We are concerned with formal models of reasoning under uncertainty. Many approaches to this problem are known in the literature e.g. Dempster-Shafer theory [29], [42], bayesian-based reasoning [21], [29], belief networks [29], many-valued logics and fuzzy logics [6], non-monotonic logics [29], neural network logics [14]. We propose rough mereology developed by the last two authors [22-25] as a foundation for approximate reasoning about complex objects. Our notion of a complex object includes, among others, proofs understood as schemes constructed in order (...) to support within our knowledge assertions/hypotheses about reality described by our knowledge incompletely. (shrink)

We are concerned with formal models of reasoning under uncertainty. Many approaches to this problem are known in the literature e.g. Dempster-Shafer theory [29], [42], bayesian-based reasoning [21], [29], belief networks [29], many-valued logics and fuzzy logics [6], non-monotonic logics [29], neural network logics [14]. We propose rough mereology developed by the last two authors [22-25] as a foundation for approximate reasoning about complex objects. Our notion of a complex object includes, among others, proofs understood as schemes constructed in order (...) to support within our knowledge assertions/hypotheses about reality described by our knowledge incompletely. (shrink)

Masaryk’s philosophical approach to reality is largely characterised by its orientation towards the positivism of Auguste Comte, which Masaryk sought to offset with the psychologism of J. S. Mill. The combination of these positivist approaches became the positive starting point for Masaryk’s ethics. But that was not the only influence on his ethics. Masaryk’s German translation of Hume’s book, titled Eine Untersuchung über die Prinzipien der Moral von David Hume (1883), reveals that the main stimuli that shaped Masaryk’s ideas about (...) ethics came from David Hume. Although the need for scientific evidence became a fundamental principle of Masaryk’s thought, the need to objectively anchor ethics in rational theism necessitated in this area a departure from his positivist outlook. Masaryk’s lectures on practical philosophy attest to this fact. The reason for his departure from a positivist stance was due to the metaphysical nature of his concept of psychology. (shrink)

According to metaphysical coherentism, grounding relations form an interconnected system in which things ground each other and nothing is ungrounded. This potentially viable view’s logical territory remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I describe that territory by articulating four varieties of metaphysical coherentism. I do not argue for any variety in particular. Rather, I aim to show that not all issues which might be raised against coherentism will be equally problematic for all the versions of that view, which features far (...) more nuance and diversity than is typically ascribed to it. (shrink)

The article puts forward the following question: do we, although the late Neoplatonic antique tradition perceived both Plato and Aristotle as the theologists par excellence, have to do with a justified historical judgement or the two authors in question, while searching for a long and authoritative philosophical tradition to their reasoning, do not even hesitate to make a move towards mystification. In the process of analyzing the Plato's and Aristotle's writings it was found out that in case of Plato, we (...) are exposed to theology in terms of 'talking about gods'. Additionally, Plato himself formulated the term 'theology'. The philosopher still remains only on the level of the 'theology of poets' or, at most, 'political theology' but not 'philosophical theology'. In case of Aristotle, however, we can refer to 'philosophical theology' in the full meaning of the term. (shrink)

'What is real?' has been one of the key questions of philosophy since its beginning in antiquity. But it is not just a question that philosophers ask. This Very Short Introduction discusses what reality is by looking at a variety of arguments, theories, and thought-experiments from philosophy, physics, and cognitive science.

This paper discusses ἐπιβολαὶ τῆς διανοίας, which later Epicureans are supposed to have elevated to a fourth criterion of truth to complement perceptions, preconceptions and feelings. By examining Epicurus’ extant writings, the paper distinguishes three different senses of the term: ‘thought in general’, ‘act of attention’ and ‘mental perception’. It is argued that only the sense ‘mental perception’ yields a plausible reading of ἐπιβολαί as a criterion of truth. The paper then turns to the textual evidence on ἐπιβολαί in later (...) authors. While the term ἐπιβολή is not used by Cicero, Lucretius and Philodemus in the sense of mental perception, it is argued that this still is the most plausible way of understanding ἐπιβολή as a criterion of truth. (shrink)

Bayesian model selection has frequently been the focus of philosophical inquiry (e.g., Forster, Br J Philos Sci 46:399–424, 1995; Bandyopadhyay and Boik, Philos Sci 66:S390–S402, 1999; Dowe et al., Br J Philos Sci 58:709–754, 2007). This paper argues that Bayesian model selection procedures are very diverse in their inferential target and their justification, and substantiates this claim by means of case studies on three selected procedures: MML, BIC and DIC. Hence, there is no tight link between Bayesian model selection and (...) Bayesian philosophy. Consequently, arguments for or against Bayesian reasoning based on properties of Bayesian model selection procedures should be treated with great caution. (shrink)

The problem of free will has persistently resisted a solution throughout centuries. There is reason to believe that new elements need to be introduced into the analysis in order to make progress. In the present physicalist approach, these elements are emergence and information theory in relation to universal limits set by quantum physics. Furthermore the common, but vague, characterization of free will as "being able to act differently" is, in the spirit of Carnap, rephrased into an explicatum more suitable for (...) formal analysis. It is argued that the mind is an ontologically open system; a causal high-level system, the future of which cannot be reduced to the states of its associated low-level neural systems, not even if it is rendered physically closed. A positive answer to the question of free will is subsequently outlined. (shrink)

_Seeking Understanding: The Lifelong Pursuit to Build the Scientific Mind_ explores the multiple ways in which the human mind grows in understanding of the self and the world as an essential dimension of transformative learning along the lifespan.

The Self of the Homeric man can be called a weak one. Men depicted in the Iliad and in the Odyssey are determined by fate, gods’ plans and interventions, and their own emotional impulses perceived as independent forces. Hermann Schmitz links this weakness of the Self with the character of the Homeric man’s experience of the body. According to Schmitz the perception of the body as directly experienced, i.e. as Leib, constitutes the Homeric idea of man. This article stresses the (...) point that the Homeric man cannot be considered as being directed only by the external forces and that the notion of Leib, however helpful, does not suffice to describe him. Being directed and being leiblich the Homeric man is also independent. He is able to master the impulses of his emotions, his actions seem to originate from himself, he can be regarded as a unity coordinated by his Self. The independence of the Homeric man is unstable: it can be said that it appears and disappears. This status of the human position seems to pose problems for a reader who is accustomed to modern notions of personal freedom, free will or choice. May that be a chance for us in our attempts to understand ourselves? (shrink)

Not only in Polish philosophical literature non-Christian Neoplatonism of Late Antiquity still lie in the unexplored gap between two domain of the history of philosophy, that of ancient one and that of medieval. The paper has had two aims: to briefly present Proclus' activity at Athens as a commentator on Plato, especially as a commentator on the "Timaeus" and on the "Parmenides", and to set forth the statement, which is hoped that it has been sufficiently proved through philological and philosophical (...) analyses of selected quotation from Proclus, Marinus and Plotinus, that for Proclus, such as for the rest of Neoplatonists of that period, above mentioned activity (i.e. explaining Plato by writing huge commentaries) was essentially a way of expressing new ideas and their own original thought. The author suggest that some of the Proclus' commentaries on Plato might have simply into being as a kind of notes or records of the meetings at the 'Academy', where Proclus with his students was reading and explicating some dialogues selected out of all the Platonic writing. The obvious evidence of that is the structure of Proclean commentaries and especially such a fact that he is quoting and analyzing Platonic texts line by line. The paper also contains the Polish translation of the part of the book III of Proclus' "Commentary on Plato's Parmenides" as a kind of textual illustration of its theses. (shrink)

Starting from an abstract sketch of scenarios for philosophical reception stimulated by disagreement and school rivalry, part one of this chapter highlights the case of an older, marginalized position that tries to reinsert itself into the debate through radical modernization of its terminology and argumentative strategies and thereby triggers various forms of orthodox response. Part two discusses examples for this scenario extracted from some of the remains of the Peripatetic ethical literature of the late Hellenistic era (Critolaus, Arius Didymus). Challenging (...) the traditional picture of contamination and decline in the development of the Peripatetic school, the chapter demonstrates how the reception of Stoic concepts and strategies by Peripatetic modernizers and the subsequent more orthodox approaches created an intellectually fruitful dynamic exemplifying different styles of reception. (shrink)

The epistemic argument against epiphenomenalism aims to prove that even if epiphenomenalism is true, its adherents are not able to justify their inferential beliefs. This would mean that they cannot know that they are right which is a self-stultifying consequence. I elaborate on this problem and then present an updated version of epiphenomenalism based on property dualism. I argue that this position is capable of refuting the conclusion of the epistemic argument even in spite of accepting its essential assumptions. This (...) was made possible by an upgraded property exemplification account of events. I also argue against a view which, if true, gives substantial support to the epistemic argument: that a belief justified by other beliefs is knowledge only if it is caused by those beliefs in virtue of their contents. (shrink)

Danksagung -- Abkurzungen -- Einleitung -- Kapitel I. Eingangssynchronopse, 1561-1679 -- Kapitel II. Institutio oratoria -- Kapitel III. Meprise und wertschatzung von rhetorik-rhetorikkonzeptionen -- Kapitel IV. Stilpaten, philologenfreunde -- Kapitel V. Bilingualismus -- Kapitel VI. Lekture -- Kapitel VII. Dichtung -- Kapitel VIII. Padagogik -- Kapitel IX. Schreibmethode -- Kapitel X. Schluwort.

Kann man Jonas als Technikphilosophen lesen? Obgleich Jonas’ Praktische Philosophie, insbesondere sein Spätwerk Das Prinzip Verantwortung und die sich anschließenden Schriften auf der Diagnose eines ›technologischen Zeitalters‹ und eines durch die Technikentwicklung induzierten Epochenbruchs der Menschheitsentwicklung basiert, bleibt sein Technikverständnis doch merkwürdig implizit. Eine systematisch entwickelte Technikphilosophie hat Jonas nicht vorgelegt.

Commentary on the Kleist’s Short Story “On the Marionette Theatre”.

Crupi and Tentori (2012) propose a condition of adequacy for any Bayesian measure of explanatory power, which they call Explanatory Justice. They criticize a measure recently defended by Schupbach and Sprenger(2011) for failing to satisfy this condition, and they offer a new explanatorily just measure of explanatory power. In this paper, we investigate Explanatory Justice’s merits as a condition of adequacy. We offer three arguments against this condition, thus supporitng the idea that a measure of explanatory power should rather be (...) unjust. Then, in order to ensure that the debate advances beyond a mere battle of intuitions, we offer some new results derived from the empirical study described in (Schupbach, 2011a). All of this strengthens the case for Schupbach and Sprenger’s measure while simultaneously posing new challenges to Crupi and Tentori’s alternative proposal. (shrink)

This paper examines the classification of desires that the Epicureans offer in their writings. It surveys the extant textual evidence for the classification and discusses the relationship between natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, and unnatural and unnecessary desires. It argues that while the practical significance of the Epicurean classification is clear, which desires fall into which class is not. The paper suggests the reason for this may be that the Epicureans acknowledge some variability in their concept of human nature, (...) arguing for a functional reading of the Epicurean classification of desires. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, T. G. Masaryk presented his national programme. This vision of modern Czech society rested on the ideals of humanity, thus infusing the national ethos with a universal dimension. The significance of T. G. Masaryk's thought is investigated by current Czech thinkers in this volume.

This paper briefly discusses the relations between logic and metalogic in history. Metalogic is understood as a reflection on logic in its various senses, particularly sensu stricto (formal, mathematical) and sensu largo (formal logic plus semantic plus methodology of science). It is shown that metalogic in its contemporary understanding arose after mathematical logic had become a mature discipline. Special passage is devoted to metalogic in Poland. The last part of the paper discussed so-called logocentric predicament.