The article contains a critical analysis of Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism. According to an influential interpretation, Wittgenstein presented in the Tractatus a new method of solving paradoxes. This method seems a simple and effective alternative to Russell’s type theory. Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is based on the requirement of clear notation and the context principle: the type of a symbol only “shows” itself in the way we use the signs of our language. The function sign φ(φx) does not (...) express any paradox, because the syntactic rules for its use, written in clear notation, should “show” us that φ(φx) = ψ(φx). Many researchers (Davant, Ishiguro, Mounce, Ruffino, Friedlander, Jolley, Livingston, Ladov, et al.) follow this interpretation. However, the difficulty of such a view on Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is that there hides the fallacy of petitio principii. Indeed, in examples of a functional sign of the form φ(φx), we are interested not only in the question of whether the functions φ are different symbols, but also in how this functional sign φ(φx) itself excludes the symbolization of the same object by different ways. This interpretation is contrasted with the idea that Wittgenstein’s theory of logical symbolism is in fact a modified analogue of Russell’s simple theory of types. The reciprocality principle becomes the core of Wittgenstein’s theory: the combinatorial potential of the “prototype” of a functional sign is identical to the combinatorial potential of the “prototype” of an argument. According to Wittgenstein, only describing the combinatorial potential of linguistic expressions (symbols) can vanish the illusion of paradoxes. The function cannot be its argument, because the function sign φ(φx) already contains the “prototype” of its argument, “showing” us that φ(φx) = φx. The correctness of this interpretation does not exclude the possibility that the differences between Russell and Wittgenstein are in fact nothing more than façon de parler. (shrink)

In current discussions on the problem of the metaphysical nature of the word, four factions – eliminativism, nominalism, originalism, and the type-token theory – take an active part. For eliminativism, words as separate entities do not exist; they are only a useful cognitive illusion. In the process of communication, competent speakers make sounds and inscriptions through which they are able to infer certain intentional contents of each other’s cognitive states. However, these sounds and inscriptions cannot be regarded as instances of (...) words since they do not possess the phonological and orthographic properties constitutive of words. For nominalism, by contrast, the streams of sounds and ink patterns produced by competent speakers serve as relevant instances of a particular word, or its tokens. What we usually call “words” are collections of such tokens, composed on the basis of similarity relations (phono- logical, orthographic or semantic). For originalism, the streams of sounds and ink patterns created by competent speakers are stages of words, understood as continuants, concrete ob- jects preserving identity over time, individualized by the causal history of their origin. Words are created by competent speakers through the practice of naming and spread through chains of interpersonal contact. The phonological, orthographic and semantic properties possessed by different stages of the same word are generally useless for a proper description of objects such as words. At different times of their existence, words can change any of their properties (pronunciation, spelling, and even reference) while preserving their identity in time. For the type-token theory, words are types, or abstract objects encoding a particular phonographic pattern, which in the process of communication must be instantiated by a competent native speaker by uttering or writing the appropriate token. The type-token theory has several ad- vantages over the views of eliminativism, nominalism and originalism. Firstly, it offers a unified ontology of linguistic structures (since the division into tokens and types extends here to the whole range of linguistic units, including sentences and letters). Secondly, unlike most of its competitors, it is able to present a clear operational criterion for word identity, while being consistent with most of our intuitive notions of intra- and cross-linguistic phenomena (homonymy, synonymy, etc.). (shrink)

The sentences ‘p but I don’t believe p’ (omissive form) and ‘p but I believe that not-p’ (comissive form) are typical examples of Moore’s paradox. When an agent (sincerely) asserts such sentences under normal circumstances, we consider his statements absurd. The Simple Solution (Moore, Heal, Wolgast, Kriegel, et al.) finds the source of absurdity for such statements in a certain formal contradiction (some kind of like ‘p & not-p’), the presence of which is lexically disguised. This solution is facing criticism (...) since it is obvious that the denial of the contradiction allegedly hidden in Moore’s paradox will not become an expression of tautology for us. Hintikka offers another solution to Moore’s paradox. In his view, the source of absurdity is the practical inconceivability of the situation, in which the agent would be able to hold mutually incompatible (inconsistent) beliefs. The sentences ‘p but I don’t believe that p’ and ‘p but I believe that not-p’ sound absurd because they express high-ordered beliefs that no rational agent can hold. A belief expressed in the sentence ‘he believes that p’, in order to be available to the agent, must be compatible with the truth of everything the agent believes. The problem with Hintikka’s solution is that it relies on an epistemic principle that does not correspond to our general intuitions about the notion of belief. According to this principle, there must be a close connection between the sentence ‘p but I don’t believe that p’ and the sentence ‘I believe that is the case is that p but I don’t believe that p’. However, it is not difficult to imagine the context for situations when the agent asserts the sentence ‘p but I don’t believe that p’ when s/he believes that p, but in parallel does not hold any high-ordered belief about his/her belief in p. For example, the agent does not recognize oneself in a photograph after a hard plastic surgery, and when one asks him ‘who is this?’ it would not be absurd for him/her to accept the following description of his/her beliefs ‘I believe that {I am me} but I don’t believe that I believe that {I am me}’. Wittgenstein provides an alternative solution based on a descriptive analysis of the grammar of verbs we use to express, attribute, and understand each other’s psychological states. In his view, the everyday practice of using the verb ‘believe’ demonstrates a characteristic asymmetry in the semantic and logical properties of the usage of this verb in the first person. The expression ‘I believe falsely’ has no real meaning since no one can meaningfully say the sentence ‘Now I believe falsely that p’ on their own behalf. Therefore, the genuine source of absurdity is associated with situations of self-attribution of false belief by the agent. Despite its originality, Wittgenstein’s solution faces objections. For example, in a certain context, it would not be absurd to assert the sentence ‘There are no beliefs, but I don’t believe in it’, unlike the sentence ‘There are no beliefs and I believe that it is so’. The solution proposed by Wittgenstein does not allow us to correct the situation since one could assert quite reasonably and without any absurdity a sentence like ‘In fact, there are no beliefs and now I falsely believe that it is so’. Based on Evans’ principle of epistemic transparency, some researchers (Atlas, Chan, Kwon, et al.) offer another strategy for solving Moore’s paradox, in which peculiar attention is paid to the dependence of understanding and evaluating the meaning of the sentences ‘p but I do not believe that p’ and ‘p but I believe that not-p’ from the immediate context of their usage. The source of absurdity should be looked for in the established practice of the self-referential use of the pronoun ‘I’. In the researchers’ view, Moore’s paradox arises only in the context of situations where the agent asserting such sentences is conscious speaking about oneself. Therefore, there is an obvious structural analogy between the sentences of the Liar family (‘This very sentence is false’, ‘Now I am lying’, etc.) and Moore’s paradox (‘p but I don’t believe that p’, ‘p but I believe that not-p’) – self-reference is constitutive for both families of paradoxical statements. (shrink)

This article provides a critical analysis of Mark Walker’s type-token theory. This theory purports to describe, explain, and justify the mechanism by which moral and legal responsibility can be attributed to exact and complete duplicates of persons. However, Walker’s defence of the view of persons as abstract entities is met with several metaphysical objections. Alternatively, a new approach to moral and legal responsibility is developed based on principles of agency law, in which the conception of a guilty person does not (...) require identity with the person who committed the culpable act. (shrink)

The article contains a critical analysis of the skeptical solution to the rule- following problem. The skeptical solution denies the existence of “superlative” R-facts that would make statements of the form “P means R by ‘+’ ” true. The role of the sources for the meaning of ‘+’ here is played by the patterns of solidarity behavior of members of some community to which P belongs. The correct use of ‘+’ would be one that is approved by the competent majority (...) of this community, and there can be no other sense in which it would be correct or wrong. Boyd’s hypothesis denies the communal character of the ‘+’ meaning. While there are no “superlative” R-facts, there should be C-facts not about the R as the standard that P or its community follows in their practice of using ‘+’, but about whether they do it correctly. The proof of the Boyd hypothesis is based on the example of an imaginary Ω-community, whose agents use a finite set of simple symbols for the needs of their arithmetic: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘J’. Each symbol denotes a subset of identical, from the Ω-community point of view, numerical values. The symbol ‘A’ is used, for ex- ample, for a subset of the natural numbers 1, 10, 19, 28, 37, 46, etc.; ‘B’ for 2, 11, 20, 29, 38, 47, etc.; ‘C’ for 3, 12, 21, 30, 39, 48, etc. The Ω-community’s arithmetic uses the only local function ⊕ whose range of values forms a finite set of mathematical propositions {α} that are true. The Ω-community’s arithmetic, like our own, is open to many skeptical challenges. Is there a fact that determines the meaning of ‘⊕’? What do agents do when they calculate with ‘⊕’ (say, solve examples ‘A⊕B = ?’, ‘C⊕E=?’, etc.)? Do they Add, Badd or Dadd? To answer them would require a “superlative” R-fact. For the calculation practice with ‘⊕’, it could be a certain R-fact that determines the only possible order for the sequence of numerals ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘J’ such that {α} is true. An analysis of the calculation practice using the local arithmetic function ⊕ shows that for it there are no such R-facts that would determine the only correct standard R – even if the agents in the Ω-community were trained in such calculations on a full set of cases for the application of that function. However, for such practice there are C-facts (independent in their existence from R-facts) that make it possible to distinguish between what seems to be right and what is right. The solitary agent P and the Ω-community are in the same position regarding the knowledge of C-facts. The Ω-community’s point of view has no advantage in matters of C-facts knowledge over the solitary agent P’s point of view. The Ω-community arithmetic shows that if a solitary agent P had the suitable knowledge of C-facts about the practice of calculations with ‘⊕’, it would allow him/her to disagree with the not correct answers of other members of the community even when they would constitute an absolute majority. (shrink)

The article presents criticism of Katz’s proto-theory. Based on the principles of semantic Platonism, he offers a new understanding of the relationship between sense and reference. However, his account faces three strong objections: against non-causal ways of accessing abstract Platonic entities (Benacerraf–Field–Cheyne), against intuition as the faculty to a priori knowledge of grammar facts (Horwich–Cheyne–Oliver), and against the medial status of finite intensionals in matters for fixing the reference of linguistic expressions (Kripke–Boghossian–Kush). Without convincing answers to these objections, Katz’s proto-theory (...) cannot be considered as a fit competitor to naturalistic theories of language. (shrink)

The article critically examines the heuristic capacity and methods of using separate tools of Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar to treat various semantic pathologies (paradoxes of Liar, Truth-Teller, etc.). According to Wittgenstein, philosophical confusion associated with the analysis of such semantic pathologies arises on the grounds of our intuitive faith that we are able to express in language any property that interests us. For instance, we believe that the property “to have a length of exactly one metre” can be meaningfully attributed to (...) any extended object. However, such a faith is fundamentally wrong, since an object like a standard metre, which plays an exclusive role as the criterion of length in our measuring practices based on the metric system, is an example of an extended object about which one can say neither that it is one metre long, nor that it is not one metre long. A correct understanding of the language-game concept shows that the criterion by which we form a set of objects that meet the standards established by the criterion cannot be described in the same way as objects of this set. Language-games using predicates of truth and falsehood are similar to our practice of measuring length using the metric system. In cases of Liar and Truth-Teller sentences, we encounter resembling examples of philosophical confusion. Beyond the context of their usage, “This sentence is false” and “This sentence is true” sentences seem to us paradoxes. But, according to Wittgenstein’s philosophical grammar, a correct method of treating such “paradoxical” sentences demands to find the lack- ing context for their usage, i.e. pay attention to the language-game in which they are emplloyed. Like in the case of the standard metre, we can claim that the sentence “This sentence is false” (“This sentence is true”) is neither false (true), nor not false (true). In an analogous way, Liar and Truth-Teller sentences should be interpreted as peculiar standards of falsehood and truth that we use in our language-games to judge about the truth value of other sentences. (shrink)

In his article, Vsevolod Ladov poses an important question – might paradoxes admit of a uniform solution? As an answer, I propose looking at an approach in which it is argued that we must recognize the truth predicate as merely analogous to a vague predicate. The proponents of this approach (V. McGee, J. Tap- penden, H. Field, G. Priest and D. Hyde) insist that there is a structural relation between sorites paradoxes and self-reference paradoxes and that they should have a (...) unified solution. (shrink)

According to animalism we are identical with human animals. Our death coincides with the cessation of the functioning of an organism. Biological approach to personal identity seems to imply that the corpse causally connected to me (as an organism) is not me. In other words, there is no such an entity as a human animal that later becomes a corpse. It is so-called «the corpse problem». However, there are various views compatible with animalism, for instance the thesis that after death (...) we can survive as corpses or souls. The main task of the article provides a critical analysis of these views. (shrink)