Physicalism is a program for building a unified system of knowledge about the world on the basis of the view that everything is a manifestation of the physical aspects of existence. Jeffrey Poland presents a systematic and comprehensive exploration of the philosophical foundations of this program. He investigates the core ideas, motivating values, and presuppositions of physicalism; the constraints upon an adequate formulation of physicalist doctrine; the epistemological and modal status, the scope, and the methodological roles of physicalist principles. (...) He reviews and evaluates major objections to the program, and considers its significance for philosophy, science, society, and individual persons. He also examines the relations between physicalism and other philosophical positions, such as realism, empiricism, and relativism, and suggests that physicalism is compatible with a tolerant pluralism in the philosophical, cultural, and personal domains. (shrink)

Addictive behavior threatens not just the addict's happiness and health but also the welfare and well-being of others. It represents a loss of self-control and a variety of other cognitive impairments and behavioral deficits. An addict may say, "I couldn't help myself." But questions arise: are we responsible for our addictions? And what responsibilities do others have to help us? This volume offers a range of perspectives on addiction and responsibility and how the two are bound together. Distinguished contributors -- (...) from theorists to clinicians, from neuroscientists and psychologists to philosophers and legal scholars -- discuss these questions in essays using a variety of conceptual and investigative tools. Some contributors offer models of addiction-related phenomena, including theories of incentive sensitization, ego-depletion, and pathological affect; others address such traditional philosophical questions as free will and agency, mind-body, and other minds. Two essays, written by scholars who were themselves addicts, attempt to integrate first-person phenomenological accounts with the third-person perspective of the sciences. Contributors distinguish among moral responsibility, legal responsibility, and the ethical responsibility of clinicians and researchers. Taken together, the essays offer a forceful argument that we cannot fully understand addiction if we do not also understand responsibility. (shrink)

This book presents the origins of Central and Eastern European phenomenology. It features chapters that explore the movement's development, its most important thinkers, and its theoretical and historical context. This collection examines such topics as the realism-idealism controversy, the status of descriptive psychology, the question of the phenomenological method, and the problem of the world. The chapters span the first decades of the development of phenomenology in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Yugoslavia before World War II. The (...) contributors track the Brentanian heritage of the development. They show how this tradition inspired influential thinkers like Celms, Špet, Ingarden, Frank, Twardowski, Patočka, and others. The book also puts forward original investigations. Moreover it elaborates new accounts of the foundations of phenomenology. While the volume begins with the Brentanian heritage, it situates phenomenology in a dialogue with other important schools of thought of that time, including the Prague School and Lvov-Warsaw School of Logic. This collection highlights thinkers whose writings have had only a limited reception outside their home countries due to political and historical circumstances. It will help readers gain a better understanding of how the phenomenological movement developed beyond its start in Germany. Readers will also come to see how the phenomenological method resonated in different countries and led to new philosophical developments in ontology, epistemology, psychology, philosophy of culture, and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Summary Leading scholars offer perspectives from the philosophy of science on the crisis in psychiatric research that exploded after the publication of DSM-5. -/- Psychiatry and mental health research is in crisis, with tensions between psychiatry's clinical and research aims and controversies over diagnosis, treatment, and scientific constructs for studying mental disorders. At the center of these controversies is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which—especially after the publication of DSM-5—many have found seriously flawed as a guide (...) for research. This book addresses the crisis and the associated “extraordinary science” (Thomas Kuhn's term for scientific research during a state of crisis) from the perspective of philosophy of science. The goal is to help reconcile the competing claims of science and phenomenology within psychiatry and to offer new insights for the philosophy of science. -/- The contributors discuss the epistemological origins of the current crisis, the nature of evidence in psychiatric research, and the National Institute for Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria project. They consider particular research practices in psychiatry—computational, personalized, mechanistic, and user-led—and the specific categories of schizophrenia, depressive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Finally, they examine the DSM's dubious practice of pathologizing normality. (shrink)

The remarkable movement known as Solidarity recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in Poland. This essay provides a theoretical appreciation of the values and principles that guided and undergirded the movement, which greatly contributed to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. This systematic overview of the ethic of the Solidarity movement fills a lacuna in the field of ethics because ethicists who are interested in the concept of solidarity have largely overlooked the Polish experience of the 1980s. (...) This essay attempts to describe the key ingredients of the Polish ethic of solidarity by analyzing both Polish treatises on the subject and accounts of events on the ground. It elaborates conceptual categories and describes characteristic features of the movement in order to provide a phenomenological account of the nature of solidarity embodied in Poland during this era. These categories and characteristics include unity among differences, the foundation of hope at the movement's roots, self-sacrifice and heroism, promoting the equality and dignity of all, the centrality of participation, the affirmation of "bread and freedom," an option for the poor, and the insistence on life in truth. Although this essay does not attempt to demonstrate the relevance of this "thick" ethic of solidarity to capitalist, democratic societies today, by way of conclusion it raises questions pertaining to the contemporary significance of the Polish ethic of solidarity. (shrink)

Specialists on issues of sexual abuse in religious institutions unanimously stress that this kind of experience significantly affects the victims’ spirituality. Particularly devastating and distorting for their spirituality is sexual abuse committed by clergy. In order to explore this issue for the first time in Poland, the authors conducted a qualitative study in the form of semi-structured interviews with five women who had experienced sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and/or religious in adolescence and young adulthood. The interviews were analyzed (...) using the interpretative phenomenological analysis and narrative methodology. The results showed that four respondents experienced or had experienced religious struggles in three areas: interpersonal, intrapsychic, and relationship with God. These struggles are complex and intense enough to be referred to as “spiritual trauma”, “religious trauma”, or “spiritual violence”. The results of the study may be of importance for people helping or having any other kind of contact with victims of clergy sexual abuse. (shrink)

This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect. Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on (...) a methodological procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive-psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland. (shrink)

This paper seeks to define the main trends, arguments and problems regarding the question of method formulated by Twardowski and his students. In this regard, the aim of the paper is twofold. First, I situate Brentano’s project of descriptive psychology within the context of disputes in the school of Twardowski concerning the method of both psychology and phenomenology, arguing that descriptive-psychological analysis was dominant in this respect. Second, the study explores the notion of eidetic phenomenology, as founded on (...) a methodological procedure, which supposed to guarantee infallibility of its descriptions. To show this, I first reconstruct Brentano’s concept of descriptive psychology, its object, its method and aims. Second, I track the changes and reinterpretations provided by Twardowski in his view of descriptive-psychological analysis. Third, I explore Witwicki’s and Bandrowski’s—both early students of Twardowski—discussions of the descriptive approach. I try to show that the former accepted psychologism, while the latter overcame it by means of logical analysis. Fourth, I suggest that the only student of Twardowski who renounced the Brentanian method was Ingarden, who developed eidetic phenomenology. Finally, I present Blaustein’s—one of the last students of Twardowski—reappraisal of descriptive psychology and his critique of Ingarden’s method. This controversy over the method of descriptive psychology reveals how one can situate Twardowski’s legacy within early phenomenology in Poland. (shrink)

The article presents a comparison of the interpretations of Edmund Husserl’s early philosophy, created in different local contexts: ones by Polish researchers (Kazimir Tvardovsky, Jan Luka sevich, Vladyslav Tatarkevych, Roman Ingarden, Aleksander Rozenblum-Augustowski) in the period 1895-1945, and Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yurynets. This comparison takes place against the background of considering the differences in the conditions of the development of philosophy in pre-war and interwar Poland and the USSR. The author demonstrates the similarity of the readings of Husserl’s (...) class='Hi'>phenomenology by Polish researchers and Yurynets and proves that the similarity between them is not only in the thematic focus of criticism of phenomenological philosophy, but also in its validity and level. In addition, the author offers an approach to the study of Yurynets’ figure and work, based on considering him primarily as a representative of Western intellectual culture. In particular, the possibility of considering Yurynets ‘ objections to Husserl’s project of phenomenological philosophy not as determined by ideological dictates, but as symptomatic of the European intellectual culture of the beginning of the 20th century is substantiated. Both Yurynets and the Polish phenomenological movement criticize phenomenology for its lack of coherence, and it is about both the internal coherence of phenomenological philosophy and its coherence with contemporary sciences. Particular attention is paid to the role of Yurynets in the history of Ukrainian studies of phenomenological philosophy in the context of the discussion about the origins of phenomenological studies in Ukraine.The author considers the investigations of the phenomenological movement in Poland to be fruitful for modern studies of phenomenological philosophy in Ukraine - a phenomenon that had a significant impact on the development of a wide range of humanitarian disciplines in Europe in the 20th-21st centuries and which has direct intersections and common personalities with Ukrainian philosophy. The same seems promising for other European local traditions. (shrink)

The tradition of realist phenomenology was founded in around 1902 by a group of students in Munich interested in the newly published Logical Investigations of Edmund Husserl. Initial members of the group included Johannes Daubert, Alexander Pfänder, Adolf Reinach and Max Scheler. With Reinach’s move to Göttingen the group acquired two new prominent members – Edith Stein and Roman Ingarden. The group’s method turned on Husserl’s idea that we are in possession a priori (which is to say: non-inductive) knowledge (...) of entities (for example, colors, tones, values, shapes) of a range of different sorts. Pfänder applied this method in his descriptive psychology of willing and motivation, Reinach (anticipating the later speech act theory) to what he called ‘social acts’, Stein to the ontology of communities, and Ingarden to works of art and aesthetic phenomena. The movement latter, through Ingarden, lived on in Poland, where it influenced the young Karol Wojtyła. (shrink)

and the one in the middle which judges as he enjoys and enjoys as he judges. This latter kind really reproduces the work of art anew. The division of our Symposium into three sections is justified by the fact that phenomenology, from Husserl, Heidegger, Moritz Geiger, Ingarden, in Germany and Poland, Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, E. Levinas in France, Unamuno in Spain, and Tymieniecka, in the United States, have revealed striking coincidences in trying to answer the following questions: What (...) is the philosophical vocation of literature? Does literature have any significance for our lives? Why does the lyric moment, present in all creative endeavors, in myth, dance, plastic art, ritual, poetry, lift the human life to a higher and authentically human level of the existential experience of man? Our investigations answer our fundamental inquiry: What makes a literary work a work of art? What makes a literary work a literary work, if not aesthetic enjoyment? As much as the formation of an aesthetic language culminates in artistic creation, the formation of a philosophical language lives within the orbit of creative imagination. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on feminist protests (exemplary, in Argentina and Poland) defending women's right to access to prenatal diagnostics and abortion, which I reflect upon from the perspective of Hannah Arendt's theory of politics. After briefly referring to Arendt's difficult relationship with feminism, linking it to the struggle of Argentinian women for legalizing abortion, I look at Arendt's theorizing of the body in and beyond the private. I then argue for politicization of abortion as extrinsically enforced and (...) rethink the role of the private in the context of abortion regulations and practices. In the closing section of my paper, I offer a micronarrative of the feminist street protests in Poland, and discuss it as an example of feminist revolutionary moment. (shrink)

The book is a collection of the author¿s selected works in the philosophy and history of logic and mathematics. Papers in Part I include both general surveys of contemporary philosophy of mathematics as well as studies devoted to specialized topics, like Cantor's philosophy of set theory, the Church thesis and its epistemological status, the history of the philosophical background of the concept of number, the structuralist epistemology of mathematics and the phenomenological philosophy of mathematics. Part II contains essays in the (...) history of logic and mathematics. They address such issues as the philosophical background of the development of symbolism in mathematical logic, Giuseppe Peano and his role in the creation of contemporary logical symbolism, Emil L. Post's works in mathematical logic and recursion theory, the formalist school in the foundations of mathematics and the algebra of logic in England in the 19th century. The history of mathematics and logic in Poland is also considered. This volume is of interest to historians and philosophers of science and mathematics as well as to logicians and mathematicians interested in the philosophy and history of their fields. (shrink)

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological founda­ tions of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social sciences - all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added (...) the great school of analytic and methodological studies in Warsaw and Lw6w. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwig Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. (From our preface to Wiatr [1979p. Other movements also have been distinctive in Poland. Phenomenology was developed in the impressive school of Roman Ingarden at Cracow, semiotics from the early work of the philosopher and psychologist Kazimierz Twardowski at Lw6w in the 1890's, with masterful develop­ ment by his disciples Kotarbinski and Ajdukiewicz onward, conceptual foundations of physics in the incisive methodological reflections of Marian Smoluchowski, and mathematical logic from Jan I:.ukasiewicz and Stanislaw Lesniewski to Tarski, Mostowski, and many others. (shrink)

Anthropologists often have fieldwork experiences that are not explicitly analysed in their writings, though they nevertheless contribute to and shape their ethnographic understandings, and can resonate throughout their work for many years. The task of this volume is precisely to uncover these layers of anthropological knowledge-making. Contributors take on the challenge of reconstructing the ways in which they originally entered the worlds of research subjects - their anthropological Others - by focusing on pre-textual and deeply phenomenological processes of perceiving, noting, (...) listening and sensing. Drawing on a wide range of research experiences - with the Dogon in Mali, immigrant football players in Spain, the Inuit of the Far North, Filipino transnational families, miners in Poland and students in Scotland - this book goes beyond an exploration of the development of increased ethnographic sensitivity towards words or actions. It also commences the foundational project of developing a new language for building anthropological works, one stemming from recurring acts of participation, and rooted primarily in the pre-textual worlds of the tacit, often non-visible, and intense experiences that exceed the limitations of conventional textual accounts. (shrink)

Phenomenology is one of the main currents of modern philosophy. Philosophers most often understand it from the perspective of Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) phenomenology as a concept of cognition and a method of viewing and describing what is directly given, i.e. a phenomenon. In addition, phenomenology is the fundamental science – prima philosophia that determines what and how is directly given. Roman Ingarden (1893–1970), a student of E. Husserl, was the first thinker in Poland who practiced philosophy (...) in a phenomenological way. R. Ingarden contributed to the dissemination of Husserl’s phenomenology in Poland and became an outstanding phenomenologist who developed an original phenomenological path proposing a creative reception of his teacher’s thoughts between World Wars II and I. Inagrden’s phenomenological path was different from Husserl’s. While Husserl developed a transcendental-idealistic form of phenomenology, Ingarden did not wholly abandon the transcendental path but went toward realism. The Polish phenomenologist did not want to question his master’s concept of the transcendental Self but only wanted to find a place for this Self in the real world. Polish thinkers who further deepened the creative reception of Husserl’s phenomenology have always gathered around Ingarden. One such person was Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (1923–2014). Their professor-student meeting occurred at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow just after the end of World War II. Husserl’s phenomenology inspired A.-T. Tymieniecka, but this was phenomenology understood by Ingarden, taking into account the realism of the world and the entire sphere of empiricism. We can assume that the scholar’s meeting with Ingarden allowed Tymieniecka to develop her phenomenological concept, which she called the concept of the phenomenology of life and the human creative condition. It is a phenomenology that rejects idealism and chooses the realism of the world and life in the cosmic dimension. The human being here is a living entity whose life is anchored in nature but ultimately evolves and develops in culture through scientific and technological activities. In this cosmological and dynamically changing perspective, the source experience of the subject – a living being – becomes the experience of being alive and living in the unity-of-erything-there-is-alive. Therefore, Tymieniecka rejected the primordial nature of the cognitive-constitutive act of the pure consciousness, which we deal with in classical phenomenology, favouring a creative act founded in man’s creative imagination and only secondarily reflected in the cognitive act. The Polish philosopher believed that only in such a case is there a possibility of freedom in the human world of life and, thus – authentic self-realisation and self-interpretation of man in existence. (shrink)

The book is a collection of the author’s selected works in the philosophy and history of logic and mathematics. Papers in Part I include both general surveys of contemporary philosophy of mathematics as well as studies devoted to specialized topics, like Cantor's philosophy of set theory, the Church thesis and its epistemological status, the history of the philosophical background of the concept of number, the structuralist epistemology of mathematics and the phenomenological philosophy of mathematics. Part II contains essays in the (...) history of logic and mathematics. They address such issues as the philosophical background of the development of symbolism in mathematical logic, Giuseppe Peano and his role in the creation of contemporary logical symbolism, Emil L. Post's works in mathematical logic and recursion theory, the formalist school in the foundations of mathematics and the algebra of logic in England in the 19th century. The history of mathematics and logic in Poland is also considered.This volume is of interest to historians and philosophers of science and mathematics as well as to logicians and mathematicians interested in the philosophy and history of their fields. (shrink)

The volume consists of thirteen papers devoted to various problems of the philosophy of logic and mathematics. They can be divided into two groups. The first group contains papers devoted to some general problems of the philosophy of mathematics whereas the second group - papers devoted to the history of logic in Poland and to the work of Polish logicians and math-ematicians in the philosophy of mathematics and logic. Among considered problems are: meaning of reverse mathematics, proof in mathematics, (...) the status of Church's Thesis, phenomenology in the philosophy of mathematics, mathematics vs. theology, the problem of truth, philosophy of logic and mathematics in the interwar Poland. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to investigate the variants of directionality implied in visual hieratic texts as religious markers in the sacrosphere, which are substantially expressed in the form of a wayside shrine/cross. The methodological underpinnings for this project rely on the proposed semiotactics : the investigative perspective modeled after phonotactics – a branch of phonology investigating the restrictions on and the possibilities of phoneme combinations in languages. The study draws on digital documentation of wayside shrines, crosses, and sacrality (...) markers on houses collected by the author in various European countries, focusing in particular on the material collected in the area of present Slovakia, Ukraine, Austria, Slovenia, and the region of the Beskid Mountains in Poland. It shows how bodily hexis is inscribed into the phenomenology of a wayside shrine through particular types of hierophanic dynamics. The study also focuses on the aspect of headedness and markedness in the nano-structure of a sign, surfacing as directionality in the conceptualization of the religious sphere by particular communities. (shrink)

Originally entitled Osoba i Czyn and published in Poland in 1969, TheActing Person is the official English translation and has been thoroughly edited and revised with the collaboration of the author. The book stresses that Man must ceaselessly unravel his mysteries and strive for a new and more mature expression of his nature. The author sees this expression as an emphasis on the significance of the individual living in community and on the person in the process of performing an (...) action. The author states in his preface that he has tried to face the major issues concerning life, nature, and the existence of Man directly as they present themselves to Man in his struggles to survive while maintaining the dignity of a human being, but who is torn apart between his all too limited condition and his highest aspirations to set himself free. The author hopes that his book "contributes to this disentangling of the conflicting issues facing Man, which are crucial for Man’s own clarification of his existence and direction of his conduct". The author’s analysis of the human being is a dynamic counter to the materialistic and positivistic tendencies in various schools of modern philosophy. Ever since Descartes, the knowledge of Man and his world has been identified through cognition. This book is a reversal of the post-Cartesian attitude toward Man in that it characterises him as the person in action. Audience: The Acting Person will be of great interest to philosophers, anthropologists, and scholars specializing in phenomenology. It will also be of deep concern to theologians, priests, seminarians, and members of religious orders who wish to gain an insight into Pope John Paul II’s philosophy of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Landmark Legal Cases in BioethicsSusan Cartier Poland (bio)Only a few decades old, the interdisciplinary field of bioethics has developed surrounded by centuries of legal tradition and moral philosophy. Bioethics and the law have weaved back and forth over time influencing each field. Sometimes ethics leads the debate on problematical issues; for example, the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee at the National Institutes of Health established regulations prior to initiating (...) human gene therapy. At other times, law takes over; Roe v. Wade, for example, has polarized and closed public discussion on abortion. Most frequently, however, scientific developments initiate discussion in both fields, as when the announcement of the birth of Dolly—the first cloned mammal—sparked President Clinton to ask the National Bioethics Advisory Commission for a report on cloning.A back-and-forth pattern also exists within the law itself, this time between legislator and judge. Legislators enact statutes, which apply universally to regulate conduct in society. Judges, on the other hand, interpret statutes and apply them to particular cases to resolve disputes between parties. Case law, as judge-made law is called, that grows in the absence of legislation becomes the common law. Legislatures can change the course of common law development by enacting more law, usually as amendments, but sometimes as repeals. A judge who sees the facts of a case or the law differently may also change the common law. And so the counterpoint between legislator and judge goes.A legal case becomes a landmark in bioethics because of its historical or precedential value to the field. Historical cases reflect judicial reasoning or rationalization that lays the conceptual foundation for a bioethical principle. Perhaps the best known example of this is the focus on the right to self-determination in Schloendorff that led to the development of informed consent. The principle of autonomy in bioethics derives its legal impetus from this line of cases.A case that acquires landmark status because of its precedential value does so for one of two reasons based on legal precedents. First, the case may be one of “first impression.” In the legal sense, that means that the particular case with its [End Page 191] facts or issues is the first one that a particular court has confronted within that court’s jurisdiction or area of decision-making authority. To be a landmark in bioethics, however, the ordinary sense of “first impression” applies. The first time that a particular bioethical topic has appeared in court for legal resolution makes a case one of “first impression” for bioethics. The case of Baby M on surrogacy contracts illustrates this.The second way in which a case can achieve landmark status based on precedents involves legal precedent and the jurisdictional basis of the court system. Under the common law system, a preceding case that involves the same or similar facts or issues as a current case must be followed by lower—i.e., less authoritative—courts in the same jurisdiction. That judicial rule of decision making is called stare decisis. It creates an institution of continuity, yet allows for change due to differences in judicial interpretation of facts and issues, which is called distinguishing the case.All courts under United States jurisdiction must follow the U.S. Supreme Court. By its sheer power of authority, the Court issues opinions that, if they concern bioethical topics, make cases landmarks in bioethics. For example, Roe v. Wade made abortion legal and set off the debate between maternal and fetal rights. Casey later refined, or to some redefined with a discussion of stare decisis, the bioethical underpinnings of Roe by framing the debate as one between maternal rights and state interests.In law, precedents concern only appellate cases. Trial courts, like that in McFall v. Shimp, handle questions of both fact and law. Appellate courts, like that in Brotherton, hear appeals from the lower trial courts and address legal issues only. Trial judges apply the law to facts, and appellate judges reason about the trial judge’s legal interpretation.Appellate court decisions are the ones most frequently published, either in print or electronically online, for citation. Consequently they are the easiest to locate and retrieve. “Reporters” as... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the usefulness of the Machamer, Darden, and Craver (2000) mechanism approach to gaining an understanding of explanation in cognitive neuroscience. We argue that although the mechanism approach can capture many aspects of explanation in cognitive neuroscience, it cannot capture everything. In particular, it cannot completely capture all aspects of the content and significance of mental representations or the evaluative features constitutive of psychopathology.

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

In the former socialist countries the relation of philosophy to social reality, as shaped by the political interests of the State, must be considered for each particular case with a view to the historical dynamics of its own development. The Polish case is not typical in this regard — it was determined by the failure of forced sovietization at the institutional, cultural level and the maintenance of Poland''s traditional contacts with Western European culture. In this regard Polish universities played (...) an important role since they preserved normal structures of academic activity.Philosophy in Poland has been marked by three currents which managed to rebuff the advances of Marxism. Best known among them is the Lwów-Warsaw school of logic and analytic philosophy. Its contribution is especially important in the methodology of philosophical inquiry and the style of responsible philosophical discourse. Though not a bed of political opposition the school''s members mounted a spiritual opposition to Marxism, especially during the Solidarity period. Catholic philosophy, as represented by the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), has been and remains a completely independent force in Eastern and Central Europe. Doctrinally, Catholic philosophy in Poland has been divided between a more traditional, dated Thomism and the more progressive circles in Cracow where Western European philosophy, especially phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics, has been influential (the significance of Józef Tischner and Karol Wojtyla, now Pope Jean Paul II). The third major current, centered in Cracow, is the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden, whose influence is manifest in a style of philosophizing that has attracted professional philosophers as well as committed intellectuals from different disciplines. (shrink)

In the former socialist countries the relation of philosophy to social reality, as shaped by the political interests of the State, must be considered for each particular case with a view to the historical dynamics of its own development. The Polish case is not typical in this regard -- it was determined by the failure of forced sovietization at the institutional, cultural level and the maintenance of Poland's traditional contacts with Western European culture. In this regard Polish universities played (...) an important role since they preserved 'normal' structures of academic activity. Philosophy in Poland has been marked by three currents which managed to rebuff the advances of Marxism. Best known among them is the Lwów-Warsaw school of logic and analytic philosophy. Its contribution is especially important in the methodology of philosophical inquiry and the style of responsible philosophical discourse. Though not a bed of political opposition the school's members mounted a 'spiritual opposition' to Marxism, especially during the Solidarity period. Catholic philosophy, as represented by the Catholic University of Lublin, has been and remains a completely independent force in Eastern and Central Europe. Doctrinally, Catholic philosophy in Poland has been divided between a more traditional, dated Thomism and the more progressive circles in Cracow where Western European philosophy, especially phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics, has been influential. The third major current, centered in Cracow, is the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden, whose influence is manifest in a style of philosophizing that has attracted professional philosophers as well as committed intellectuals from different disciplines. Against this diversified background Marxism had to prove its mettle, a requirement that explains the unique internal differentiation and pluralism within Polish Marxist philosophy. The decisive factors in its development were its rejection of Soviet Marxism-Leninism and the opening to Western Marxism. The often remarked 'revisionist' character of Polish Marxism consists in the recognition by its most talented representatives of the fundamental incompatibility between Marxism as the ideological legitimation of the Communist state and as a philosophy subject to rational criteria. In effect, Polish Marxists thought the theory through to its end, and in this sense brought to light its inherently unstable nature: to be a philosophy it would have to cease to be Marxist, to be Marxist means having to pander to ideology. The confrontation of the diverse currents in Polish philosophy contributed to an unfortunate result: for political reasons non-Marxists steered clear of social philosophical questions, while official Marxism, which suppressed the 'revisionist' trend, obfuscated the relation between philosophy and social reality. Today philosophy in Poland has the urgent task to contribute to the reconstruction of a social rationality combining a critical consciousness with moral elements of commitment and responsibility. (shrink)

While many books have been written about Bertrand Russell's philosophy and some on his logic, I. Grattan-Guinness has written the first comprehensive history of the mathematical background, content, and impact of the mathematical logic and philosophy of mathematics that Russell developed with A. N. Whitehead in their Principia mathematica (1910-1913).? This definitive history of a critical period in mathematics includes detailed accounts of the two principal influences upon Russell around 1900: the set theory of Cantor and the mathematical logic of (...) Peano and his followers. Substantial surveys are provided of many related topics and figures of the late nineteenth century: the foundations of mathematical analysis under Weierstrass; the creation of algebraic logic by De Morgan, Boole, Peirce, Schröder, and Jevons; the contributions of Dedekind and Frege; the phenomenology of Husserl; and the proof theory of Hilbert. The many-sided story of the reception is recorded up to 1940, including the rise of logic in Poland and the impact on Vienna Circle philosophers Carnap and Gödel. A strong American theme runs though the story, beginning with the mathematician E. H. Moore and the philosopher Josiah Royce, and stretching through the emergence of Church and Quine, and the 1930s immigration of Carnap and GödeI. Grattan-Guinness draws on around fifty manuscript collections, including the Russell Archives, as well as many original reviews. The bibliography comprises around 1,900 items, bringing to light a wealth of primary materials. Written for mathematicians, logicians, historians, and philosophers--especially those interested in the historical interaction between these disciplines--this authoritative account tells an important story from its most neglected point of view. Whitehead and Russell hoped to show that (much of) mathematics was expressible within their logic; they failed in various ways, but no definitive alternative position emerged then or since. (shrink)

In Explaining Attitudes, Lynne Rudder Baker considers two views of what it is to have a propositional attitude, the Standard View and Pragmatic Realism, and attempts to argue for Pragmatic Realism. The Standard View is, roughly, the view that “the attitudes, if there are any, are particular brain states”. In contrast, Pragmatic Realism that a person has a propositional attitude if and only if there are certain counterfactuals true of that person.Baker’s case against the Standard View is a complex one. (...) One aspect of that case is that there are no good general arguments for the Standard View. We argue that one of the three she considers, an argument from causal explanation, can be defended. The problematic premise, according to Baker, is the claim that unless beliefs are [identical to, constituted by, or realized by] brain states, they cannot causally explain behavior. Baker tackles this premise in two ways: in Chapter 4, she attempts to undermine the brain-explain thesis by taking issue with the conception of causal explanation that she believes supports it; in Chapter 5, she argues against the brain-explain thesis directly, by attempting to show that it is false, whether or not the Standard View is true. Neither of these attempts are successful, on our view.The alternative version of the causal argument we develop uses the doctrine of physicalism as a supplementary premise rather than appeal to a reductive conception of causal explanation. After presenting this alternative version, we consider how Baker might respond to it by drawing on her discussion of materialism. We conclude that Baker’s argument against materialism does not generalize to physicalism as we construe it. (shrink)

Underlying the gnoseological and metaphysical dimension of Brentano’s philosophy Ingarden criticizes the psychological reception of Brentano in Poland as superficial. The article asks a question of the pertinence of Ingarden’s own phenomenological perspective to explain the Brentanian idea of intentionality.

This article describes the impact of, and response to, Trofim D. Lysenko's anti-genetics campaign in Poland between the years 1949 and 1956. It focuses particularly upon the response of three individuals – Teodor Marchlewski, Waclaw Gajewski, and Aleksandra Putrament -who were central figures in the controversy in Poland. In addition to examining the responses and motivations of these individuals, the article also addresses the question of why the Lysenko-era in Poland ended relatively earlier than in neighboring Soviet-allied (...) states such as Hungary, East Germany or Czechoslovakia, as well as 9 years before Lysenko was forced from power in the USSR. I argue that conditions specific to Polish politics and Poland's relationship with the Soviet Union, during the Thaw after Stalin's death, provided the opponents of "Lysenkoism" in Poland with an opportunity to criticize Lysenko, and restore Polish genetics. These conditions are linked to the near-revolution in Poland following the strike in Poznan in June, 1956, and successful transition of power between Edward Ochab and Wladyslaw Gomulka the following October. (shrink)

In his book The Acting Person Karol Wojtyła makes frequent references to the concept of truth. He analyzes truth expressions in various realms, including the epistemological, the metaphysical, the moral, and the axiological. He does not, however, say exactly what he means by truth. This essay analyzes select passages from this book and tries to formulate a coherent understanding of truth as Wojtyła conceived it. This essay puts special emphasis on the question of axiological truth, for this concept is novel (...) within the Thomistic framework of philosophizing and seems to be a consequence of the philosopher’s encounter with phenomenology. In the centre of attention is the first edition of this book published in 1969 in Poland. The main intention of the article is to grasp the very first Wojtylian approach to the problem of truth. (shrink)

The article describes the background of Roman Ingarden's 1922 review of Leon Chwistek's book Wielość rzeczywistości, and the back-and-forth that followed. Despite the differences, the two shared some interesting similarities. Both authors had important ties to the intellectual happenings outside Poland and were not considerd mainstream at home. In the end, however, it is these connections that allowed them to gain recognition. Ingarden, who had been a student of Husserl, became the leading phenomenologist in the postwar Poland. For (...) Chwistek, a painter, philosopher, and logician interested in Russell’s work, such connections meant that he won the competition for a professorship at the university in Lwów over Alfred Tarski. Until recently, Chwistek’s place in Polish logic remains unclear and Ingarden’s interactions with Polish logic and the Vienna Circle have not been investigated extensively. A deeper look at this intellectual fracas between Ingarden and Chwistek helps one in the study of the complicated mesh of alliances within the Lwów-Warsaw School. The article also identifies the origins of the split between phenomenology and the analytic philosophical tradition in Poland. The article is also accompanied by the translations of the reviews. (shrink)

After Poland gained independence in 1918, logic developed very quickly both as a scientific direction and as a taught discipline. This introduction to the special issue “Logic in Poland in the 20th Century,” published in Volume 13:1 (2024) and Volume 13:2 (2024), provides the historical context for the development of logic in the interwar period.

In the Introduction to the Polish-language version of the present book I expressed the hope that Polish studies in semiotics would before long be numerous enough to make possible another anthology on semiotics in Poland containing material published since 1970. That hope has in fact come true. The fact that semiotic research has been gaining momentum in this country is reflected in the growing interest in the discipline, in expanding international contacts, and in the steady increase in the number (...) of publications. Thus, 1972 saw the setting up of the Department of Logical Semiotics, headed by the present writer, at Warsaw University Institute of Phi losophy. The seminar on semiotics, which I started in 1961, had met more than two hundred times by the end of 1976; since 1968, meetings have been held jointly with the Polish Semiotic Society. Another semi nar, confined to university staff and concerned with logical semiotics, which was inithted in 1970, had met more than fifty times by the end of 1976. The former seminar often plays host to foreign visiting pro fessors; so far scholars from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, the German Democratic Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and the United States have attended. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 12.3 (2002) 305-323 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 41 Bioethics and Cloning, Part I Susan Cartier Poland and Laura Jane Bishop This is Part One of a two part Scope Note on Bioethics and Cloning. Part Two will be published in the December 2002 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal and as a separate reprint. Contents For Parts 1 And (...) 2 Part 1Part 2I.History of the ScienceI.Ethical PerspectivesII.Historical CommentaryII.Religious PerspectivesIII.Animal WelfareIII.Fiction and FilmIV.Laws and Legal Literature"Clone" is a collective noun (I, Stewart 1997, p. 771). A collective noun names a group and is composed of individual members, such as "herd" or "flock." Derived from the Greek kl¯on for twig or slip, "clone" was first used in biology to describe the aggregate of asexually produced progeny of an individual, either naturally occurring or man-made; the definition later expanded to mean a group of genetically identical members who originate from a single ancestor. Thus, a clone is a group that results from the process of asexual reproduction.In nature, cloning occurs either by parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization) or by fission (embryo splitting). In a pioneering experiment in 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas J. King (I, 1952), cancer researchers at the Institute for Cancer Research (today part of the Fox Chase Cancer Center) in Philadelphia, demonstrated on frogs another method of cloning by transplanting nuclei into enucleated cells, a technique called "nuclear transplantation," which John B. Gurdon and colleagues (I, 1958, 1975) used to create clones of frogs.Then, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, two back-to-back frauds in cloning occurred. First, the cloning of a human described by American science journalist David Rorvik in the 1978 book In His Image was called a hoax by a court in [End Page 305] 1982. Second, the cloning of three mice, announced by German wunderkind Karl Illmensee to scientific circles in 1979 (and to the public in 1981), could not be proven to be true, according to convincing evidence by McGrath and Solter (I) published in 1984.With their pronouncement that mammalian cloning was impossible, McGrath and Solter essentially stopped cloning research and funding for such biological research. So by the mid-1980s, instead of further investigating cloning, developmental biologists studied embryology related to in vitro fertilization, while molecular biologists studied recombinant DNA under the newly relaxed NIH guidelines. These two strands of scientific investigation came together in the work of Ian Wilmut, who created in vitro embryos using nuclear transplantation to reproduce genetically engineered cattle. Wilmut was seeking a way to increase the successful birth rate when, in the 1990s, he produced identical twin sheep, Megan and Morag, cloned from an embryonic cell, followed by another sheep, Dolly, cloned from an adult cell. The birth of a mammal from an embryo whose genetic material came from an adult cell firmly re-established the possibility of cloning from adults. Prior to Dolly's birth, scientists believed that adult cells lost the ability to dedifferentiate—i.e., to become unspecialized—and so could not direct the development of an embryo through to birth.The 1997 announcement of Dolly's birth initiated the present widespread discussion of cloning. Because of its potentially vast applications across human health, medicine, agriculture, and business/economics, cloning raises a host of issues including those concerning: genetics and genetic engineering, patenting, animal rights and/or animal welfare (especially for transgenic, research, or cloned animals), organ transplantation, reproduction, eugenics, pharmacology (drug production using transgenic animals), research practices, informed consent, stem cell research, women's rights, children's rights, parental rights and responsibilities, and theology and philosophy. It fosters questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the limits of human powers to intervene in research and therapy, and what it means to be human or animal. In addition, environmentalists and organic farmers raise concerns about the effect of novel animals and plants on the environment, while nutritionists and the lay public wonder... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.3 (2000) 265-281 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 39 Genes, Patents, and Bioethics-Will History Repeat Itself? Susan Cartier Poland Gene patenting--the very notion sounds absurd! How can anyone claim to have invented the genes with which one is born? To make matters worse, genetic makeup precedes birth, meaning the existence of the invention predates the existence of the inventor. So, do we (...) really own our genes, or do they belong to our parents, or our governments, or a Supreme Being? Ownership is only one bioethical issue involved in gene patenting. But before looking at the issues, some essential and basic terms must be understood, namely genes and patents. Genes In his book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, the biologist Charles Darwin proposed a theory called "natural selection," whereby living things changed over time or evolved through generations due to competition and variation. By experimenting with the garden pea in the 1860s, Gregor Mendel, a monk and accomplished horticulturalist, provided the mechanism of inheritance supporting the natural selection theory of his contemporary Darwin. That mechanism is the gene, or, as Mendel described it, a discrete "factor." The gene has also been defined as "the fundamental unit of heredity" (United States 1987, p. 157). Each individual has two copies of a gene, one from each parent, but that individual passes down to offspring only one of the two copies. Because of Mendel, the gene has become a scientific concept and the basis of a new scientific field: genetics.David C. Page (2000) of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explained today's terms for genetics structures using an analogy taken from the home. In his view, the cell is a kitchen, the genome is a shelf in the kitchen, the chromosome is a cookbook on the shelf, the gene is a recipe in the cookbook, and a base-pair (either adenine with thymine or guanine with cytosine) is a single letter in the recipe. A protein, the [End Page 265] working molecule blueprinted by a gene, is a dish ready to eat, and an ingredient in the dish is an amino acid, which is a building block of the protein as specified by a string of base-pairs.Colin Tudge (1993), a British science journalist, would disagree with Page's description of the gene as a recipe. A recipe is like a blueprint: both are directions that precede the work. But a gene is not passive according to Tudge; it actively administers the cell's work, and it also responds to cellular events (Aldridge 1996).The current focus of scientific research and funding is on the gene and the completion of the sequencing of all the genes that comprise the human genome, portrayed in the press as a race between the U.S. government's Human Genome Project and the private corporation Celera Genomics. The real action, however, is at the protein level. The gene only holds the information to produce a protein; it is the three-dimensional shaped protein that does the work. In order to produce energy, eliminate waste, and perform other functions specific to a cell or tissue, proteins must bind, thus creating "biological pathways." Proteins bind (or not) and detach as a function of their shapes, which are determined by their precise chemical composition as spelled out in their genetic code. IBM will spend the next five years making one computer, Blue Gene, that will then take an entire year to come up with the chemical map for only one protein (Gillis 2000). It is estimated that there are about 40,000 proteins in the human body.Despite these overwhelming numbers, modern biology has been able to achieve significant results within the Human Genome Project's 15-year time frame, from 1990 to 2005. The genetic map was completed in 1993; the physical map was completed in 1995; and the genetic sequence is expected to be completed in 2002, with 97 to 99 percent completed as of 26 June 2000. This... (shrink)

Scientific medicine has been successful by ways of an ever more detailed understanding and mastering of bodily functions and dysfunctions. Biomedical research promises new triumphs, but discontent with medical practice is all around. Since several decades this has been acknowledged and discussed. The philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics have been proposed as promising ways to approach medical practice, by ways of a richer understanding of the meaning structures of health and illness. In 2000, Swedish philosopher Fredrik Svenaeus published (...) a book where he proposes that the phenomenological hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and also the reflections on health and illness of Hans-Georg Gadamer offer important ways to approach the nature of medicine. In particular, Svenaeus argues that the goal of medicine is to promote and restore health, and that health ought to be seen as “homelike being-in-the-world”. Unhealth, illness, consequently should be understood as a situation where a person’s “being-in-the-world” in characterized by that lack of the rhythm, balance and “tune” of everyday living that characterizes not “being at home”. In this article, Svenaeus’ position is briefly outlined. Questions are raised whether “unhomelikeness” is to be seen as a metaphor, and, if so, if it is a fruitful such. Furthermore, I discuss whether or not a discourse on health and illness in these terms may be misleading in a situation where the ontological presuppositions of Heidegger are lost out of sight and the popular understanding of health psychology predominates. I also approach the question whether Svenaeus’ assumptions may inadvertently lead us to an unjustifiably broad understanding of the tasks of medicine. It is finally concluded that Svenaeus phenomenological and hermeneutical approach is both interesting and promising. There are, however, several questions that ought to be pursued further, and the step from philosophical analysis to everyday clinical discourse may be unexpectedly long and risky. (shrink)

This volume explores what phenomenology adds to the enterprise of anthropology, drawing on and contributing to a burgeoning field of social science research inspired by the phenomenological tradition in philosophy. Essays by leading scholars ground their discussions of theory and method in richly detailed ethnographic case studies. The contributors broaden the application of phenomenology in anthropology beyond the areas in which it has been most influential—studies of sensory perception, emotion, bodiliness, and intersubjectivity—into new areas of inquiry such as (...) martial arts, sports, dance, music, and political discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to outline a tripartite systematization of the plurivocal senses of movement in phenomenology. In particular, I follow Eugen Fink’s speculative integration of the phenomenological method as providing a broad map to orient the interpretation of phenomenologically informed studies of movement. My interpretation focuses on the role of Neoplatonic concepts and terms in Fink’s own systematic recasting of phenomenology. As a result of the development of self-critical discussions of method in phenomenology in (...) connection with Neoplatonic metaphysics, three types of movement emerge: the katabantic movement of origination, the ekbantic movement of philosophical refection, and the anabantic movement of concrete living human experience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15.2 (2005) 211-218 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics, Biolaw, and Western Legal Heritage Susan Cartier Poland Bioethics and biolaw are two philosophical approaches that address social tension and conflict caused by emerging bioscientific and biomedical research and application. Both reflect their respective, yet different, heritages in Western law. Bioethics can be defined as "the research and practice, generally interdisciplinary in nature, which aims (...) to clarify or resolve ethical questions raised by the advances and application of biomedical and biological sciences" (II, Miller 2000, p. 246). Biolaw, on the other hand, is a legal philosophical concept that can be defined as "the taking of agreed upon principles and practices of bioethics into law with the sanctions that law engenders" (p. 246). Some see biolaw as hierarchical, either evolving from or devolving into bioethics (p. 245), while others think of bioethics and biolaw as a continuum or gradation (p. 246). Whichever view one takes, bioethics and biolaw are, at the least, intertwined (II, Loureiro 2000, p. 71).Although bioethics came out of the U.S. in the 1970s, the field is now considered Anglo-American (II, Kemp 2000a, p. 67). Biolaw emerged in the 1990s from the French biodroit and has become associated with continental Europe (p. 68). These distinctions, however, are based on geopolitical entities. Another way to distinguish bioethics from biolaw is to look at their legal heritage and understand the differences between the common law and the civil law.Bioethics and biolaw share a Western legal heritage, specifically roots in Roman law. When the Roman empire in the West fell to Germanic tribes in 476 A.D., the Romans had developed a sophisticated system of law that included flexible standards and abstract, rather than concrete, modes of thought. In 528, Justinian, emperor of the surviving Roman empire in the East at Constantinople, ordered a compilation and consolidation of Roman law. Despite the rise of seventh century Islam, the split of the Christian church into eastern and western branches in 1054, and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Roman law survived through the courts of canon law and was revived later in the twelfth century at the University of Bologna in Italy. By 1500, what would later become France and Germany had [End Page 211] "received" or recognized Roman law, albeit in varying degrees. Not a single event, the Reception, or "direct acceptance of Roman law as a principal source of law," is the definitive turning point in Western legal history that eventually produced the common law and civil law strands (I, Von Mehren 1957, p. 10).England, however, did not participate in the Reception, although its influence was felt at Oxford University, where Vacarious taught its precepts in 1151, and in the courts of canon law (I, Von Mehren 1957, p. 10). William the Conqueror already essentially had established the common law tradition when he merged Anglo-Saxon law with Norman law and created a centralized system of justice administration for the single fiefdom known as England.Aside from historical development, the common law and the civil law differ from other legal families in terms of their modes of thought, institutions, sources, and ideology (I, Zweigert and Kotz 1977, p. 62). In the common law, Roman legal concepts were shaped by Christian ethics through the canon law courts. In the civil law, Roman law became the basis for a legal science centered in the universities and interpreted by various schools, such as the commentators, the glossators, and the humanists. The civil law uses a central text as the starting point for legal reasoning and analysis. The common law develops over time through case law, that is, by judges applying principles from preceding cases to resolve the issue at hand. One writer describes the common law as "anything that is not prohibited is permitted" and the civil law as "anything that is not permitted is prohibited" (I, Karambelas 2005, p. 28).The common law and the civil law are only two of the three traditions in Western law. The third is socialist law. All three are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bioethics Commissions: Town Meetings with a “Blue, Blue Ribbon”Susan Cartier Poland (bio)Town meetings are characteristic of New England. In theory, a quorum of registered voters in a small municipality meets annually to decide local public policy. In fact, special interests and the town bureaucracy control the meeting.Like a town meeting, a commission (or committee or council) comes into being, whether on an ad hoc or permanent basis, to (...) direct a government function. Bioethics commissions specialize in one area: the intersection of public policy with developments, either real or anticipated, in the basic and applied sciences.That specialization of commissions carries over into the selection of the members. More often than not commission members are appointed on the basis of expertise in a specific area. Although some commissions are still made up entirely of one kind of expert, usually medical, the majority of these government bodies seek breadth between the fields of law, religion, ethics, and science (including medicine and the social sciences).In the words of Mrs. Rigenbach, the law clerk to Chief Judge Carl B. Rubin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, selection of persons “knowledgeable in the field” constitutes a “blue, blue ribbon” jury. In contrast, a “blue ribbon” jury is composed of those persons having “the greatest amount of formal education” (In re Richardson-Merrill, Inc. (Bendectin litigation), 624 Federal Supplement 1212 at 1217 (1985)). The problem with persons knowledgeable in the field is that their minds may have already been made up. For a jury, this is a disaster; for a bioethics commission, this directs and shapes the research, investigation, and discussion, or, in short, it makes for more efficient decision making.For this Scope Note, the definition of commission begins with the Bioethicsline description of its index term “advisory committees” as committees or commissions set up to advise government bodies on public policy. Furthermore, a commission [End Page 91] (or committee) receives government funding and support in exchange for its expertise in research, investigation, reporting, and recommendations.Six functions served by bioethics commissions have been clearly and succinctly described by LeRoy Walters (Commissions and Bioethics. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 14 (4): 363–68, August 1989). The functions are: (1) to legitimize action; (2) to delay action or resolution; (3) to identify duplication; (4) to be representative; (5) to do research and find facts; and (6) to provide education and support (pp. 364–65). Since 1989, however, another government function has moved to the forefront. Instead of remaining within the legislative arena, government commissions serve the judiciary as well, in cases involving complex and technical questions. The now defunct Law Reform Commission of Canada recognized this use when it included in its annual reports a section on its “Influence on Law Reform through Judicial Decisions.”In mid-1997, the United States Supreme Court in its consolidated cases on assisted suicide used extensively the writings from a state commission, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, to support its rationale. Not only did the Court make use of the Task Force’s work, but in so doing the Court extended the efforts of the commission beyond its jurisdiction of New York into another jurisdiction on the opposite coast, Washington state. Furthermore, although the commission was chartered by one state, through the federal court system, its influence became national.Outside the U.S., the United Nations recently adopted its first bioethics text on the ethics of genetic research, and Canada is reworking its human research guidelines into a single set of guidelines that will apply to research in both the natural sciences and the social sciences.This Scope Note attempts to compile for the researcher and the reference librarian those commissions, existing and defunct, that have addressed bioethics issues. Only one other such attempt is known to the author, an Office of Technology Assessment [OTA] Background Paper, Biomedical Ethics in U.S. Public Policy (1993). Due to space limitations, not all publications could be listed; the selections included represent the range of topics from a particular group or the more frequently cited sources. Future updates of this compilation are planned, so please notify the... (shrink)