Jan Wolenski

Wybrałem naturalizm jako temat, kierując się tym, że, chociaż kierunek ten jest coraz częściej dyskutowany w filozofii światowej, stosowna problematyka nie znajduje zbyt dużego oddźwięku w Polsce, może poza etyką i filozofią prawa. Prezentowana książka ma także na celu przybliżenie polskiemu czytelnikowi istotnej współczesnej problematyki filozoficznej. Intencja sprawozdawcza nie jest jednak ani jedyną, ani nawet najważniejszą, ponieważ dominuje zamiar merytoryczny, czyli udział w dyskusji wokół naturalizmu. Moje rozważania nad tą orientacją są prowadzone z punktu widzenia kogoś, kto sympatyzuje z naturalistycznym punktem widzenia, dokładniej z jego umiarkowaną wersją, którą uważam za możliwą do obrony. Staram się także przedstawić argumenty przeciwko naturalizmowi i nie ukrywam, że są one bardzo poważne. Jan Woleński, Wstęp.

Non-existence provides big problems for ontology and modest for logic. Logical problems of non-existence consist in licensing inferences in which sentences with empty terms are involved. The standard predicate logic solves this question by presupposing that every individual constant has an object to which it refers. This means that empty domains are excluded from semantics for the first-order logic. However, there is a temptation to consider logic without existential presuppositions.The ontological problem of non-existence leads to the question of the meaning of 'nothing'. We encounter "various conceptions of nothing" in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to our times. However, nothing (or nothingness) is always a negation of being. Since we have distributive and collective (mereological) concepts of being, we also should distinguish nothing in the distributive and mereological meaning. This difference is important because only the former leads to the paradox of nothing of all nothings, analogical to the paradox of all sets. A closer analysis of the nothing in the distributive sense shows that any meaningful talk about non-existence requires a relativisation to a fixed domain of discourse. This seems; to entail that the empty set is the formal model of nothing what means that the concept of absolute nothing in the distributive sense is simply inconsistent. To some extent, being and nothing are mutually dual. This motivates that the concept of nothing is governed by so-called dual logic connected with processes of rejection. More specifically, statements on "nothing" are not asserted but rejected.

The article examines the psychological views of S. Baley. It is emphasized that S. Baley’s interest in psychology arose under the influence of K. Twardowski, who combined philosophical and psychological research in his work, did not agree with the possibility of reducing mental phenomena to physiological ones, and emphasized that the method of introspection (self-analysis of internal experience) is an important psychological method. It is emphasized that K. Twardowski adopted the view of the importance of using the method of introspection as an analysis of acts of consciousness, which is always intended for something, in the process of psychological research from his teacher F. Brentano. It is stated that K. Twardowski’s students, and in particular S. Baley, under the influence of their teacher’s ideas, paid much attention to the philosophical foundations of psychological research, the significant connections existing between philosophy and psychology (in particular, with regard to general methodological issues) and the justification of the fact that introspection is a reliable scientific method of cognition. It is noted that Baley developed the ideas of psychology of education and development, influenced the formation of ideas of social psychology. In general, he worked within the framework of experimental psychology, going beyond the views on psychology held by F. Brentano, in particular regarding psychoanalysis. He devoted considerable attention to both specialized research and general methodological issues, the treatment of which determines how to understand the nature of mental phenomena and express it through language – in judgments about mental phenomena. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that Baley’s conclusion that perceptions are subjective is interesting from an epistemological point of view, which does not prevent them from being the intersubjective basis of empirical sciences. As a result, it must be stated that in the process of studying humanistic or social phenomena, it is not advisable to clearly separate the subjective and objective worlds. Keywords: introspection, mental phenomena, inner experience, intersubjective, psychology.

Kazimierz Twardowski, a student of Brentano, established an analytical philosophical school in Lvov at the end of the nineteenth century. As charismatic teacher, he trained a group of young philosophers very soon. This group became the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) just after the end of World War I; in fact, its particular members obtained positions in other Polish universities (in Cracow, Vilna and Poznań). Although some philosophers from LWS were active until the end of the twentieth century (even at the beginning of twenty-first century), the School itself existed as an organised and compact scientific enterprise until 1939. Its end was caused by World War II and the later political changes. LWS was a large and complex community (about 80 persons) with several generations and circles. Twardowski and his oldest students (like Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Władysław Witwicki, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Zygmunt Zawirski and Tadeusz Czeżowski) constituted the first generation of LWS. They trained the second generation, mostly acting in Lvov and Warsaw. The Warsaw Logical School with Leśniewski, Łukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski as the main representatives, became the most famous branch of LWS, working on various problems of mathematical logic. This circle had close connections with Polish Mathematical School. Philosophers like Ajdukiewicz, Czeżowski, Kotarbiński or Zawirski contributed to epistemology, ontology, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. On the other hand, LWS was also active in the history of philosophy, ethics, aesthetics and psychology. Thus, all basic parts of philosophy were represented in LWS. Due to the multi-ethnic character of Polish society in the interwar period, LWS consisted not only of Poles (the majority), but also Jews and Ukrainians. The significance of LWS can be considered from the following two axes. Logicians achieved many fundamental results which influenced the world logical research. Some of them (Tarski’s theory of truth, Łukasiewicz’s many-valued logic, Leśniewski’s systems) were important for general philosophy. Taking into account the role of LWS in Poland, this school essentially contributed to philosophical culture of this country.

The general view is that Camerata Florentina invented opera at the end of sixteenth century as a counterpart to Greek theater. We assume that some features of ancient tragedies—especially confrontation with an inevitable fate—effectively influenced the first operatic works. We argue that in some operas, legal and moral rules functioned as an instrument of fate, and that Camerata Florentina followed this philosophical anthropology. However, a very rigid understanding of fate by ancient writers had to be modified due to the view that people have a certain amount of freedom in their actions. We see this point as important for evaluating certain stories told in librettos. Our claim is that many operas successfully continue (a modified version of) the ancient ideal of the tragic fate of humans, forced to make choices between dramatic alternatives. We present an analysis based on the importance of law in four nineteenth-century Italian operas, Bellini’s Norma and I Puritani, Verdi’s Aida and Puccini’s Tosca, in order to show that respect for the law is in fact one of the main ingredients in opera from the point of view of music and narrative. This usually neglected or hidden topic strongly contributes to opera’s beauty, high value and impact. Therefore, our analysis contributes to the philosophy of opera.

Views on truth of German and Austrian philosophers (among others, Lotze, Fries, Erdmann, Mauthner, Bolzano, Brentano, Frege) as well as British philosophers (Bradley, Joachim, Russell) are presented in this chapter. As Tarski as a mathematician and philosopher grew up in Poland, the special section is devoted to truth-definitions put forward by some Polish philosophers and logicians of the 20th century. The last section contains a sample of definitions circulating in philosophy in the last hundred years—most definitions are taken from analytic philosophy.

This chapter contains a detailed account of STT as a formal theory. The exposition considers truth as truth in a model. Firstly, truth-definition as satisfaction by all sequences of objects is explained. Arithmetic of natural numbers and its models play the crucial role in presenting various results concerning the concept of truth, particularly limitative theorems and the undefinability of arithmetical truth in arithmetic itself. Models constructed on terms are used as tools for defining the denotations of sentences in models. The last section reports Gödel’s and Tarski’s views on limitative theorems and truth.

The last chapter mostly discusses philosophical aspects. According to my general view on STT, I elaborate its various aspects and defend this theory against some philosophical objections. The list of the discussed problems is as follows: STT as a correspondence theory of truth, the status of T-equivalences, truth and meaning, the relative of absolute character of truth as semantically defined, truth and science, comparison of STT with minimalism and coherentism, truth and realism, and applications of STT to the Gettier problem and determinism.

This paper analyses proofs of impossibility of epistemology formulated by Leonard Nelson. He proposed two such demonstrations. The first proof tries to show that no criterion of knowledge is possible. Nelson’s second argument considers the sentence B ‘A is a piece of knowledge’ as being synthetic (in Kantian sense). On the other hand, Epistemology cannot employ problematic premises. Hence, it consists of analytic sentences. Now, epistemology is impossible because synthetic sentence cannot be derived from purely analytic ones. The analysis conducted in the papers intends to locate Nelson’s arguments in contemporary discussions about the status of epistemology. In particular, it is argued that the second proof deserves attention of contemporary epistemologists.

This paper summarizes losses of Polish philosophy during World War II (including the last prewar period and first post-war years). Three lists are presented, firstly (list I), of victims belonging to the Lviv-Warsaw School, secondly (list II), of victims from other philosophical circles, thirdly (list III) of emigrants. An estimation is such that Poland lost about 1/3 of its philosophical community. Further losses, also related to the change of borders of the post-war Poland and the fact that two universities were found outside Poland, consisted in lack of normal scientific and educational life as well as destroying many works existing in manuscripts.

This paper proposes an analysis of sport from an analytic-philosophical point-of-view. The authors argue that although a definition in the traditional sense (per genus proximum and differentiam specificam) – conceived as analytic, synthetic, or regulative – is rather impossible, a conceptual description, using some key intuitions, can be achieved. These intuitions are suggested by taking into account phenomena such as physical culture and its properties, Olympic games and their regulations, or the popularity of sport as perceived by direct spectators and indirect observers, particularly on television. Various examples suggest that sport is a complex phenomenon, generally consisting of the actions of people, subordinated to rules that govern how sport actors behave. Hence, a normative aspect of sport must be taken into account in any conceptual analysis of sport. If the traditional manner for defining a concept is considered unavailable, then Wittgenstein’s strategy of analysis, via the notion of family resemblance, is recommended. The authors show that this can also be applied to the concept of sport. After mentioning Renford Bambrough’s interpretation of Wittgenstein, the authors propose to treat the name sport as referring to a mereological collection of parts, unified by several factors and forming a family resemblance.

The larger part of Yearbook 6 of the Institute Vienna Circle constitutes the proceedings of a symposium on Alfred Tarski and his influence on and interchanges with the Vienna Circle, especially those on and with Rudolf Carnap and Kurt Gödel. It is the first time that this topic has been treated on such a scale and in such depth. Attention is mainly paid to the origins, development and subsequent role of Tarski's definition of truth. Some contributions are primarily historical, others analyze logical aspects of the concept of truth. Contributors include Anita and Saul Feferman, Jan Wolenski, Jan Tarski and Hans Sluga. Several Polish logicians contributed: Gzegorczyk, Wójcicki, Murawski and Rojszczak. The volume presents entirely new biographical material on Tarski, both from his Polish period and on his influential career in the United States: at Harvard, in Princeton, at Hunter, and at the University of California at Berkeley. The high point of the analysis involves Tarski's influence on Carnap's evolution from a narrow syntactical view of language, to the ontologically more sophisticated but more controversial semantical view. Another highlight involves the interchange between Tarski and Gödel on the connection between truth and proof and on the nature of metalanguages. The concluding part of Yearbook 6 includes documentation, book reviews and a summary of current activities of the Institute Vienna Circle. Jan Tarski introduces letters written by his father to Gödel; Paolo Parrini reports on the Vienna Circle's influence in Italy; several reviews cover recent books on logical empiricism, on Gödel, on cosmology, on holistic approaches in Germany, and on Mauthner.

In 1960, A. N. Prior proposed a binary sentential functor defined by inferential rule (introduction) A ⊢ A tonk B, and (elimination) A tonk B ⊢ A. Later, this idea was discussed by several authors, including in the context of the question of whether the ab ove rule defines this functor in a sufficient manner. This paper shows that if we assume the standard matrix (truth-tables) characterization of classical sentential functors, no valuation agrees with rules generating the sense of tonk. Moreover, these inferential prescriptions are at odds with the principle that if premises are true, the conclusion has to be such as well. A new solution is proposed. It consists in considering tonk-rules via so-called rejection consequence operation, that is, a dual with respect to the standard Cn. The general moral stemming from the proposed analysis says that inferentialism, the view that inference rules are purely syntactical, is dubious, because logic has its basis also in semantic presuppositions as well as in pragmatic ones.