and the process of growth and justification of the Author's views, Krakow 2001, p. 308). (shrink)

The book introduces Tadeusz Kotarbiński’s philosophy of action into the mainstream of contemporary action-theoretical debates. Piotr Makowski shows that Kotarbiński–Alfred Tarski’s teacher and one of the most important philosophers of the renowned Lvov-Warsaw school—proposed a groundbreaking, original, and (in at least a few respects) still fresh perspective in action theorizing. The book examines and develops Kotarbiński’s ideas in the context of the most recent discussions in the philosophy of action. The main idea behind Kotarbiński’s action theory—and thus, behind this (...) book—is the significance of the philosophical investigations of the general conditions of effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of intentional actions. Makowski presents and reinterprets Kotarbiński’s views on these dimensions of our activities and sheds new light on the most important areas of action theory. (shrink)

Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

Argues that the key distinction between human and nonhuman social cognition consists in our complex, diverse and flexible capacities to shape each other's minds in ways that make them easier to interpret.

This article intends to shed light on the political and security developments in Yemen that ultimately resulted in the Saudi-led military operation in this country. It discusses the political background behind the Yemeni revolution of 2011, its positive outcome in the shape of the results of the National Dialogue Conference and the reasons for the collapse of the efforts to stabilize Yemen.

I argue for two claims. First I argue against the consensus view that accurate behavioral prediction based on accurate representation of cognitive states, i.e. mind reading , is the sustaining function of propositional attitude ascription. This practice cannot have been selected in evolution and cannot persist, in virtue of its predictive utility, because there are principled reasons why it is inadequate as a tool for behavioral prediction. Second I give reasons that favor an alternative account of the sustaining function of (...) propositional attitude ascription. I argue that it serves a mind-shaping function. Roughly, propositional attitude ascription enables human beings to set up regulative ideals that function to mold behavior so as to make it easier to coordinate with. (shrink)

Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through cultural rather than biological evolution. Although these accounts describe the role of culture in the ontogenetic development of mindreading, they neglect the question of the cultural origins of mindreading in human prehistory. We discuss four possible models of this, distinguished by the role they posit for culture: the standard evolutionary psychology model, the individualist empiricist model, the cultural (...) empiricist model, and the radical socio-cultural constructivist model, which we favor. We motivate model by arguing that many forms of mental state ascription do not serve the function of simply describing inner states causally responsible for the behavior of a cognitive agent; rather, they relate the agent to her environment by characterizing her practical commitments. Making these practical commitments explicit has an important regulatory function in that it supports action coordination and alignment on joint goals. We propose a model of how the ascription of mental states may have evolved as a linguistic device to perform exactly this function of making agents’ practical commitments explicit. (shrink)

The article presents two concepts of indexicality. The first, more standard and narrow, identifies indexicality with systematic context-sensitivity. The second, broader, conceives indexicality in terms of the potential variability of the general semiotic characteristics expressions. The text introduces the concept of a pragmatic matrix that serves for a schematic representation of contextual variation. I also recapitulate briefly the views of Jerzy Pelc on the meaning and use of expressions, and briefly indicate its relationship approaches with contemporary debates around contextualism and (...) status of non-sentential speech acts. Finally, the relationship between the broader notion of indexicality and the directival theory of meaning is analyzed. (shrink)

The eminent 20th-century Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński is the author of a novatory philosophy of combating global suffering. Kotarbiński’s theory states that although humans are by nature rational, and additionally endowed with goodwill, human life nonetheless offers an endless stream of pain and suffering. Some of this suffering results from the essence of the human condition and can not be helped, mostly, however, it is the effect of the meanderings of the human mind and can be eliminated by education. (...) More than by anything else, the human mind is brought to err by so-called phantasmats, or emotion-laden intellectual mirages, mainly of a religious, national and political nature. Such phantasmats are the source and fundament of humanity’s divisions into hostile cultures, nations and political systems, which in turn gives rise to conflict between civilizations, countries and ideologies, inadvertently accompaniedby mounting mistrust, suspiciousness, xenophobia, hatred, armaments—and ultimately war. All this means an ocean of suffering for countless individuals. Both in philosophy and praxis Kotarbiński strove to eliminate all sources of suffering, including that stemming from differences in culture, development, nationality, and politics. He believed in the motivating powers of reason and the creative powers of persuasion, and consequently sought to attain his goal by rationalization, or focusing solely on the logic-driven and common experiencing of the human fate in a bid to eradicate cultural, national and political difference. Thus united, humanity would melt into one big human state devoted to lingering inevitable suffering. Today similar views are promoted as “global humanism”—which makes Kotarbiński a pioneer of the Humanistic Manifesto 2000. An Appeal for New Global Humanism brochure. (shrink)

I review recent evidence that very young, pre-verbal infants attribute belief-like states when anticipating the behavior of others. This evidence is drawn from infant performance on non-verbal false belief tasks. I argue that, contrary to typical interpretations, such evidence does not show that infants attribute belief-like states. Rather, it shows that infants apply an enhanced version of what Gergely ( 2011 ) calls the “teleological stance” to brief bouts of behavior. This requires them to parse behavioral sequences into goals and (...) rationally/informationally-constrained means of achieving them; however, it does not require the attribution of unobservable mental states, like beliefs, that are causally responsible for behavior. (shrink)

I defend an alternative to the two traditional accounts of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition: metacognition as primary versus social cognition as primary. These accounts have complementary explanatory vices and virtues. They also share a natural assumption: that interpretation in terms of mental states is “spectatorial”, aiming exclusively for an objective description of the mental facts about self and others. I argue that if one rejects this assumption in favor of the view that interpretation in terms of mental (...) states also plays important regulative roles with respect to minds and behavior, a new and superior conception of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition comes into view. On this conception, person-level metacognitive concepts are socio-cognitive tools that shape us into better cognitive agents and more predictable cognitive objects, thereby enhancing our abilities at social coordination. Mastery of these metacognitive concepts relies on subpersonal, non-conceptual, procedural metacognition. This reconceptualization of the relationship between metacognition and social cognition combines the complementary explanatory virtues of the two traditional conceptions, while avoiding their complementary explanatory vices. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to pose a problem for theories that claim that belief reports are context dependent. Firstly, I argue that the claim is committed to verbalism, a theory that derives the context sensitivity of belief reports from the context sensitivity of the psychological verbs used in such reports. Secondly, I argue that verbalism is not an attractive theoretical option because it is in conflict with the non-proto-rigidity of verbs like ‘believe’. Finally, I describe various consequences that (...) the argument has for invariantism and moderate contextualism. (shrink)

The article reviews the book Filozofia analityczna. Koncepcje, metody, organiczenia [Analytic Philosophy. Concepts, Methods, Limitations], by Tadeusz Szubka.

The article reviews the book Filozofia analityczna. Koncepcje, metody, organiczenia [Analytic Philosophy. Concepts, Methods, Limitations], by Tadeusz Szubka.

The article reviews the book Historia filozofii XX Wieku. Nurty [The History of 20th Century Philosophy: Currents], by Tadeusz Gadacz.

The paper considers certain properties of intermediate and moda propositional logics.The first part contains a proof of the theorem stating that each intermediate logic is closed under the Kreisel-Putnam rule xyz/(xy)(xz).

Książka ta ukazała się jedyny raz w 1965 roku w Państwowym Wydawnictwie Naukowym. Z tamtego opracowania za uprzejmą zgodą PWN korzystamy, za co Wydawnictwu dziękujemy. Inicjatywa wznowienia Filozofii na rozdrożu w Wydawnictwie Naukowym Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika wiąże się nie tylko z obowiązkiem troski o dziedzictwo intelektualne założyciela toruńskiej filozofii, ale także z przekonaniem o ciągłej aktualności jego myśli tworczej oraz zdolności porządkowania i inspirowania myślenia filozoficznego młodszych badaczy. To, co ceni się od dziesięcioleci w pracach Tadeusza Czeżowskiego, to przecież niezwykła (...) zwięzłość i logika wykładu fundamentalnych problemow filozoficznych. Jego filozofia koresponduje - jak się przekonujemy - z głownymi nurtami i pomysłami filozofii XX wieku, wyrastając jednak ze źrodeł charakterystycznych dla Szkoły Lwowsko-Warszawskiej, ktorej był wybitnym przedstawicielem. Wznawiamy więc książkę podsumowującą przemyślenia filozoficzne jej Autora, ktora w znacznej mierze i przede wszystkim jest - jak sugeruje jej tytuł - pracą o charakterze metafilozoficznym. Taki charakter ma zwłaszcza filozofia i metodologia nauki, a także koncepcja etyki naukowej. Czeżowski traktował przedmiot filozofii szeroko i w tym sensie widział w niej zespoł nauk filozoficznych, zaliczając do nich metafizykę, epistemologię, psychologię, etykę, estetykę, logikę i historię filozofii. Jakkolwiek dziedzinami tymi zajmował się z nierownym zaangażowaniem, łączył podejście merytoryczne, w aspekcie historycznym i empirycznym, z podejściem formalnym, kładąc nacisk na logiczny charakter struktur i procedur naukowego badania przedmiotu. Jan Woleński określił kiedyś Czeżowskiego koncepcję nauki jako „skrajnie logiczną", i idą śadem tej oceny, moża powiedzieć ż jest on typowym przedstawicielem polskiej filozofii logicznej. Z drugiej strony, nawiąująe do Franza Brentana, szerokie traktowanie dośiadczenia, rozciąająe je na sferęetyki i estetyki, wyrożia polskiego filozofa na tle skrajnie antymetafizycznych i antyaksjologicznych zwolennikow empiryzmu logicznego z kręu Koł Wiedeńkiego. MetodologicznąotwartośćCzeżwskiego na problemy egzystencjalno-moralne ceniono szczegolnie w nurcie etycznym i metodologicznym Lubelskiej Szkoł Filozoficznej. Wiele wybitnych umysłw wyrażł swąwdzięznośćintelektualnądla tekstow filozoficznych Tadeusza Czeżwskiego i moża miećuzasadnionąnadzieję ż nie sąoni ostatnimi. Do tych należątakż inicjatorzy wznowienia tej książi w 120. rocznicęurodzin jej Autora. Włodzimierz Tyburski, Ryszard Wiśniewski. (shrink)

We address recent interpretations of infant performance on spontaneous false belief tasks. According to most views, these experiments show that human infants attribute mental states from a very young age. Focusing on one of the most clearly worked out, minimalist versions of this idea, Butterfill and Apperly's "minimal theory of mind" framework, we defend an alternative characterization: the minimal theory of rational agency. On this view, rather than conceiving of social situations in terms of states of an enduring mental substance (...) animating agents, infant interpreters parse observed bouts of behavior and their contexts into goals, rational means to those goals, and available information. In other words, the social ontology of infant interpreters consists in goal-directed, informed bouts of behavior, by non-enduring agents, rather than agents animated by states of enduring, unobservable minds. We discuss a number of experiments that support this interpretation of infant socio-cognitive competence. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The present volume offers a selection of papers written by Tadeusz Czezowski. one of the most prominent representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw ...