Zbigniew Orbik

In the paper, I present the achievements of the outstanding female representative of the Lvov‑Warsaw School Izydora Dąmbska in the field of philosophy of science. The following issues are analysed: the concept of the philosophy of science, the question of irrationalism in scientific cognition, the problem of scientific laws, and the meaning and role of analogy in science. Following the development of the issues classified as the philosophy of science in Dąmbska’s works, it is easy to notice that she takes a realistic view as far as the concept of knowledge is concerned. However, she also has a tendency to emphasize the importance of subjective factors and the role of so‑called operators in scientific cognition.

Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenological philosophy, developed the concept of the so-called pure transcendental consciousness. The author of the article asks whether the concept of consciousness understood this way can constitute a model for AI consciousness. It should be remembered that transcendental consciousness is the result of the use of the phenomenological method, the essence of which is referring to experience (“back to things themselves”). Therefore, one can legitimately ask whether the consciousness that AI can achieve can possess the characteristics attributed by Husserl to pure transcendental consciousness. The answer to such questions seems to be negative because AI, as created by humans, can only operate in the field of phenomena. Human intelligence, however, is capable of operating at the ontological level. In the face of difficulties in understanding the phenomenon of consciousness on a scientific basis, the question arises about the possibility of using the phenomenological concept of consciousness developed by Husserl as a starting point in analyzes aimed at answering the question about AI consciousness (The aim of the article is not to discuss in detail the contemporary state of research on consciousness. Therefore, many results currently achieved mainly in the field of neuroscience are omitted. It is just about indicating the possible application of Husserl’s transcendental concept of consciousness in research on AI consciousness).

Izydora Da˛mbska was one of the most outstanding representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School and a disciple of both the School’s founder Kazimierz Twardowski and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Interest in the School was the result of Twardowski’s program of scientific philosophy, which was adopted by the vast majority of his students. This program assumed that the basic condition for practicing philosophy in a scientific manner is the precise use of language by a philosopher. One of the scholars who devoted most attention to language was Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. Da˛mbska accepted that the philosophical program of the School was opposed to the trend shared by many contemporary schools at the time which belonged to the so called current of linguistic philosophy. According to this trend, language is the only object of philosophical investigation. The analysis of Ajdukiewicz’s concept of language is one of her most interesting achievements in the domain of philosophy of language. This concept, called by Da˛mbska ‘the immanent concept of language’, is the basis of Ajdukiewicz’s well-known radical conventionalism.

The article presents ethical work of an outstanding representative of the philosophical Lvov-Warsaw School – Izydora Dąmbska. The conviction that philosophy is a science and is axiologically grounded was inherited from her teacher Kazimierz Twardowski. According to this point of view, being a philosopher means realization of both intellectual and moral values. The text gives an insight into the ways Dąmbska understands the term ethics and her notion of the most fundamental terms of axiological ethics: assessment, values, norms. The four distinguished by her issues of scientific ethics: the issue of ethical criteria, sources of morality, moral foundation and range of ethics are also examined. Dąmbska’s achievements in the history of ethics, her reflections on ethics’ independence from religion and on teaching ethics at school are also presented.