When Russell argued for his ontological convictions, for instance that there are negative facts or that there are universals, he expressed himself in English. But Wittgenstein must have noticed that from the point of view of Russell's ideal language these ontological statements appear to be pseudo-propositions. He believed therefore that what these statements pretend to say, could not really be said but only shown. Carnap discovered a way out of this mutism: what in the material mode of speech of the (...) object language looks like a pseudo-proposition can be translated into a perfectly meaningful proposition in the formal mode of speech (in the metalinguistic mode of speech of the logical syntax of language). But is this ascent into the metalanguage necessary? Taking advantage of Lésniewski's logical system there exists another way outwe can expand the number of categories of our ideal language. But Leniewski's formulas raise another profound problem, the problem of semantical muteness (cf. W. G. Lycan Semantic Competence and Funny Functors Monist 64 (1979), 209–222). (shrink)

"Lesniewski defined ontology, one of his three foundational systems, as 'a certain kind of modernized 'traditional logic' [On the foundations of mathematics (FM), p. 176]. In this respect it is worth bearing in mind that in the 1937-38 academic year Lesniewski taught a course called "Traditional 'formal logic' and traditional 'set theory' on the ground of ontology"; cf. Srzednicki and Stachniak, S. Lesniewski's Systems. Protothetic, 1988, p. 180. On this see Kotarbinski Gnosiology. The scientific approach to the theory of knowledge, (...) 1966, pp. 253-54 [the Polish original was published in 1929], which Lesniewski praised in [FM]: see in particular pp. 373 ff. Kotarbinski noted that Lesniewski "calls his system 'ontology' in harmony with certain terms used earlier (as in.. (shrink)