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1

False Democracy

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Holowka J.

Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria

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2006

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vol. 15

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issue 4(60)

301-319

EN

JJ.S. Mill criticizes all political systems that rely too much on direct majority rule. Political rationality can be achieved only if voters cease to lend their support to political parties and try instead to find in their numbers such individuals that can best defend their conception of functional political organization. Voting for them will create 'a true' democracy. A 'false' democracy will continue to prevail, however, if political voting will be used as an opportunity to bring to parliament groups that are motivated by their own economic or social interests. They will tend to form in the legislative body an internal majority of the selected house members who will do their best to impose their rule on others. To stop this practice Mill proposes several remedies: plurality of votes, tests of literacy, limited expenditure for election campaigns, etc. He speaks in favor of a voting scheme proposed by Thomas Hare, which favors various kinds of minorities. The project is not described by Mill with the precision that it deserves. The author tries to make up for this deficiency.

2

The Hell of Having to Face the Truth

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Holowka J.

Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria

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2005

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vol. 14

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issue 4(56)

317-331

EN

Two different interpretations of 'Huis clos' are proposed and both are presented as plausible. In the first reading the three protagonists are viewed as victims of the traditional, repressive society. Their difficulties are a result of social discrimination and stubborn adherence to stale morality of sham decency. In the second reading the three characters are viewed as selfish and inconsistent individuals who eagerly satisfy their desires and shamelessly neglect other people's needs. Now their difficulties are fully deserved as a punishment for cultivation of false ideas about their remarkable achievements, grand roles and fictitious obligations to others. Though both reading are plausible, the author argues that the second is more interesting and more characteristic of Sartre's philosophy. To sustain this claim the author offers a new, and rather unorthodox, interpretation of the concepts of 'etre-pour-autrui' and 'etre-pour-soi'. He concludes by presenting Sartre as a champion of an intellectualist ethics based on the concept of authentic life and a critical scrutiny of human motives.

3

Mental Entities

100%

Holowka J.

Przegląd Filozoficzny. Nowa Seria

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2008

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vol. 17

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issue 4(68)

171-190

EN

It seems with respect to mental entities that W.V.O. Quine was a reductionist, eliminativist, anti-mentalist and physicalist. He was a reductionist because he held that mental entities are physical phenomena in disguise. He was an eliminativist because he claimed that the scientific image of the world makes no room for such entities whose functioning is not connected with the use of energy. His philosophy was an anti-mentalist because he argued that mental phenomena are to be studies through behavior. He was a physicalist because in his opinion sciences should strive to present a uniform description of the world in all its aspects by referring to physical facts. If we take a closer look at his writings, however, all these assumptions are borne out only in part. The reductionist postulate is moderated by the opinion that theorems of different sciences are not fully intertranslatable. His eliminativism must cope with the argument that unmitigated physicalism obliterates the difference between human beings and zombies. Anti-mentalism is seriously undermined by the role he assigns to the process of language acquisition motivated by empathy. Physicalism is doubtful insofar as it has not been sufficiently distinguished by him from functionalism.

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False Democracy

The Hell of Having to Face the Truth

Mental Entities