Filozofia i Nauka

The article analyses physicists’ attitudes towards philosophy on the examples of the positions of eminent theorists. There are two physicists’ philosophical attitudes towards philosophy: pro-philosophical (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, von Weizsäcker, Penrose, Rovelli) and anti-philosophical (Weinberg, Hawking, Feynman). I analyse some physicists' arguments for or against philosophy. It is demonstrated that physicists are most critical of all philosophical conceptions that accept a priori factors in cognition, while those who recognize the significance of philosophy for science most often refer to the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition as the proper basis for understanding modern physics.

This article aims to reconstruct Max Scheler’s conception of three types of knowledge, outlined in his late work Philosophical Perspectives (1928). Scheler distinguished three kinds of knowledge: empirical, used to exercise control over nature, eidetic (essential) and metaphysical. I review the epistemological criteria that underlie this distinction, and its functionalistic assumptions. In the article’s polemic part I accuse Scheler of a) crypto-dualism in his theory of knowledge, which draws insufficient distinctions between metaphysical and eidetic knowledge; b) totally omitting the status of the humanities in his classification of knowledge types; c) consistently developing a philosophy of knowledge without resort to the research tools offered by the philosophy of science, which takes such analyses out of their social and historical context (i.e., how knowledge is created in today’s scientific communities).

For Plato, language was the way to cognize the universe. The philosophy of language, which was primarily initiated by Plato in the Cratylus, still has not received answers to the questions settled by this great Greek thinker. In fact, it just offered various solutions formed in different conceptions and approaches in the ancient, scholastic, modern and postmodern periods. The questions raised by Plato in his dialogue have been continued in various nativistic theories of language, especially in works of Noam Chomsky. Language—as it is seen by Plato, i.e., as uniting our inner world with the outer world, is a significant feature of humankind, is still underinvestigated.

I investigate the idea of science elaborated by Edmund Husserl in his later works, first of all, in Cartesian Meditations and the Crisis of European Sciences. The first part of this investigation has been published in the paper: Edmunda Husserla idea nauki i projekt fenomenologii jako nauki ścisłej [Edmund Husserl’s Idea of Science and the Project of Phenomenology as a Strict Science], Filozofia i nauka. Studia filozoficzne i interdyscyplinarne, 2019, 7 (2), pp. 247–264. Husserl claims that the transformation of philosophy into a strict science, which is the basic aim of his intellectual enterprise, is connected with a reform of all the positive sciences. Positive science is closely related to philosophy—both they have a common grounding and ideal. The paper also compares Husserl’s project of philosophy as a fundamental science with the today trends in philosophy and the plurality of its schools, attitudes, fields of problems and methods.

This article considers Steven Pinker’s recent outlook presented in his book Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. The paper discusses not only current political and philosophical Pinker’s views on a considerable number of evidences in favor of mankind’s progress in the last period. The authors claims that Pinker’s views may serve as an antidote to the contemporary pessimism that is being spread inter alia by mass media. The reader is pulled into a debate regarding issues surrounding the contemporary state of being of the human race. This is something more than just pop-scientific excursion of a well-established specialist beyond his area of expertise, but a valuable aggregate of data enticing also to professionals from the realm of sociology, philosophy and politics. Above all Pinker’s voice should be regarded as a counterbalance to all-pervasive pejorism and however momentary relief.

The philosophical tradition defines the subject as a reflective being, in principle aware of its agency which makes it capable of making free decisions and taking responsibility for them. Agency, understood in this way, is clearly attributed only to people. However, the technological development of artificial cognitive enhancements and of increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence, that has been taken place in last few decades, casts doubts whether such an approach is not too anthropocentric. This doubt is indicated by some proponents of extending cognitive processes beyond the human brain; they argue for the need of appropriate extension of the subject as well. Moreover, there is an increasing number of proposals attributing agency to artifacts. In the first part of the article, I refer to the two most commonly used philosophical criteria distinguishing the subject of cognition from all information processing systems: being a reflective system, and being the subject of intentional stance. Next, I assess, from such a perspective, the attempts to attribute agency to both one-person extended cognitive systems and artificial systems, such as relatively autonomous computer programs. I argue that the gap between conceptions of the extended subject and the artificial subject, and the standard approach incline toward the usage of the term “agent” designating this phenomenon. The term is already widely used in cognitive science to designate any relatively autonomous information processing system performing a cognitive task. The need of the clear distinction between “the subject” (“subjectivity”) and “the agent” (“agency”) is especially noticeable in Polish, where the difference in meanings of these concepts is not so evident as in English. The awareness of the applying in cognitive science these two different notions of agency prevents against a conceptual misuse which could lead to erroneous explanations and predictions.

The article presents the main functions of aesthetic values (beauty, simplicity, symmetry) in the process of formulating, evaluating and accepting scientific theories in the work of physicist: 1) they motivate to undertake scientific research; (2) have a heuristic role which enables the direction of the search for a new theory to be selected; (3) are a criterion for choosing between empirically equivalent theories in the absence of empirical evidences and (4) sometimes constitute an epistemological obstacle. The basic thesis of the work is that aesthetic values, in addition to positive functions, also play a negative role in science, hindering the acceptance of new theories or leading to inefficient research. Too much weight on the aesthetic side of theory can pose a threat to the objectivity of scientific cognition.

The paper discusses three stages in the development of hunting. Initially hunting had an adaptive value and contributed to the process of evolution of humanoids. When animals were domesticated hunting rituals still constituted an important element of cultural identity and were subject to various transformations due to the pressure from the state and the church. In the contemporary world, under the influence of ecology we witness the emergence of a new ethics which changes man’s relationship to animals. Hunting cannot be reconciled with the morality of modern humanity. Some people demand a complete ban on hunting or that only bloodless tradition should be continued.

The current model of hunting economy, focused mainly on killing innumerable number of game species and finding joy and benefit in it, does not totally fulfil criteria of sustainable, ethical and rational management. This work provides an overview of evidences that the moral evil of hunting, together with the whole hunting culture, are not rationally justifiable. I am going to validate there is no reasonable argument for maintaining hunting economy and culture in the on-going, archaic condition. I maintain that therefore an immediate system reform of our hunting economy is necessary. There is a broad list of objection to the different aspects of hunting practices, which are presented and discussed in short in the paper. A reformed hunting institution, endowed with veterinary service, should guard some animals’ interests by different strategies of assuaging some conflicts among people and animals, as catching alive, flushing, separating or biosafety and professional reprocessing of infected corpses. The main recommendation for the ossified hunting tradition is the appeal for listening to the opinion of experts in natural sciences.

The new edition in Italian of the articles by the Polish microbiologist and philosopher Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) edited by Francesco Coniglione offers the opportunity for some considerations around this significant scholar. Fleck anticipates Kuhn’s ideas as well as those of the sociology of science. For him, any epistemology that does not take psychological and sociological methods into account, or that does not concern itself with economics, technology, art, and even politics, is an epistemology imaginabilis. Here we discuss some key points of the essays collected in the book, some observations taken from the rich introduction of the editor, and an inevitable question: Why has Fleck been neglected for so long?

Major works by Leon Koj deal with the issues of semiotics, logics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and ethics. Many of them refer to aspects of communication, however, this is not the main subject of his considerations. These references relate to the problems of satisfying: 1. the logical criteria, 2. the methodological criteria, 3. the ethical criteria, 4. the semiotic criteria. This article is dedicated to defining the semiotic criteria. It briefly covers basic semiotic notions present in Koj’s works. On the basis of Koj’s assumptions the concept of semiotics conditions for the realisation and functions of the communication process is defined.

The article consists of two parts. In the first one (introductory) I recall—following Edmund Husserl, Stanisław Ossowski and Adam Schaff—the main formulations of the “principle of transparency of the sign.” In these formulations it is usually said about (1) the transparency of the sign regarding objects denoted by the sign (denoted, designated and/or named), or (2) the transparency of the sign regarding its meaning (respectively, events, states of affairs and facts designated by the sign). However, as Husserl pointed out, one can also speak about (3) the transparency of the sign in relations to the activities and mental states of the sign’s users (senders and recipients). After all, only due to the transparency of the sign understood in this way, it is possible for people to communicate with each other, thus the sign can also has an expressive and communicative function. In turn, the second part of the article (essential) contains a reconstruction of the Leon Koj’s approach; Koj gave a consistently formalized form to the theory of sign based on the principle of transparency— the form of an axiomatized logical system (using Quine's formalism from his Mathematical Logic). One of Koj's main goals was also to indicate the close relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and even the primacy of pragmatics over semantics. Formal-logical tools have also shown that the theory of sign based on the principle of transparency neither contravene The Law of Non-Contradiction (at least in its psychological formulation), nor contain or imply semantic antinomies such us antinomy of the liar. Because it is a theory easily negotiable with Alfred Tarski’s theory of language levels.

In the paper, I present the views of Alina Motycka, a Polish philosopher of science who died in 2018. I place Motycka’s scholar activity in a historical context, relative to two traditions of the philosophy of science—its historical version signed by Thomas Kuhn, and the tradition of logical reconstruction of science which in the second half of the twentieth century was revived by the thought of Karl Popper. I believe that this historical situation forms the context in which Motycka shaped her view of the philosophy of science and, because of such a particular context, she has participated in it with her own problematizations. So, what constitutes the originality of her way? Two issues come to the fore here. The first is the reconstruction of the fundamental problem of the philosophy of science, which, according to Motycka, is the question of confronting two scientific theories, of which the earlier (T1) is replaced by a later and competitive one (T2). Motycka shows the inability of the epistemology of the second half of the 20th century to adequately capture this relationship. The reason for this is the lack of intellectual means to problematize the situation T1–T2. The second area of the author's interest is the issue of creativity in science. She was inspired by the theories of Carl G. Jung. In this context, it is of interest to use the philosophy of science of terms such as archetype and myth.