In ethical debates on moral status, a common assumption is that in cases of uncertainty it is safer to be over-inclusive rather than under-inclusive when defining the boundaries of our moral community. Some argue that, since it cannot be definitively ruled out that AI might one day possess morally relevant capacities—such as consciousness or the ability to feel pain—a more ethically cautious approach may be to treat AI as a moral patient. But is over-inclusiveness truly the more cautious approach to AI? I argue that the risks associated with the over-attribution of moral status to AI are more likely in the short term, as they are already materializing. This is illustrated by cases of so-called AI psychosis, as well as by the potential to divert resources and care away from beings that clearly need them toward parasocial relationships with AI. By contrast, the risks associated with under-attributing moral status to AI—existence of which I do not deny—can, to a certain extent, be mitigated by other ethical reasons for refraining from interacting with AI in problematic ways. Such reasons (e.g., concern for one’s own moral character, respect for norms governing certain social practices, or aversion to symbolic violence) do not, however, require attributing moral status to AI itself.
Interest in legal regulations and ethical standards regarding the use of animals in scientific research remains constant. Changing societal attitudes and the development of alternative research methods have contributed to the increased importance of transparency and effective communication in this field. International standards of openness are gaining acceptance among many institutions, although they have not yet been fully implemented in the public sphere in Poland. Social media have enabled faster information exchange, but also raised challenges related to the reliability of the message. Data from reports on the use of animals in research, collected between 2011 and 2022, are redefining the boundaries of acceptable practices and highlighting changes in the language that reflect a modern approach to human-animal relationships. A key challenge remains building public trust, which requires methodological transparency, effective communication, and education on alternative research methods. Creating communication groups for animal experiments that separate the responsibility of researchers from institutions could improve informational processes and support young researchers. Changes in the approach to animal welfare and the minimization of suffering require legislative, educational, and open dialogue between science and society. Only through the integration of different perspectives can a balanced approach to animal research be achieved.
The principle of parsimony in relation to medical diagnosis states that a physician should always choose simpler diagnostic hypotheses. This principle is the subject of analysis not only by philosophers of science but also by clinicians. The article will demonstrate that the significance of this principle is not based on its a priori justification (the perspective of philosophers) but on the fact that it can serve as a starting point for a better understanding of the process of generating new hypotheses in medical diagnosis. It will be shown that in this process, the diagnostician is guided by three main rules of data management: the principle of errors avoidance (PEA), the principle of epistemic benefits increase (EBI) and the disease prevalence condition (DPC). These rules have different roles in diagnostic decisions in various epistemic contexts.
Community, which occupies a central place in Gerald Allan Cohen’s political philosophy, is characterized by the mutual care that individuals extend to each other. This study illustrates this often-overlooked value across different contexts and proposes a new conceptual model of how the (in)equality of economic distribution influences its viability. I argue that the realization of the value of community can be undermined by two interrelated elements: an objective element, the hierarchical stratification of life experiences, and a subjective element, the perception among the disadvantaged that the better-off choose not to assist them. Building on this, I contend that, compared to alternative distributive principles such as utilitarianism, sufficientarianism, limitarianism, maximinism, and prioritarianism, egalitarianism most robustly sustains the community value. Accordingly, community itself furnishes a powerful rationale for endorsing egalitarianism over competing distributive principles, a conclusion further corroborated by the core insights of relational egalitarianism.
Roman Ingarden's ontological conception of relations constitutes a complex and unconventional approach to this issue. Nevertheless, it has not become a central focus for researchers’ interest in Ingarden's work, nor does it serve as a significant point of reference for contemporary ontologists exploring relations. Therefore, given its indisputable value on the one hand, and the limited scope of existing research on the other, an analysis of Ingarden's theory of relations, along with an attempt to situate it within a broader context, seem justified. I begin this work by presenting, in the first chapter, three fundamental ways of conceiving relations: as polyadic properties, as sui generis properties, and as reducible to ordinary non-relational properties. The second chapter is devoted to an introduction to Ingarden's theory of relations, in which I discuss both a number of formal-ontological issues as well as the problem of the existential status of relations. The third chapter provides a detailed examination of the multi-element formal structure of relations according to Ingarden's view. Finally, in the fourth chapter, Ingarden's theory is compared with the previously discussed approaches to understanding relations, which highlights its synthetic character
