Boiling water: case

Every one of us has had a moment in our lives when we thought, “This could not have been a coincidence!” An unusual coincidence, meeting someone in the least expected place, or a series of events that changed everything. Are such moments merely a blind guess and a soulless result of the calculus of probability, or perhaps a manifestation of a deeper order that we cannot yet define? Look for answers on October 16 at the discussion from the Boiling Round series. We can say that chance plays a non-accidental role in our lives. If we trace our lives, we can conclude that who and with whom we are today is largely the work of chance. The case, understood as a situation in which different sequences of events overlap, happens very often. We have no choice and we have to learn to live with it.

Science views chance differently (although Aristotle excluded the case from scientific considerations, since science studies what always or most often exists, and chance is neither one nor the other). Here we can distinguish the case in the objective sense, where the sources of randomness (for this is associated with the case in science) occur in the properties of nature independent of the knowing subject, and the case in the subjective sense, when randomness arises from our ignorance and ignorance of the real causes operating in the world.

Chance also plays an important role in theories about the origin of life and the Universe. In this first, nomen omen, case, when we ask about the origin of life, we ask how it came about: whether in a random way, as evolutionists want, or in an intelligent, i.e. planned way. In the case of the question of the origin of the universe, it is also reasonable to ask what was the cause of its creation: chance or God, who, as Einstein said, does not play dice. Or is it God using chance?

In Origen's view, “God's absolute power” can do anything that does not lead to contradiction — ordered power — limits absolute power by reason, justice, and good (God could do anything that is not contradictory, but not that which would be unreasonable, wrong, and wrong.

Does God know the future by virtue of strict determinism: knowing the present state, can he simply enumerate everything that will happen next? Or does it know the future by sight: beyond time, it embraces all the time with one glance.

A case — any event that we are not sure about and assign a probability of less than 1.

A property of the human mind — the high probability of occurrence of an event we are inclined to consider to be correct enough for its occurrence, while the low probability of occurrence of some event demands, in our opinion, justification.

Interpretations of probability: — Objective — Subjective

Does Divine Providence exclude accidental and random events (St. Thomas says that, no).

B. Russell: “Man is the result of causes incapable of foreseeing its effects; his origin, his development, his hopes and the fears of his love are the result only of the accidental arrangement of atoms; no man, no flame, no heroism, no surge of affection will prolong an individual's life; all the hardships of the centuries, all piety, all inspiration, all light If human genius is to be annihilated in the immeasurable death of the solar system, the entire temple of human achievement must be buried in the rubble of the universe...

Text by Dariusz Juruś, PhD, Jagiellonian University

We invite you to an interdisciplinary meeting, during which the case concept will be subjected to a multidimensional analysis.

The host and moderator of the panel, Dr. Dariusz Juruś (philosopher, professor of the Jagiellonian University), invited recognized experts to talk, each of whom will look at the issue from the perspective of the field they represent:

Prof. Dr. Tadeusz Boruta - an outstanding painter, art critic and curator, professor at the University of Rzeszów (Institute of Fine Arts). Author of numerous exhibitions in Poland and abroad as well as publications in the field of theory and history of art. In his work and theoretical considerations, he often takes up metaphysical, existential themes and the issue of the role of chance and intention in the process of artistic creation Prof. Ryszard Laskowski - biologist and ecologist, professor of biological sciences associated with the Institute of Environmental Sciences of the Jagiellonian University. He specializes in ecotoxicology, population ecology and modeling of biological processes. Krzysztof Mudyń, PhD, a philosopher and researcher associated with the Jagiellonian University, examines the influence of stress factors on organisms and the role of randomness and selection in the functioning of ecosystems. In his scientific and didactic work, he focuses on issues in the field of epistemology, philosophy of science and methodology. His areas of interest lie in cognitive mechanisms, the structure of scientific theories, and the ways in which the human mind defines order, causation, and chance.

Lecturer: Dariusz Juruś, PhD, professor of the Jagiellonian University (philosophy) and Cracow University of Technology (architecture), professor at the universities of Bochum, Heidelberg and Oxford. He deals with the philosophy of politics, as well as ethics and aesthetics. He is the author of more than 60 publications, including the monographs “In Search of the Foundations of Libertarianism” and “Philosophical Concepts of Property. From Plato to Marx”. He works at the Institute of Intercultural Studies of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Member of the Programme Council of Contemporary Art Gallery BWA SOKÓŁ in Nowy Sącz.

[1] B. Russell, The Cult of the Free Man, trans. A Litviniszyn, in “The End of the Century,” 1994 No. 6, p. 35, (34-41), for P. S. Williams, C.S. Lewis v. The New Atheists, trans. P. Bylica, Warsaw 2021, p. 50.