Why Polish philosophy does not exist

Why have Polish philosophers fared so badly as concerns their admission into the pantheon of Continental Philosophers? Why, for example, should Heidegger and Derrida be included in this pantheon, but not Ingarden or Tarski? Why, to put the question from another side, should there be so close an association in Poland between philosophy and logic, and between philosophy and science? We distinguish a series of answers to this question, which are dealt with under the following headings: (a) the role of socialism; (b) the disciplinary association between philosophy and mathematics; (c) the influence of Austrian philosophy in general and of Brentanian philosophy in particular; (d) the serendipitous role of Twardowski; (e) the role of Catholicism. The conclusion of the paper is that there is no such thing as 'Polish philosophy' because philosophy in Poland is philosophy per se; it is part and parcel of the mainstream of world philosophy simply because, in contrast to French or German philosophy, it meets international standards of training, rigour, professionalism and specialization

From 'scientific revolution' to 'unscientific revolution': an analysis of approaches to the history of generative linguistics

This paper is devoted to the challenge that generative linguistics poses for linguistic historiography. As a first step, it presents a systematic overview of 19 approaches to the history of generative linguistics. Second, it analyzes the approaches overviewed by asking and answering the following questions: (a) To what extent and how are the views at issue biased? (b) What central topics do the approaches discuss, how successfully do they tackle them, and how do the various standpoints converge and diverge? (c) How do the approaches relate to general trends in the philosophy and history of science? The concluding step summarizes our findings with respect to Chomsky’s impact on linguistic historiography

An Introduction to Ontology

Analytical philosophy of the last one hundred years has been heavily influenced by a doctrine to the effect that one can arrive at a correct ontology by paying attention to certain superficial (syntactic) features of first-order predicate logic as conceived by Frege and Russell. More specifically, it is a doctrine to the effect that the key to the ontological structure of reality is captured syntactically in the ‘Fa’ (or, in more sophisticated versions, in the ‘Rab’) of first-order logic, where ‘F’ stands for what is general in reality and ‘a’ for what is individual. Hence “f(a)ntology”. Because predicate logic has exactly two syntactically different kinds of referring expressions—‘F’, ‘G’, ‘R’, etc., and ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc.—so reality must consist of exactly two correspondingly different kinds of entity: the general (properties, concepts) and the particular (things, objects), the relation between these two kinds of entity being revealed in the predicate-argument structure of atomic formulas in first-order logic

Does the Generality of Philosophy of Education Ensure its Triviality?

I will start by drawing attention to two assumptions about Philosophy of Education. These two assumptions underpin the belief that Philosophy of Education is a subject worthy of study by beginning teachers. The assumptions are: (a) Philosophy of Education discovers and develops substantial and informative general principles and theories about education (hereafter the content assumption. (b) These general principles and theories are applied by teachers in order to help solve some of their professional problems (hereafter the application assumption). In this paper I mainly will be canvassing reasons for doubting both of these assumptions. Then I will briefly consider some implications for philosophers of education if these two assumptions are indeed fals

MW 720 Mission to Muslim Peoples

Readings B 741-753 BP 1-399 BV 2625-2626 DS 35+ HQ 1170 PJ 6000+ Islamic philosophy Islam, in general Missions to Muslims Historical, geographical, and political aspects Women in Islam Arabic language and literaturehttps://place.asburyseminary.edu/syllabi/3958/thumbnail.jp

Home of the Owl? Kantian Reflections on Philosophy at University

The focus of this paper is on Kant and on a text which has often been drawn upon when talking about the present situation of philosophy at university, namely his 'The Conflict of the Faculties' of 1798. Kant’s claims, though not applicable to the contemporary situation directly, can indeed be worked out in a way which can assign a distinct and clearly identifiable role for university-based philosophy. I need to emphasize, though, that I am not suggesting that this is the only way Kant’s thoughts in this respect can be adapted to and utilized for such an account. Quite the contrary, Kant’s text offers a manifold of highly important options here. In my article I will seek to establish the following claims: a) Kant, in his later years, which therefore amounts to something like his “mature” position, subscribed to a conception of a public use of reason which mainly referred to the Faculties of Philosophy at universities. b) Kant’s dismissal of philosophy according to the school conception of it must not be taken as a dismissal of academic philosophy altogether. Philosophy practiced at university by professionals is vital for Kant to build philosophy as a fully worked out discipline and to answer questions revolving around the issue of the compatibility of the theoretical standpoint and Kant’s own moral theory. c) Neither a) nor b) can be immediately applied to the contemporary situation we find ourselves in. Combining elements of a) and b), however, a possible route for the actualization of Kant’s ideas may open up. At least one of the functions for which university-based philosophy is uniquely qualified is the assessment of the implications of progress in the natural sciences for the conception of a moral standpoint in general, and as such for a core element of our self-understanding as rational beings

Future cosmic microwave background delensing with galaxy surveys

The primordial B-modes component of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization is a promising experimental dataset to probe the inflationary paradigm. B-modes are indeed a direct consequence of the presence of gravitational waves in the early universe. However, several secondary effects in the low redshift universe will produce \textit{non-primordial} B-modes. In particular, the gravitational interactions of CMB photons with large-scale structures will distort the primordial E-modes, adding a lensing B-mode component to the primordial signal. Removing the lensing component ("delensing") will then be necessary to constrain the amplitude of the primordial gravitational waves. Here we examine the role of current and future large-scale structure surveys in a multi-tracers approach to CMB delensing. We find that, in general, galaxy surveys should be split into tomographic bins as this can increase the reduction of lensing B-modes by $\sim 25\%$ in power in the most futuristic case. Ongoing or recently completed CMB experiments (CMB-S2) will particularly benefit from large-scale structure tracers that, once properly combined, will have a better performance than a CMB internal reconstruction. With the decrease of instrumental noise, the lensing B-modes power removed using CMB internal reconstruction alone will rapidly increase. Nevertheless, optical galaxy surveys will still play an important role even for CMB S4. In particular, an LSST-like survey can a achieve a delensing performance comparable to a 3G CMB experiment but with entirely different systematics. This redundancy will be essential to demonstrate the robustness against systematics of an eventual detection of primordial B-modes.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. This is part of a dissertation submitted for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Astrophysics at the University of Chicag

"What was Molyneux's Question A Question About?"

Molyneux asked whether a newly sighted person could distinguish a sphere from a cube by sight alone, given that she was antecedently able to do so by touch. This, we contend, is a question about general ideas. To answer it, we must ask (a) whether spatial locations identified by touch can be identified also by sight, and (b) whether the integration of spatial locations into an idea of shape persists through changes of modality. Posed this way, Molyneux’s Question goes substantially beyond question (a), about spatial locations, alone; for a positive answer to (a) leaves open whether a perceiver might cross-identify locations, but not be able to identify the shapes that collections of locations comprise. We further emphasize that MQ targets general ideas so as to distinguish it from corresponding questions about experiences of shape and about the property of tangible (vs. visual) shape. After proposing a generalized formulation of MQ, we extend earlier work (“Many Molyneux Questions,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 2020) by showing that MQ does not admit a single answer across the board. Some integrative data-processes transfer across modalities; others do not. Seeing where and how such transfer succeeds and fails in individual cases has much to offer to our understanding of perception and its modalities