Rok 1929 przyjmuję jako datę ogłoszenia reizmu, doktryny Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego. Jej sformułowanie zawierały Elementy teorii poznania, logiki formalnej i metodologii nauk. Elementy były jednym z trzech podstawowych podręczników filozofii w środowisku warszawskim przez co najmniej dwadzieścia pięć lat. Ale reizm narodził się wcześniej i myśl reistyczna była obecna zarówno w wykładach Profesora, powołanego w 1919 roku na Katedrę Filozofii UW, zwaną „Seminarium Filozoficzne II”, jak i przedtem w niektórych jego publikacjach. A zatem poglądy autora zawarte w tym dziele zaczęły kształtować (...) umysły już przeszło dziesięć lat wcześniej. Wychowanków więc szkoła Elementów miała wielu, bardzo wielu [...]. (shrink)

The philosophical-psychological Lvov-Warsaw School, derived from the philosophical tradition of Franz Brentano, developed his concept of intentionality for many years in an original way. This is particularly evident in Kazimierz Twardowski’s theory of actions and products and Tadeusz Tomaszewski’s theory of action. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s semantic epistemology is also an important yet unfinished achievement (though less related to the issue of intentionality), in the light of which cognitive processes are organically embedded in cultural artefacts and, more specifically, in language. Despite the (...) extraordinary wealth of the Lvov-Warsaw School’s achievements, the theoretical findings of Twardowski and his disciples allow for the extraction of relatively consistent conclusions regarding the specifics of human cognition. Achievements of the Polish school of psychology seem to be important in the long ongoing discussion on the topic of the nature of cognitive processes and the mind. (shrink)

In a paper entitled A Semantical Version of the Problem of Transcendental Idealism, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz gives a very impressive analysis of transcendental idealism. He approaches the matter using the tools of formal semantics developed by Alfred Tarski and draws a rather surprising conclusion. According to Ajdukiewicz, the idealist position, claiming that the world around us is ontologically dependent on our cognitive activity can be shown to be implausible on purely logical grounds. It is worth taking a closer look at this (...) insightful argument, since Ajdukiewicz’s analysis, if sound, has a relevance reaching far beyond purely historical questions concerning the right interpretation and proper assessment of past idealist doctrines. These days various species of idealism are thriving under such labels as ‘anti realism’ or ‘pragmatism’. Ajdukiewicz’s venerable paper goes to the very core of many contemporary metaphysical discussions. (shrink)

The book provides a historical and systematic exposition of the semantic theory of truth formulated by Alfred Tarski in the 1930s. This theory became famous very soon and inspired logicians and philosophers. It has two different, but interconnected aspects: formal-logical and philosophical. The book deals with both, but it is intended mostly as a philosophical monograph. It explains Tarski’s motivation and presents discussions about his ideas as well as points out various applications of the semantic theory of truth to philosophical (...) problems. (shrink)

I shall elaborate more on the idea of anti-irrationalism proposed by the Polish analytic philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, a prominent member of the Lvov-Warsaw School of philosophy and logic. In my reading, anti-irrationalism stands in opposition not only to overt irrationalism, which is made clear by the term itself, but also to all forms of rationalism that tip toward something like worship of reason. Having characterized anti-irrationalism as it originally appeared in Ajdukiewicz’s works, I shall propose a certain reformulation of it, (...) so as to capture a broader philosophical legacy in Poland, primarily, yet not exclusively the Lvov-Warsaw School. (shrink)

Inthisarticle,IreconstructKazimierzAjdukiewicz’sviewthathecalledradical conventiona‐ l i s m (as opposed to moderate conventionalism developed by Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem). then, I recall little‐known criticism of this approach developed by Stefan Amsterdamski. Finally, I demonstrate, contrary to the conception of the originator’s declarations, that a radical conventio‐ nalism is not a ‘paper ction’. On the other hand, the standpoint of radical conventionalism is useful due to the precision of expressions provided to it by Ajdukiewicz; it shows the di culties that have to (...) be tackled by each philosophical approach assuming a social constructivism or related notion. (shrink)

This article is polemical. It argues with those philosophers who see, in the semantic theory of knowledge of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, the significant and exclusive influence of Alfred Tarski’s semantic output. Listening to these philosophers, one gets the impression that they have overlooked the fact that the term “semantics” meant one thing in the case of Ajdukiewicz, presenting the semantic theory of knowledge, and something different in the case of Tarski, presenting the semantic theory of truth. There is another difference, related (...) to the abovementioned, and fundamental in the case of both these logicians, namely their different approach to language, which seems to escape the attention of those who write about the semantic theory of knowledge. Ajdukiewicz’s approach was intensional, while Tarski’s approach was extensional: for the first of them, the intensional interpretation of language was basic, as for the second, was the extensional interpretation. The philosophers with whom I argue overlook one more fact, namely the impact, difficult to overestimate, that the intentional theory of language of Edmund Husserl had on the emergence of the semantic theory of knowledge. This article tries to restore Tarski’s real role in the matter referred to in the title, and do justice to Husserl: after all, without his philosophy of the semantic theory of knowledge, as a metaepistemological project, it would not have come to be. It was only in the implementation of this project that some of the achievements of Tarski’s semantics were used. (shrink)

This paper proposes a formal framework for the cognitive relation understood as an ordered pair with the cognitive subject and object of cognition as its members. The cognitive subject is represented as consisting of a language, conequence relation and a stock of accepted theories, and the object as a model of those theories. This language allows a simple formulation of the realism/anti-realism controversy. In particular, Tarski’s undefinability theorem gives a philosophical argument for realism in epistemology.

Niniejszy artykuł ma polemiczny charakter. Polemizuje on z głosami tych filozofów, którzy w semantycznej teorii poznania Kazimierza Ajdukiewicza widzą znaczący i nadto wyłączny wpływ semantycznego dorobku Alfreda Tarskiego. Słuchając głosów tych filozofów można odnieść wrażenie, że przeoczyli oni fakt, iż termin „semantyka” znaczył co innego w wypadku Ajdukiewicza, prezentującego semantyczną teorię poznania, a co innego w wypadku Tarskiego, prezentującego semantyczną teorię prawdy. Z tą różnicą, dotyczącą znaczeń terminu „semantyka”, wiąże się inna, fundamentalna w wypadku obu tych logików różnica, a mianowicie (...) ich odmienne podejście do języka, co zdaje się umykać uwadze tym piszącym o semantycznej teorii poznania, z którymi zamierzam polemizować. Podejście Ajdukiewicza było intensjonalne, natomiast podejście Tarskiego – ekstensjonalne, co mówiąc mam na myśli to, że dla pierwszego z nich podstawową była intensjonalna interpretacja języka, a dla drugiego – interpretacja ekstensjonalna. Filozofowie, z którymi polemizuję, przeoczają jeszcze jeden fakt, a mianowicie trudny do przecenienia wpływ, jaki na powstanie semantycznej teorii poznania miała intencjonalna teoria języka Edmunda Husserla. Niniejszy artykuł stara się przywrócić właściwą miarę Tarskiemu w tytułowej sprawie oraz oddać sprawiedliwość Husserlowi, bez filozofii którego semantycznej teorii poznania, jako metaepistemologicznego projektu, by nie było. A przecież to ów projekt legitymizował jego realizacje i dopiero w nich były wykorzystywane niektóre osiągnięcia semantyki Tarskiego. (shrink)