"PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE"
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The content of No 1-2, 1999
Leon Koj
Towards methods of philosophy
The paper contains introductory remarks and is conceived of
as a part of a larger project.
First of all decisions are made as to the choice of an adequate
concept of philosophy (which does not exclude other concepts
of this field of interest). Among others philosophy as a very general domain
of considerations is contrasted to logic and mathematics. Methods
for philosophy are described in the way the natural sciences do it:
methods are schemes for repeatable actions which in similar
circumstances result in similar or identical outcomes irrespective
of the philosopher's (the performer's) views. Philosophers very
often neglect repeatability and similarity of effects. Kazimierz
Twardowski's method of the elimination of contradiction (cf. his
paper "On the so-called relative truths") is put forward as a paragon
of further important methods of philosophy.
Ryszard Kleszcz
What does "justice" mean?
The paper presents three essential meanings of the notion of
"justice": (1) justice as a feature of human acts, (2) justice
as a feature of human beings, and (3) justice as a feature of the structure of distribution.
The second part of the paper shows that justice as value
may be in conflict with other values such as benevolence or honesty.
Witold Strawinski
Variants of scientism
The views described as "scientistic" often find expression in the
form of evaluations or normative, and usually recommend cognitive
procedures and methods patterned after natural sciences. Those who
address the scientistic directives to philosophers can be recognized as
representatives of the metaphilosophical scientism: they promote
"a scientific philosophy" and assume primarily the methodological-imitative
attitude towards (natural) science. The one who addresses the scientistic
directives to scholars in the humanities and social science can be recognized
as a representative of metascientific type of scientism, promoting "the unity
of science" and assuming the methodological-normative attitude towards the mentioned
disciplines.
The term "scientism" also often represents a specific outlook on life
understood as "popular scientistic philosophy": it addresses the
scientistic directives to all members of a society, and promotes convictions
concerning an exceptional public mission of science which should
have not only a cognitive, but also a practical character. The
central appeal of the article is following: do not confuse the
metascientific and metaphilosophical scientism - with the "popular" one!
Jacek Wojtysiak
Metaphysics in logic
The paper contains a survey of existence problems in the folowing calculi of formal logic:
calculi of classes, syllogistics, classic predicate calculus, Lesniewski's
ontology, quantificational modal calculi, quantificational tense
logics, sentential calculi. The particular attention is given to
metaphysical (ontological) presuppositions and commitments of logical calculi
especially to the problems of empty set, existential axiom
(axiom of the non-emptiness of universe of discourse), existential
operators (quantifiers and functors), possible worlds, temporal
predicates and operators, objects of sentences.
Witold C. Kowalski
To read or not to read - this is a question. The principles of the selections
among scientific publications
The considerations presented in the paper are an attempt to prove
that free access to all scientific publications is evaluated on
some world scientific forum. Scientists have to make selections
among scientific publications again and again. In order to economise
the scientist' time it is proposed to execute selections in three phases:
the first phase - preliminary - even without seeing the relevant
publications, and only on the basis of the title, author's name,
names of publishers and journals, list of references, blurbs etc.; the
second phase (with the relevant publications at hand) - the verification of
results of the first preliminary phase on the basis of rough reviewes
of the publications; the third phase - selective - the verification
of results of the second phase by attentive studies of selected publications.
Zdzislawa Piatek
Do cats require naturalization? A several polemic remarks on
Tadeusz Skalski's essay "Cats, demons, spells and ... naturalization".
The reason for my disagreement with Tadeusz Skalski is my objection
to his attempts at demonizing the problems connected with
the functioning of mind as presented in his essay. In my opinion,
the inclination of the author towards demonization stems from
the fact that he accepts an extremely limited "natural picture of the world",
a picture which is both reductionistic and mechanistic.
It is no wonder then that neither intentionality nor the usage of language
fits into this picture and - what amounts to the same thing -
can be naturalized. Both seem to be magic phenomena. Moreover,
the range of "purely natural" categories in this picture seems to
be so limited that even the behaviour of a cat which comes to his
master when he whistles for it - i.e. which knows what the
whistling means - cannot be described. The behaviour of chimpanzees
which have an inborn knowledge that snakes are dangerous and should be avoided
cannot be described on this view either. Hence, it is no surprise
that each theory of how mind is functioning which has been
constructed by a natural philosopher has a status of a "magic theory".
Archives: The letters of Stanislaw Lesniewski
to Kazimierz Twardowski
