Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia

The New Antireductionism: Its Components and Its Significance

2023-09-22T11:07:57+02:00

Beginning in the 1970s and culminating in the first two decades of the 21st century, there has been a marked shift in the sciences from a predominantly reductionist and mechanistic approach to a broader and more holistic viewpoint. It goes without saying that such a shift in point of view will have significant implications, not only for the sciences but for our concepts of nature and of human beings. The present essay is an attempt to assess the significance of this change in the focus of the sciences and to describe the nature of its components. Originally, it had a far more limited scope, that of comparing two of the parts of the new nonreductionist stance: brain plasticity and biological systems theory. Unfortunately, my understanding of one of these factors (systems theory) turned out to be incorrect, while the section on brain plasticity was incomplete. The result of this dual realization is an essay of far greater scope, taking in both new developments in the sciences far beyond that of plasticity, and reassessing the content and impact of systems theory, which is greater than I had thought. I will begin with a study of systems theory, dealing first with the unexpected mathematics which made its present status possible. Then I will deal with its history, which reaches back over a century. One of the confusions into which we are liable to fall is to fail to distinguish the old systems theory from the new. This is even more likely because the two versions of the theory have many features in common.

Moralna i religijna dwuznaczność nawrócenia. Przykład apostoła Pawła

2023-09-22T11:51:59+02:00

The subject of the article is the moral and religious ambiguity of St. Paul’s conversion; rabbi Saul of Tarsus, who had previously been a persecutor of Christians, encountered a resurrected Jesus and proceeded to accept Him as the Messiah, becoming a zealous apostle. On one hand, the moral meaning of his conversion is a positive one, as it shows that even the worst villain can receive God’s forgiveness if they understand their mistake and change their behavior. On the other, however, Paul’s case suggests that God’s mercy is an injustice—it shows that ceasing to do evil and accepting the true faith is enough to avoid punishment for previous evil deeds. The religious meaning of conversion is similarly ambiguous; on one hand God is merciful because He forgave a person who persecuted His followers because he understood his mistake, converted, and accepted the true faith. However, there is an injustice here; converted sinners and Christ’s persecutors may receive salvation given that they are baptized and join the Church, meanwhile people who are moral but do not believe in God and were not baptized cannot be saved despite never having committed any atrocity.

Osiemnastowieczna sztuka podróży a formowanie się nowoczesnej koncepcji podmiotu

2023-09-22T11:55:02+02:00

The 17th and 18th centuries were exceptionally important in Western philosophy for the problematization and formation of the modern concept of subjectivity. Conceptions of the subject formulated in that period drew both from the rational, Cartesian tradition, and from the irrational elements that preceded 19th-century Romanticism; they were also anchored in everyday praxis. The explorations of reality, and limitations of one’s ego exposed in the uncommon situation of travel or wandering, fi ll the writing (philosophical and otherwise) of the 18th century. Its proliferation laid the theoretical foundations for the eponymous “art of travelling,” and for conceptions of the subject which were opposed to radical rationalist ones. The attempts to defi ne human being as an “unfi nished project,” becoming itself in the experience of travelling, creating, and being created, rather than a finite and static res cogitans, support the vision of the subject known in contemporary philosophy.

Koncepcja systematyczności nauki Paula Hoyningena-Huene a psychologiczny kryzys teoretyczny

2023-09-22T12:20:53+02:00

The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of the theoretical crisis in psychology from the perspective of the concept of systematicity of science proposed by German philosopher Paul Hoyningen-Huene. In the first part, I analyse the main assumptions of the idea of systematicity and outline the problem of theoretical crisis in psychology. According to the assumptions, the crisis in psychology may be related to problems with systematicity in some dimensions of psychology. Finally, I consider whether in psychology, basing explanations on the mechanistic strategy of explanation, which is an increasingly popular strategy in the philosophy of social sciences, could strengthen the systematic nature of psychology in the indicated dimensions.

Od logiki Łukasiewicza do idei implikacji ważonej. Epistemologiczne przesłanki za przyjęciem wielowartościowości logicznej jako odpowiedź na tezę Suszki

2023-09-22T12:29:52+02:00

In this paper I argue that logical multivalency is necessary for epistemology and has desirable structural properties. In support of this claim, I discuss the nonclassical logical values from an epistemological point of view. The question addressed is how many logical values logicians and philosophers need. Two standpoints are usually adopted regarding this issue: the fundamentality of bivalence and the necessity of multivalence. The first position, supported by Suszko, is summarized in the statement that due to the very nature of logic, bivalency is all we need. The second position, motivated by research practice which requires making inferences under imperfect conditions, admits the multivalence. In the first part of the article, I focus on the very first manyvalued system L3, invented and explored by Jan Łukasiewicz. I recount the critique of L3, and then discuss Suszko’s thesis and Malinowski’s response. I also analyze the epistemological background of the Suszko-Łukasiewicz controversy which was related to the relation between logic, antirealism and externalism. I conclude fundamentalism regarding logical bivalence generates more problems than the adoption of multivalency.

Etyka pamięci: refleksyjność troski [Avishai Margalit, „Etyka pamięci”]

2023-09-22T12:48:40+02:00