Lawrence Nelson (2018) criticizes conscientious objection (CO) to abortion statutes as far as they permit health care providers to escape criminal liability for what would otherwise be the legally wrongful taking of a pregnant woman’s life by refusing treatment (i.e. abortion). His key argument refers to the U.S. Supreme Court judgment (Roe v. Wade 1973) that does not treat the unborn as constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, Nelson claims that within the U.S. legal system any vital interests of (...) pregnant women must always take precedence over fetuses’ interests. While agreeing with the main thesis of the article, we believe that the author’s argument neither vindicates his claim, nor explains why those who believe that fetuses are equally protectable human beings do not have the right to refuse to perform an abortion in lifethreatening emergency circumstances (AE). Therefore, the main aim of our commentary is to outline, by referring to our earlier works on conscientious objection in health care (Z_ uradzki 2016) and cultural exemptions (Ciszewski 2016), a better and universalizable argumentative path that would lead to the same conclusion. (shrink)

The paper extends the framework of outcomes in branching space-time (Kowalski and Placek [1999]) by assigning probabilities to outcomes of events, where these probabilities are interpreted either epistemically or as weighted possibilities. In resulting models I define the notion of common cause of correlated outcomes of a single event, and investigate which setups allow for the introduction of common causes. It turns out that a deterministic common cause can always be introduced, but (surprisingly) only special setups permit the introduction of (...) truly stochastic common causes. I analyse next the Bell-Aspect experiment and derive the Bell-CH inequalities. I observe that we postulate there not a common cause for outcomes of a single event but rather a common common cause that accounts for outcomes of many events, where 'events' mean 'measurements with (different) directions of polarization'. Since the inequalities are violated, I claim that no causal story can be told about the Bell correlations, where causality is subliminal and restricted by screening-off condition. Similarly, given certain intuitive principles, no deterministic story can be told about these correlations. (shrink)

The paper intends to provide an algebraic framework in which subluminal causation can be analysed. The framework merges Belnap's 'outcomes in branching time' with his 'branching space-time' (BST). it is shown that an important structure in BST, called 'family of outcomes of an event', is a boolean algebra. We define next non-stochastic common cause and analyse GHZ-Bell theorems. We prove that there is no common cause that accounts for results of GHZ-Bell experiment but construct common causes for two other quantum (...) mechanical setups. Finally, we investigate why some setups allow for common causes whereas other setups do not. (shrink)

One of the basic assumptions of David Lewis's formal semantics of counterfactuals is that the crucial relation of comparative similarity between possible worlds is a linear ordering.Yet there are arguments that when we take into account relativistic features of space-time, this relationshould be only a partial ordering. The first part of the paper deals with the question of how to formulate appropriatetruth conditions for counterfactuals under the supposition of a partial ordering of possible worlds. Such truthconditions will be put forward, (...) and it will be argued that they are more general than those proposed in recentliterature, because they turn out to be applicable also when the so-called Limit Assumption is not met. The secondpart analyzes two relativistically invariant ways of interpreting spatiotemporal counterfactuals with antecedentsreferring to free-chance point events. After briefly examining key differences between these two approaches,the issue of their extension for a broader class of antecedents will be addressed. Following the approach of Finkelstein, who has proposed a specifically designed similarity relation between possible worlds, servingas a generalization tool in the case of one of the above intuitions, the possibility of a similar extension forthe second interpretation will be considered. The main result of the paper is the theorem to the effect that thegeneralization of the second intuition is impossible to obtain. More specifically, the theorem proved in the paperstates that there is no similarity relation which together with the Lewis-style truth conditions for counterfactualswould imply the second of the above interpretations as a special case. Some consequences of thistheorem for the applicability of the Lewis logic of counterfactuals to quantum phenomena will be briefly mentionedat the end of the paper. (shrink)

Standard deontic logic (SDL) is defined on the basis of possible world semantics and is a logic of alethic-deontic modalities rather than deontic modalities alone. The interpretation of the concepts of obligation and permission comes down exclusively to the logical value that a sentence adopts for the accessible deontic alternatives. Here, we set forth a different approach, this being a logic which additionally takes into consideration whether sentences stand in relation to the normative system or to the system of values (...) under which we predicate the deontic qualifications. By taking this aspect into account, we arrive at a logical system which preserves laws proper to a deontic logic but where the standard paradoxes of deontic logic do not arise. It is a logic of strictly-deontic modalities DR. (shrink)

The article discusses the issue of the departure from examining real behaviours in a real environment, a trend in social psychology which has been observed going back several years, and the impact of this phenomenon for social psychology as a scientific discipline. The article presents two studies on the well-known and explored “bystander effect”. This phenomenon is examined in two ways – once by way of a “traditional” field experiment conducted in natural conditions, and once through a survey. As it (...) turned out, the results generated by the two studies were diametrically opposite, and only in the field experiment were we able to achieve a pattern of results consistent with those in the original studies. (shrink)

In the late 2010s, various international committees, expert groups, and national strategy boards have voiced the demand to ‘open’ the algorithmic black box, to audit, expound, and demystify artificial intelligence. The opening of the algorithmic black box, however, cannot be seen only as an engineering challenge. In this article, I argue that only the sort of transparency that arises from critique—a method of theoretical examination that, by revealing pre-existing power structures, aims to challenge them—can help us produce technological systems that (...) are less deceptive and more just. I relate the question of AI transparency to the broader challenge of responsible making, contending that future action must aim to systematically reconcile design—as a way of concealing—with critique—as a manner of revealing. (shrink)

According to psychological research, people are more eager to help identified individuals than unidentified ones. This phenomenon significantly influences many important decisions, both individual and public, regarding, for example, vaccinations or the distribution of healthcare resources. This paper aims at presenting definitions of various levels of identifiability as well as a critical analysis of the main philosophical arguments regarding the normative significance of the identifiability effect, which refer to: (1) ex ante contractualism; (2) fair distribution of chances and risks; (3) (...) anti-aggregationist principles that recommend the distribution of bad effects and the concentration of good ones. I will show that these arguments, although connected with interesting philosophical problems regarding e.g. counterfactuals, aggregation, or probability, are unconvincing. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate Boolean connexive logics in a language with modal operators: □, ◊. In such logics, negation, conjunction, and disjunction behave in a classical, Boolean way. Only implication is non-classical. We construct these logics by mixing relating semantics with possible worlds. This way, we obtain connexive counterparts of basic normal modal logics. However, most of their traditional axioms formulated in terms of modalities and implication do not hold anymore without additional constraints, since our implication is weaker than (...) the material one. In the final section, we present a tableau approach to the discussed modal logics. (shrink)

In this article, I present a new interpretation of the pro-life view on the status of early human embryos. In my understanding, this position is based not on presumptions about the ontological status of embryos and their developmental capabilities but on the specific criteria of rational decisions under uncertainty and on a cautious response to the ambiguous status of embryos. This view, which uses the decision theory model of moral reasoning, promises to reconcile the uncertainty about the ontological status of (...) embryos with the certainty about normative obligations. I will demonstrate that my interpretation of the pro-life view, although seeming to be stronger than the standard one, has limited scope and cannot be used to limit destructive research on human embryos. (shrink)

Consider how we evaluate how normal an object is. On the dual-nature hypothesis, a normality evaluation depends on the object’s goodness and frequency. On the single-nature hypothesis, the evaluation depends solely on either frequency or goodness. To assess these hypotheses, I ran four experiments. Study 1 shows that normality evaluations vary with both the goodness and the frequency assessment of the object. Study 2 shows that manipulating the goodness and the frequency dimension changes the normality evaluation. Yet, neither experiment rules (...) out that some people evaluate normality solely based on frequency, and the rest evaluate normality solely based on goodness. Whence two more experiments. Study 3 reveals that when scenarios are contrasted—presented one after another—only frequency matters. But, as study 4 shows, when scenarios are evaluated alone, both frequency and goodness influence normality evaluations in a single person, although the more a person is sensitive to one dimension, the less she’s sensitive to the other. The dual-nature hypothesis seems thus true of uncontrasted applications of the concept of normality, whereas the single-nature hypothesis seems true of contrasted applications. (shrink)

It is part of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences that objects seem to be presented to us. The first guide to objects is their perceptual presence. Further reflection shows that we take the objects of our perceptual experiences to be among the causes of our experiences. However, not all causes of the experience are also objects of the experience. This raises the question indicated in the title of this paper. We argue that taking phenomenal presence as the guide to the (...) objects of perception, we can see that at least in two sensory modalities, smell and touch, there is no uniform answer to this question. The objects of olfactory and tactile experiences can move along the causal chain. Accordingly, the content of olfactory and tactile experience may vary. (shrink)

Konserwatywni przeciwnicy prowadzenia badań naukowych na ludzkich embrionach argumentują, że od momentu poczęcia mają one status moralny równy statusowi ludzi dorosłych: zarodki mają takie samo prawo do życia jak dorośli. W artykule przedstawiam oryginalną argumentację za tym stanowiskiem, której źródła można znaleźć w XVII-wiecznej teologii moralnej i współczesnej teorii decyzji. Argumentacja ta nie odwołuje się do statusu ontologicznego embrionów, ale do pewnego typu rozumowania praktycznego na temat tego, co należy robić w rozmaitych sytuacjach niepewności. Na pierwszy rzut oka wydaje się (...) ona wzmacniać stanowisko konserwatywne, ponieważ nie zależy od kontrowersyjnych metafizycznych założeń na temat statusu zarodków czy kwestii ich potencjalności. W artykule pokażę jednak, że argumentacja ta obarczona jest poważnymi wadami, które sprawiają, że nie da się jej zastosować do uzasadnienia sprzeciwu wobec moralnej czy prawnej dopuszczalności np. badań na zarodkowych komórkach macierzystych. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that enactivism and computationalism—two seemingly incompatible research traditions in modern cognitive science—can be fruitfully reconciled under the framework of the free energy principle. FEP holds that cognitive systems encode generative models of their niches and cognition can be understood in terms of minimizing the free energy of these models. There are two philosophical interpretations of this picture. A computationalist will argue that as FEP claims that Bayesian inference underpins both perception and action, it entails a (...) concept of cognition as a computational process. An enactivist, on the other hand, will point out that FEP explains cognitive systems as constantly self-organizing to non-equilibrium steady-state. My claim is that these two interpretations are both true at the same time and that they enlighten each other. (shrink)

According to constitutive reductionism of Derek Parfit, a subject/person is not a separate existing being but his existence consists in the existence of a brain and body, performance of actions, thinking and occurrence of other physical and mental events. The identity of the subject in time comes down only to “Relation R” - mental consistency and/or connectedness – elicited by appropriate reasons. In the following article, I will try, relying on Frank Johnson's Knowledge Argument, to argue in favour of the (...) following conclusions: a person/subject is a “fact”irreducible to body and physical relations with the environment and a subject is something/”fact” non-reducible to mental occurrences. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct and correct one argument in support of the symmetrization postulate in quantum mechanics. I identify the central premise of the argument as a thesis specifying a particular ontic property of quantum superpositions. The precise form of this thesis depends on some underlying assumptions of a metaphysical character. I compare the exchange degeneracy argument with alternative formal arguments for the symmetrization postulate, and I discuss the role and meaning of labels in the symmetric/antisymmetric (...) representations of the states of many particles. (shrink)

In this paper I present an argument in favour of a parental duty to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). I argue that if embryos created in vitro were able to decide for themselves in a rational manner, they would sometimes choose PGD as a method of selection. Couples, therefore, should respect their hypothetical choices on a principle similar to that of patient autonomy. My thesis shows that no matter which moral doctrine couples subscribe to, they ought to conduct the PGD (...) procedure in the situations when it is impossible to implant all of the created embryos and if there is a significant risk for giving birth to a child with a serious condition. (shrink)

In order to understand how the environment influences business owner/managers’ attitudes towards tax morale, we build a theoretical model based on a neo-institutionalist framework. Our model combines three complementary perspectives on institutions—normative, cultural–cognitive and regulatory–instrumental. This enables a broader understanding of factors that influence business owner–managers’ attitudes towards tax evasion. We test the resulting hypotheses using regression analysis on survey data on business owner/managers in Latvia—a transition country, which has undergone massive institutional changes since it was part of the Soviet (...) Union over 25 years ago. We find that legitimacy of the tax authorities and the government, feeling of belonging to the nation and perceptions of the risk and severity of punishment are all associated with higher tax morale for business owners and managers. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of the multiplicity of various grades of discernibility that can be defined in model theory. Building upon earlier works on the subject, I first expand the known logical categorizations of discernibility by introducing several symmetry-based concepts of discernibility, including one I call “witness symmetry-discernibility”. Then I argue that only grades of discernibility stronger than this one possess certain intuitive features necessary to individuate objects. Further downsizing of the set of non-equivalent grades of discernibility can be (...) achieved by stipulating that any relation of discernibility should be applied only to those pairs of objects which have been previously distinguished from the rest of the universe. Restricting discernibility to pairs of objects satisfying this condition gives an additional bonus in the form of restoring the transitivity of some types of indiscernibility which have been known to be non-transitive. (shrink)

In his pioneering study of Grande Dame Guignol, a female-centric 1960s subgenre of horror film, Peter Shelley explains that the grande dame, a stock character in this form of cinematic expression, “may pine for a lost youth and glory, or she may be trapped by idealized memories of childhood, with a trauma that haunts her past”. Indeed, a typical Grande Dame Guignol female protagonist/antagonist usually deals with various kinds of traumatic experiences: loss of a child, domestic violence, childhood abuse, family (...) conflicts or sudden end of career in the fickle artistic industry, etc. Unable to cope with her problems, but also incapable of facing the inevitable process of aging and dying, she gradually yields to mental and physical illnesses that further strengthen the trauma and lead to her social exclusion, making her life even more unbearable. Unsurprisingly, scholars such as Charles Derry choose to name psycho-biddies horrors of personality, drawing attention to the insightful psychological portrayal of their characters. Thus, it would be relevant and illuminating to discuss films such as Die! Die! My Darling! and Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? as narratives of trauma. This will be the main concern of my article. (shrink)

A general theory of refutation systems is given. Some applications (concerning maximality and minimality in lattices of logics) are also discussed.

I will argue that physicians have an ethical obligation to justify their conscientious objection and the most reliable interpretation of the Polish legal framework claims that conscientious objection is permissible only when the justification shows the genuineness of the judgment of conscience that is not based on false beliefs and arises from a moral norm that has a high rank. I will demonstrate that the dogma accepted in the Polish doctrine that the reasons that lie behind conscientious objection in medicine (...) cannot be evaluated or controlled by anyone is based either on a mistaken interpretation of the Constitution or on the unreliable concept of conscience. I will refer to the legal regulations concerning military refusals that require from objectors to reveal and justify their views. Finally, I will demonstrate why conscientious objection under uncertainty does not deserve acceptance, because it is based on a specific version of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

This article reviews the book Selected Issues in the History of Polish Philosophy, by Tomasz Mróz.

In this paper I consider the question of whether absolute discernibility is attainable in symmetric languages. Simon Saunders has proven that all facts expressible in first-order language with identity can be equivalently stated within its symmetric sublanguage. I use this result to show specifically how particles of the same type can be absolutely discerned in the permutation-invariant language of the quantum theory of many particles.

I analyze recent discussions about making moral decisions under normative uncertainty. I discuss whether this kind of uncertainty should have practical consequences for decisions and whether there are reliable methods of reasoning that deal with the possibility that we are wrong about some moral issues. I defend a limited use of the decision theory model of reasoning in cases of normative uncertainty.

Committees established for the ethical review of research involving animals have become a widespread legal standard around the world. Despite many differences in their composition, powers, and institutional settings, they share many common problems related to the well-established standards of procedural justice in administrative practice. The paper adapts the general theory of procedural justice to the specific context of ethical review committees. From this perspective, the main concerns over the procedural aspects of the ethical evaluation of research projects are identified (...) and examined. They include in particular the standards of the committees’ composition, impartiality, fair hearing, appeal, transparency, and benevolence. Their proper reflection in the regulatory regimes of animal ethics committees is necessary to secure the standards of fairness of the ethical review itself. This, in turn, is a condition of the moral and social legitimacy of all administrative and quasi-administrative procedures, including the committees’ operations. (shrink)

The paper investigates, in the framework of branching space–times, whether an infinite EPR-like correlation which does not involve finite EPR-like correlations is possible.

My paper builds on the conceptual tools from three interrelated philosophical debates that—as I believe—may help structure important if chaotic discussions about surrogates for living human brains and resolve some practical issues related to regulatory matters. In particular, I refer to the discussions about the “moral precautionary principle” in research ethics (Koplin and Wilkinson 2019); about normative uncertainty in ethics (MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ord 2020), and about the inductive risk problem for animal welfare scientists (Birch 2018). I elucidate upon the (...) possible meanings of the phrase “a too good human brain surrogate” used by Henry T. Greely (2021), and I demonstrate that the evaluation of the practical and regulatory implications of the “goodness” of such surrogates created for research purposes should be sensitive to the possible consequences of two types of errors: the under-attribution and over-attribution of moral status to such beings. Many authors writing about this topic (including Greely 2021, but see also, e.g., Koplin and Savulescu 2019) concentrate only on the first type of error, neglecting the negative consequences of the second type, i.e., over-attribution. (shrink)

The paper will compare two methods used in the design of diagnostic strategies. The first one is a method that precises predictive value of diagnostic tests. The second one is based on the use of Bayes’ theorem. The main aim of this article is to identify the epistemological assumptions underlying both of these methods. For the purpose of this objective, example projects of one and multi-stage diagnostic strategy developed using both methods will be considered.

The book _Metaphysics in Contemporary Physics_ offers various perspectives on the relation and mutual influence between modern physical theories and analytic metaphysics.

In the paper, we examine tableau systems for R. Epstein’s logics of content relationship: D (Dependence Logic), DD (Dual Dependence Logic), Eq (Logic of Equality of Content), S (Symmetric Relatedness Logic) and R (Nonsymmetric Relatedness Logic) (cf. Epstein in Philos Stud 36:137–173, 1979, Epstein in Rep. Math. Logic 21:19–34, 1987, Klonowski in Logic Log Philos 30(4):579–629, 2021, Krajewski in J Non Class Logic 8:7–33, 1991). The first tableau systems for those logics were defined by Carnielli. However, his approach has some (...) limitations, for example, it requires a proof of functional completeness and axiomatization. Notwithstanding the first two constraints, it does not include all Epstein logics, e.g., logic Eq. Unlike Carnielli’s approach, here we use set-assignment semantics to determine those logics. Since syntax and semantics of a given logic usually determine a minimal syntax and structure of a tableau system for the logic along with other properties, we propose a uniform tableau framework for the logics determined by set-assignment semantics. What distinguishes our tableau systems is that they combine the features of tableaux for propositional logics and syllogistic logics when the problem of content of propositions is analysed in tableau proofs. To denote the content of propositions in the proofs, we use generalised labels (see Jarmużek and Goré in Landscapes in Logic, College Publications, London, 2021). (shrink)

We show that truth conditions for counterfactuals need not always be given in terms of a vague notion of similarity. To this end, we single out the important class of historical counterfactuals and give formally rigorous truth conditions for these counterfactuals, employing a partial ordering relation called "comparative closeness" that is defined in the framework of branching space-times. Among other applications, we provide a detailed analysis of counterfactuals uttered in the context of lost bets. In an appendix we compare our (...) theory with the branching space-times based reading of counterfactuals recently proposed by Belnap. (shrink)

In this text I concentrate on semiotic aspects of the theory of political identity in the work of Ernesto Laclau, and especially on the connection between metaphors, metonymies, catachreses and synecdoches. Those tropes are of ontological status, and therefore they are of key importance in understanding the discursive “production” of identity in political and educational practices. I use the conceptions of both Laclau and Eco to elucidate the operation of this structure, and illustrate it with an example of the emergence (...) of the “Solidarność” movement in Poland, expanding its analysis provided by Laclau. I focus on the moment when one of particular demands assumes the representation of totality, which, in Laclau, is left to “circumstantial” determination. This moment inspires several questions and needs to be given special attention if Laclau’s theory is to be used in theory of education. It is so because theory of education cannot remain on the level of the ontological, but has to theorize “non-ontological” dimensions as well, that is the ontic, the deontic, as well as what I call the deontological—the very relation between “what there is” and “what there is not” as the locus of education. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some metaphysical consequences of an unorthodox approach to the problem of the identity and individuality of “indistinguishable” quantum particles. This approach is based on the assumption that the only admissible way of individuating separate components of a given system is with the help of the permutation-invariant qualitative properties of the total system. Such a method of individuation, when applied to fermionic compositions occupying so-called GMW-nonentangled states, yields highly implausible consequences regarding the number of distinct components (...) of a given composite system. I specify the problem in detail, and I consider several strategies of solving it. The preferred solution of the problem is based on the premise that spatial location should play a privileged role in identifying and making reference to quantum-mechanical systems. (shrink)

In this article, I present the argument that educational theory has specific character, which distinguishes it from most scientific disciplines. It requires the application of not only strictly scientific methods, which essentially consist of descriptions and explanations, but also normative ones, which indicate how it is related to philosophy and ethics. Its essential connections with philosophy and ethics cause that clear and final thesis are actually impossible to claim, but from the other hand, it is the only discipline which, according (...) to its definition, tries to answer practical-moral questions.The crucial elements of this analysis are the presentation of the justification of a thesis on the specific character of educational theory, which will be accomplished with the concept of “research potential”, formulated for its purposes, and showing the consequences of this particular characteristic of the discipline being discussed. (shrink)