Polish Journal of Philosophy

This article challenges the common assumption that the character virtues can be divided into two groups, one consisting of other-regarding virtues and oneof self-regarding virtues. On such accounts the other-regarding virtues are often said to focus on advancing the good of others, whereas the self-regarding virtuesprimarily benefit the agent herself. Here, however, it will be shown that virtues like friendship, particular justice, even temper and benevolence—traditionally seen as other-regarding—all contain strong self-regarding aspects. The central claim of the article is that these self-regarding aspects of the other-regarding virtues arenecessary components of complete virtue. Given the scope of these virtues, an agent has to act virtuously in her dealings with herself as well as with others inorder to qualify as fully virtuous. While this account draws on a number of Aristotelian ideas it should be noted that it is not intended as an authoritative, or exegetic, reading of Aristotle.

Perception and conceptualization of space are some of the most basic elements of human cognition. It has been long assumed that human spatial thinkingand frames of reference used to grasp and describe the location of an object in relation to other objects are of universal nature and so are projected in naturallanguages in basically the same manner; three principal dimensions in egocentric perceptual space were distinguished: up-down, front-back and left-right, reflecting our biological make-up. If differences in spatial terminology were observed, they were relegated to surface structure phenomena, but were not regarded as differences in perceptual and conceptual representations in the human mind. That belief in the universal perception of spatial relations among humans was ofconsiderable importance for some philosophical theories, also for Husserl’s conception of the Lebenswelt a priori and his defence of the validity of scientificpropositions and of absolute truth. It now appears that the extent of the diversity in spatial thinking has been drastically underestimated (Levinson 2003), but it does not follow that Husserl’s intuitions regarding the existence of universal constituents in incompatible Lebenswelt experiences were necessarily wrong.

Recent perspectival interpretations of Kant suggest a way of relating his epistemology to empirical science that makes it plausible to regard Einstein’stheory of relativity as having a Kantian grounding. This first of two articles exploring this topic focuses on how the foregoing hypothesis accounts for variousresonances between Kant’s philosophy and Einstein’s science. The great attention young Einstein paid to Kant in his early intellectual development demonstrates the plausibility of this hypothesis, while certain features of Einstein’s cultural-political context account for his reluctance to acknowledge Kant’s influence, even though contemporary philosophers who regarded themselves as Kantians urged him to do so. The sequel argues that this Kantian grounding probably had a formative influence not only on Einstein’s discovery of the theory of relativity and his view of the nature of science, but also on his quasi-mystical, religious disposition.

In this paper, I propose a specific version of theism which I would call apophatic theism. In the first part of the paper, I argue that this in the only tenableversion of theism. Due to the fact that it may seem indistinguishable from a very strong form of agnosticism (or atheism understood in the etymological sense of the word: as a-theism where ‘a’ means ‘without’), in the second part of my paper, I try to distinguish apophatic theism from agnosticism (or a-theism), and from so called “Wittgensteinian” view of religion, which also may seem similar to the position I propose.

I argue that deflationism about truth does not imply minimalism about truthaptness. The condition for truth-aptness can be strengthened and the disquotationalschema restricted without resorting to any inflationary conception of truth-theoretic notions.

A nagging problem for the consequentialist is the fact that a person who chooses the action-option that seems to her to maximize good consequences all toooften does not produce consequences as good as she would have produced had she thought about her decision in some other fashion. In response, indirect consequentialists typically recommend that one take advantage of whatever benefits the employment of a nonconsequentialist decision procedure may provide. But I argue here that the consequentialist cannot straightforwardly appropriate the decision procedures of those averse to consequentialism. I show that indirect consequentialists treat decision procedures the very same way direct consequentialists treat actions, and thus all of the reasons why direct consequentialists fail to act as well as they can likewise plague the indirect consequentialists’ attempts to decide as well as they can. So despite the wishes of the indirect theorists, consequentialism turns out to be self-defeating after all.

John Barker, in two recent essays, raises a variety of intriguing criticisms to challenge my interpretation of the liar paradox and the type of solution I proposein ‘Denying the Liar’ and ‘Denying the Liar Reaffirmed.’ Barker continues to believe that I have misunderstood the logical structure of the liar sentence and itsexpression, and that as a result my solution misfires. I shall try to show that on the contrary my analysis is correct, and that Barker does not properly grasp what mysolution to the liar paradox involves. Additionally, I argue that Barker makes fundamental errors in the explanation of liar sentence formulations in intensional contexts and in the classical metatheory he invokes to support his criticisms.