Roczniki Filozoficzne

The modern cosmology indicates some manifestations of the unity of the Universe, such as: the generality of the laws of nature, global space-time, the ability to distinguish universal time and the common history, or the close relationship between cosmological parameters and physical constants and the fact of the existence of life. The use of abstraction method and analogue reasoning in the analysis of properties of the Universe allows, without violating the principle of the autonomy of science and philosophy, to reasonably argue the thesis of his nomological unity. On the other hand, in the cosmology some assumptions related to the determination of the subject of the research and enabling the research practice are assumed. These assumptions are founded on a conviction of the constant, independent of time and place, way of functioning of nature. This allows formulating of the invariant laws of nature and extrapolating them to the entire Universe. This practice is justified by the consistency of cosmological models with the observation, the effectiveness of an explanation of scientific problems, the coherence of other fields of natural knowledge and the success of the unification programs and interdisciplinary research.

The article is an attempt to answer the question of the status of computer science as a branch of knowledge and its place among other disciplines. Four views on the status of computer science as a branch of knowledge dominate nowadays among computer scientists and philosophers. The first of them is a claim that science is a branch of mathematics. Because writing programs is a basic activity of computer scientists, which is in fact a mathematical activity, so a computer science is a formal science, simply a party of mathematics. But not all agree with this view—some specialists claim that writing computer programs is a kind of experiment and that computer science is a natural science. Experimenting using computers is not only a supporting method in other sciences but it plays an important role within the very computer science. However, many computer scientists believe that treating their discipline as a formal or natural science neglects the basic objective of computer science, i.e. problem solving using computers. So computer science is not a science at all, it is an engineering discipline. The fourth, currently dominating view claims that computer science is a new discipline of knowledge that uses engineering, experimental and formal methods. But it is neither a branch of mathematics, nor a natural science, nor an engineering discipline.

This article discusses the problems of language in John Locke’s thought. In the present studies the dominating considerations focus on the history of epistemology and philosophy of language. This study takes into account a broader intellectual context of the philosophy of language pursued at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. First and foremost it places the problems of language in the context of changes in the teaching of logic and rhetoric. Locke inspired the then beliefs about the significance of language as the tool of science and public discourse, in the questions of education, morality, politics, and religion. The English philosopher emphasized how important was the duty to shape the activity of the human mind, one of which was to develop linguistic skills; such skills are the condition of the reliability of knowledge and argumentative efficacy in social communication.

Autor przedstawia tytułowy problem duszy, umysłu, ciała i nieśmiertelności oraz ich wzajemnych relacji w siedmiu częściach (poprzedzonych ogólnym wstępem): I. Kwestia antropologiczna i jej trudności; II. Droga materializmu i naturalizmu; III. Dusza, umysł, ciało; IV. Tomasz z Akwinu i Kartezjusz (i A.R. Damasio) o duszy; V. Mind-Body Problem: dwuznaczna kwestia; VI. Umysł a mózg; VII. Nieśmiertelność człowieka. Artykuł kończą obszerne wnioski.

The article presents the question of community in Jean-Luc Nancy’s work La communauté désoeuvrée (1983). Nancy’s writings on community are one of the most well known part of his work. That is why firstly that essay shows how Nancy redefined community and moved away from this word toward explicitly ontological terms such as being-in-common, being-together and being-with. Then we take up Nancy’s discussions of the relation between myth and community: between the interruption of myth, the unworked community (la communauté désoeuvrée), and “literary communism.” And, eventually, at the end we take a closer look at the relation between Nancy’s understanding of community and history in general to show what Nancy means by finitude.

The concept of creation in the tradition of human thought was investigated in the theological perspective—to explain the article of faith about the origin and God-world relation. Recently, the understanding of the issue has often been dominated by an ideologically based dispute between so called creationism and evolutionism.In his theory of creation (mostly contained in De Potentia, Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica), Thomas Aquinas uses strictly philosophical instruments to analyze the problem. It allows to treat the issue of creation as a detailed explanation of the metaphysical causation theory. Furthermore, it lets us define the nature of relation between the Creator as the First Cause and the world—the set of created beings.The concept of creation is therefore a metaphysical explanation of ontic pluralism and contingency, that is, the existence of many beings (more than one) which do not have the necessity of existence. Creation is a way of explanation how the First Cause acts, which results in the existence of numerous accidental beings. It is not a transformation or a creation of something on the basis of previous elements. It is a production in being with no previous conditions (creatio ex nihilo). Theformal end of the creative action is the act of existence of accidental beings.The creation of accidental beings generates a mutual relation of the Creator and the created beings. For the Creator (creatio activa), the creation is his own nature (Subsistent Existence) in its relation to the created beings. Such a connection has a feature of a mental relation, as practically it is not different from the nature of the Creator. For the created beings the creation (creatio passiva) is a real dependence in existence of the created beings on the Creator. This relation is a real accident, inherent in every created being, which means it is a predicable relation in the category of property (proprium).

Przedmiotem artykułu jest koncepcja „domniemania ateizmu” Antony’ego Flew. Flew twierdzi,że w punkcie wyjścia debaty na temat istnienia Boga powinniśmy przyjąć stanowisko ateizmu, a ciężar dowodu spoczywa na teiście. W artykule kwestionuję różne wymagania stawiane przez Flew reprezentantom teizmu i ateizmu. Odpowiadając na propozycję Flew, analizuję problem epistemologiczny, jak silne świadectwa na rzecz danego przekonania są potrzebne, by podmiot przyjął to przekonanie. Twierdzę, że zależne jest to od okoliczności, w jakich znajduje się dana osoba i jej indywidualnych uwarunkowań. Za pomocą tych analiz staram się wskazać, w jaki sposób różne osoby mogą racjonalnie wymagać od przekonania teistycznego innego stopnia prawdopodobieństwa niż od przekonania ateistycznego. Pokazuje to, jak sądzę, że propozycja Flew nie musi być racjonalna dla innych osób, choć może by taką dla samego Flew.

In the contemporary analytic philosophy about one-third of authors tend toward moral antirealism. Sources of its popularity have to be found in many arguments justifying the abandonment of moral realism. Every realist should meet them. Unfortunately, in Polish literature about ethics it is difficult to find a presentation and a critique of these arguments. Many philosophers who represent continental philosophy like Neo-Thomism, material Value-Ethics, hermeneutic ethics, assume ethical realism and do not respond to the arguments of anti-realists. The purpose of the article is to present in one place the most important arguments that are important sources of ethical antirealism in metaethics of analytic philosophy.

In Paul Thagard’s article “Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience”, we might find some demarcation criteria which are best used in determining whether certain fields with a lot of practitioners can be claimed to be pseudoscientific. Theory T for the pseudoscience club is if T has long been less progressive than its competitors and faces many more unsolved problems; and, adherents to T do not try to develop the theory to solve puzzles, do not attempt to evaluate T with respect to its alternatives, and are highly reserved and selective in seeking confirmation and falsification. Ten years later Thagard gave us new proposals. If T is a pseudoscience, then it is usually the case that (1) T is neither simple nor unified; the explanations, resources, (2) and predictions of T tend to be ad hoc, spurious, or ill-fitted to the rest of T; or, (3) adherents to T do not try to develop the theory to solve puzzles, do not attempt to evaluate T with respect to competitors, and (4) are highly reserved and selective in seeking confirmation and falsification.In this article, Paul Thagard’s criteria of demarcation are examined and evaluated from the point of view of the history of astrology.

This article presents an attempt to fund Ontology of Stanisaw Leniewski on a simple theory with one primitive relation “being denoted by”. Developed theory shows that to the linguistic model of the Ontology can belong only such general names that in their extensions have at least two objects (references) denoted by individual names.