Piotr Kozak

How can Kant's philosophy inspire us to search for new solutions to problems in contemporary debates? Which Kantian ideas, if any, are still relevant? Should we re-evaluate Kantian ideas from the perspective of the current state of philosophy, and if so, in what way? Written in the year of his 300th birthday, this collection addresses these questions and examines the topicality of Kant's thought and its impact on the development of contemporary philosophy. With renowned scholars approaching Kant's philosophy from multiple perspectives spanning across Science and Metaphysics, Perspectives on Mind, Moral Faith and Rational Religion, and Enlightenment, the essays here demonstrate a still-live intertwinement of Kant's thought and ongoing philosophical debates. They shed new light on Kant's major influence on key thinkers of the 20th century, from Heidegger to Rawls, from Sellars to McDowell, and how his ideas continue to inform issues in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics, political and moral philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Speaking to the enduring relevance of Kant's legacy, this collection affirms Kant not only holds historical value as a philosopher of the past, but his ideas are still fruitful and offer valuable insights into philosophical problems today.

What does it mean to think with images? There is a well-established tradition of studying thought processes through the nature of language, and we know much more about thinking with language than about thinking with images. Piotr Kozak takes an important step towards rectifying this position. Presenting a unified theory of different types of images, such as diagrams, maps, technical drawings and photographs, Kozak argues that images provide a genuine and autonomous form of content and knowledge. In contrast to the propositional view of thinking and resemblance-based accounts, he puts forward a measurement-theoretic account of images as operations that exemplify measures, revealing the outcomes of measurement operations performed on a depicted situation. Bringing together insights from philosophy of science, picture-theory, cognitive science and cognitive psychology, this book demonstrates that we can only understand what an image is if we truly understand the role they play in our thought processes, challenging the prevailing view that the utility of images is only instrumental and cognitively inferior.

In this paper, I discuss the interpretation of the method of deconstruction in David J. Gunkel’s Deconstruction (MIT Press 2021). I focus on the relationship between deconstruction and truth. I hold that the concept of truth is indispensable for deconstruction since truth introduces correctness conditions for the deconstructive method. However, I claim that truth, being essential and primitive for deconstruction, is fundamentally inaccessible for being analyzed by the latter. ------------------------- Received: 19/10/2022. Reviewed: 13/12/2022. Accepted: 20/12/2022.

Celem artykułu jest omówienie zagadnienia treści i funkcji tzw. emocji epistemicznych, takich jak poczucie poprawności i niepoprawności. Twierdzę, że odpowiednie wyjaśnienie tych ostatnich powinno uwzględnić ich nie-metareprezentacyjny, niedykursywny i pozbawiony kryteriów charakter. W nawiązaniu do zagadnienia tzw. normatywności pierwotnej i problemu kierowania się regułą twierdzę, że możemy powiązać emocje epistemiczne z teorią znaczenia i argumentuję, że pewna klasa emocji epistemicznych, tj. poczucie poprawności i niepoprawności, stanowi warunek konieczny znaczenia.

The format of mental representation is the way information is organized in the mind. The discussion surrounding the format of representation addresses the problem of what representational primitives are and the rules of information processing. In philosophy, the discussion is dominated by the distinction between analog and digital representational systems. It is thought that this distinction can bring us closer to an understanding of the nature of perceptual and discursive representations. I argue that the analog-digital distinction cannot meet that expectation. The analog-digital distinction is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain the distinction between perceptual and discursive representations. I propose an alternative interpretation of the concept of representational format which provides us a better understanding of the difference between iconic and discursive representations. I explain the differences between formats of representations in terms of differences in information processing. I demonstrate, how this alternative interpretation of the concept of the representational format can explain the constraints put on the contents of representational systems.

My main aim is to answer the question regarding the relationship between concepts and sensuous cognition on the basis of Kant’s critical philosophy. I argue that concepts are a part of the sensuous experience. The key question regarding the shape of this relation and the way concepts interconnect with sensibility are formulated in terms of the so-called rule-following problem that I try to resolve with reference to the function of the so-called power of judgment and Kant’s Third Critique. I argue that the Kantian answer to the rule-following problem is not based only on the rejection of the necessity of a metaphysical criterion, since concepts and intuitions are epistemologically indiscriminable, and the rejection of an epistemological criterion, since the possibility of cognition and meaning presupposes a subjective feeling of agreement between singular and general representations. I claim that the possibility of rule-following presupposes having an ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant rules.

W pracy Sztuka i myśl staram się argumentować, że sztuka jest formą myślenia. Rozumiem przez to, po pierwsze, że możemy o sztuce myśleć jako o pewnej klasie operacji pojęciowych, gdzie operacje pojęciowe należy interpretować jako bezpośrednie rozpoznawania poprawności realizacji danej dyspozycji poznawczej lub praktycznej. Po drugie, argumentuję, że sztukę możemy rozumieć jako pewien sposób widzenia i myślenia. Twierdzę, że sztuka ukazuje to, w jaki sposób możemy widzieć i myśleć o danych przedstawieniach, mówiąc ściślej, sztuka wyznacza reguły i pojęcia, za pomocą których widzimy i myślimy. Po trzecie, twierdzę, że tak jak logika uczy formułować wnioski, tak sztuka uczy widzieć, a bez sztuki stajemy się w metaforycznym sensie ślepi. Literatura piękna, malarstwo czy muzyka czynią nas w pewnym nietrywialnym sensie bogatszymi, ponieważ pozwalają spostrzegać świat z różnych perspektyw. Ukazują nam nieoczywiste aspekty danej rzeczywistości społecznej, zewnętrznej czy wewnętrznej, ucząc tego, w jaki sposób spostrzegać daną rzeczywistość i pozwalając nam spojrzeć na świat z perspektywy innego podmiotu i innych czasów. Czy jest to wiele? Trudno od jakiejkolwiek dziedziny wymagać więcej. Piotr Kozak

The aim of this paper is to present Giorgio Agamben's biopolitical theory in the context of the relationship between the logic of sovereignty and 'bare life'. The first part of the paper presents the foundations of his political thought and, in connection with Carl Schmitt's idea of sovereignty, considers the problem of defining the category of the state of emergency. According to Agamben the principle of sovereignty is constructed on the integrating exclusion of bare life, which is represented by the homo sacer, as one who may be killed but cannot be sacrificed. This will be the central figure of Agamben's thought and also the topic of the next part of this paper. According to the author of Profanation, the figure of the homo sacer as excluded from both secular and sacred law, reaches its highest form in the Nazi concentration camp, which is the space of legal authority where no law exists. In the last part of the paper we will argue in favor of Agamben, that the camp represents a state of emergency and also constitutes a paradigm of western biopolitics.