The article analyses physicists’ attitudes towards philosophy on the examples of the positions of eminent theorists. There are two physicists’ philosophical attitudes towards philosophy: pro-philosophical (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, von Weizsäcker, Penrose, Rovelli) and anti-philosophical (Weinberg, Hawking, Feynman). I analyse some physicists' arguments for or against philosophy. It is demonstrated that physicists are most critical of all philosophical conceptions that accept a priori factors in cognition, while those who recognize the significance of philosophy for science most often refer to the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition as the proper basis for understanding modern physics.

Artykuł jest próbą interpretacji stanowiska Platona w sporze między naturalizmem i konwencjonalizmem w sprawie języka na podstawie dialogu Kratylos. Interpretacja tego dialogu jest nadal przedmiotem sporów we współczesnej literaturze. W artykule przedstawiam następującą interpretację Kratylosa: 1) Platon nie stara się wybrać jednego tylko stanowiska, ale łączy ze sobą naturalizm i konwencjonalizm; 2) specyfika jego tezy na temat języka polega na tym, że według niego konwencjonalizm opisuje faktyczny sposób funkcjonowania języka, zaś naturalizm jest pewnym postulatem dotyczącym tego, jak język powinien funkcjonować. Sformułowanie tego postulatu powinniśmy łączyćz religijnym wymiarem myśli Platona.

The motif of the so-called “critique of writing” in the Phaedrus has received much attention from contemporary commentators of Plato. Less attention has been paid to the explicit praise of writing and the project of making all citizens literate presented in the Laws. Because in the Phaedrus there is talk of writing of every sort (including legal documents), the question arises whether Plato changed his attitude to writing in the Laws. The present discussion places the Platonic reflection on writing and speech in the broader context of the ambivalent attitude of fourth-century BC Athenians to writing and written laws. It is demonstrated, first, that Plato criticizes writing to the same extent to which he praises it; second, that if his criticism includes writing, it also includes verbal teachings and all oral compositions.

While working on the oeuvre of P.F. Strawson (1919–2006), and especially on his metaphysics, I had a unique opportunity to exchange ideas with this eminent exponent of Oxford philosophy. Those exchanges, of which some have been reflected in private correspondence and in a published reply to one of my papers, were focussed on various interpretative questions. Three threads of those discussions seem especially pertinent for grasping the gist of Strawson’s philosophy and its general orientation. The first one concerned the nature of philosophical analysis, or to be more precise, the connective model of it, favoured by Strawson, and its relationship with the idea of concept presupposition. The second thread had to do with the position taken by the Oxford philosopher in the realism debate on three levels: semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical. Strawson made every effort to take a realist stand in this debate and avoid antirealism in any of its forms; however, his realism is in many respects very moderate and not so distant from antirealism. Similarly moderate was his stand in the traditional debate about universals, constituting the topic of the third thread of the exchanges with Strawson. He claimed that universals exist, but at the same time emphasized that they are objects of pure thought alone and as such do not form a part of the spatiotemporal world in which we live. One cannot also say much about the relation of exemplification in virtue of which universals manifest themselves in the world as particular instances. Presentation and elaboration of these three threads has led to the conclusion that although Strawson was a deeply systematic thinker, he avoided wide-ranging and ambitious statements and radical views. In characteristically minimalist way he dispelled some questions, and the ultimate resolution of many crucial and fundamental issues were for him choice and taking a particular attitude or stance.