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

The Methods of Normativity

This essay is an examination of the relationship between phenomenology and analytic method in the philosophy of law. It proceeds by way of a case study, the requirement of compliance in Raz’s theory of mandatory norms. Proceeding in this way provides a degree of specificity that is otherwise neglected in the relevant literature on method. Drawing on insights from the philosophy of art and cognitive neuroscience, it is argued that the requirement of compliance is beset by a range of epistemological difficulties. The implications of these difficulties are then reviewed for method and normativity in practical reason. A topology of normativity emerges nearer the end of the paper, followed by a brief examination of how certain normative categories must satisfy distinct burdens of proof

Creationism and evolution

In Tower of Babel, Robert Pennock wrote that “defenders of evolution would help their case immeasurably if they would reassure their audience that morality, purpose, and meaning are not lost by accepting the truth of evolution.” We first consider the thesis that the creationists’ movement exploits moral concerns to spread its ideas against the theory of evolution. We analyze their arguments and possible reasons why they are easily accepted. Creationists usually employ two contradictive strategies to expose the purported moral degradation that comes with accepting the theory of evolution. On the one hand they claim that evolutionary theory is immoral. On the other hand creationists think of evolutionary theory as amoral. Both objections come naturally in a monotheistic view. But we can find similar conclusions about the supposed moral aspects of evolution in non-religiously inspired discussions. Meanwhile, the creationism-evolution debate mainly focuses — understandably — on what constitutes good science. We consider the need for moral reassurance and analyze reassuring arguments from philosophers. Philosophers may stress that science does not prescribe and is therefore not immoral, but this reaction opens the door for the objection of amorality that evolution — as a naturalistic world view at least — supposedly endorses. We consider that the topic of morality and its relation to the acceptance of evolution may need more empirical research

Hilary Putnam on the philosophy of logic and mathematics

This paper focuses on Putnam’s conception of logical truth as grounded in his picture of mathematical practice and ontology. Putnam’s 1971 book Philosophy of Logic came one year later than Quine’s homonymous volume. In the first section, I compare these two Philosophies of Logic which exemplify realist-nominalist viewpoints in a most conspicuous way. The next section examines Putnam’s views on modality, moving from the modal qualification of his intuitive conception to his official generalized non-modal second-order set-theoretic concept of logical truth. In the third section, I emphasize how Putnam´s “mathematics as modal logic” departs from Quine’s “reluctant Platonism”. I also suggest a complementary view of Platonism and modalism showing them perhaps interchangeable but underlying different stages of research processes that make up a rich and dynamic mathematical practice. The final, more speculative section, argues for the pervasive platonistic conception enhancing the aims of inquiry in the practice of the working mathematician.Este artículo estudia la concepción de Putnam de verdad lógica que emana de su visión de la práctica de la matemática y de su ontología. Philosophy of Logic, el libro de 1971 de Putnam surge un año más tarde que el homónimo de Quine. En la primera sección, se comparan estas dos Filosofías de la Lógica que ejemplifican los puntos de vista del realismo y del nominalismo de modo conspicuo. La siguiente sección examina el enfoque de la modalidad de Putnam, que va desde la cualificación modal de su caracterización intuitiva de validez lógica a su concepción oficial generalizada no-modal conjuntista de segundo orden. La tercera sección subraya el modo en que «la matemática como lógica modal» de Putnam se distancia del «Platonism a regañadientes» de Quine. Aquí se sugiere una visión complementaria del Platonism y del modalismo, los cuales, aunque quizás intercambiables, se muestran subyaciendo a los diferentes estadios del proceso de investigación de una práctica de la matemática rica y dinámica. La sección final, más especulativa, conjetura algunas razones de la persistente concepción platónica implícita en la práctica del matemáticoThe research for this paper was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity and FEDER via the research projects FFI 2013-41415-P and FFI2017-82534-PS

Apperceptive patterning: Artefaction, extensional beliefs and cognitive scaffolding

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog)

Predicativity and parametric polymorphism of Brouwerian implication

A common objection to the definition of intuitionistic implication in the Proof Interpretation is that it is impredicative. I discuss the history of that objection, argue that in Brouwer's writings predicativity of implication is ensured through parametric polymorphism of functions on species, and compare this construal with the alternative approaches to predicative implication of Goodman, Dummett, Prawitz, and Martin-L\"of.Comment: Added further references (Pistone, Poincar\'e, Tabatabai, Van Atten