Jan Wolenski

Globalization consists in the universality of the web of international economic and cultural interactions; this means that they comprise the entire world, not only its particular regions. Globalization processes are evaluated in various manners. Whereas some consider them to be an essential danger, others maintain that globalization is a device for solving many problems worrying humanity. This second perspective assumes that globalization will contribute to a relative equilibrium of the social structure of the world. The problem of the distribution of deficit goods, e.g. food or water, is a good example of questions related to globalization. The claim that distribution should be just seems natural. This paper introduces the category of participatory justice as a conceptual device which can help in considerations about the just distribution of goods.

There are two possible strategies for investigating questions on logic and mathematics. First, one can adopt the pattern recommended by the phenomenologists, which consists in looking for the actual essences of logic and mathematics in order to relate both fields. The second approach, adopted in this paper, starts with a historical review of the foundational standpoints. I will then try to extract on this base some insights on how logic and mathematics are mutually related. In particular, I am interested in the concept of logic suggested by the development of the foundational debate. Yet one more preliminary remark is here in order. I will take into account the classical foundational positions: logicism, intuitionism, and formalism, as well as their later modifications and changes.1 Of course, this, so to speak, Foundational Trinity, does not exhaust the complete map of the foundations and philosophy of mathematics. For instance, I entirely neglect views wich might be exemplified by Lakatos, Dieudonné or Hersh, who, roughly speaking, radically deny that the study of logic and its relation to mathematics provides any interesting problem. I do not feel competent myself to judge this matter from the point of view of working mathematicians. On the other hand, philosophers are traditionally interested in the nature of logic and its links with other fields. Consequently, I regard my problem rather as a way of understanding what logic is, than whether it is important for mathematics or not

Naturalism is the view that only the so-called Natural World that surrounds us exists and that it is knowable by means of general cognitive tools. This has consequences for epistemology, because it determines what is an object of knowledge and how it comes to be known. Epistemological naturalism can be either radical or moderate, granting a certain autonomy to the theory of knowledge with respect to science. The article defends the second position and shows that it justifies the existence of certain problems whose discussion requires going beyond purely scientific data. Nevertheless, naturalized epistemology in any of its forms is incompatible with transcendentalism.

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.

The paper is a reply to Jan Czerniawski's paper „On epistemic impotence of analytical philosophy” (Filozofia Nauki 3-4/1998). Czerniawski argues that the analytic method consists either in arbitrary stipulations or in the appeal to linguistic intuitions. He claims that the latter are subjective and moreover they cannot help deciding objective problems, while the former are an arbitrary creation of truth. Hence, the analytic method has to be assisted by an intuitive insight into objective situations. However, Czerniawski forgets one quite elementary circumstance. For there is something else between linguistic intuitions and arbitrary terminological stipulations - namely precisation of intuitions. And this is what the analytic philosophers care for the most; those analytic philosophers who are logicians at the same time, in particular. According to the analytic philosophers philosophically relevant intuitive insight into objective situations is always achieved through language. Therefore, we do not need an epistemic viagra in the form of the extra-linguistic insight directly into the objective situation

One can often encounter an opinion that Polish scientific philosophy deserves to be much better known than actually is. This book is thought as a response to such a claim. The papers collected in this volume are divided into two parts: Background and Influence and History and Systematics. However, there is no sharp borderline between themes which are touched in both parts. Generally speaking, all papers of the first part relate the Lvov-Warsaw School to some philosophical movements external to it whereas the papers collected in the second one focus on internal issues connected with the school . Since the Polish school of mathematical logic is much better known than the Polish analytic philosophy we decided to omit here any treatment of the former. Thus, this collection centers on purely philosophical matters. We projected this volume not as an exhaustive panorama of Polish analytic philosophy but rather as a series of essays on particular persons or topic. As a result one can find here papers on Twardowski. Ajdukiewicz, Kotarbinski, Tarski and Lukasiewicz as well as on ethics on science, nominalism, and the methodology of psychology. We hope that this book will contribute to a better knowledge and evaluation of Polish achievements in analytic philosophy. We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Leszek Nowak, the editor-in-chief of Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, who initiated the idea of the collection and helped in its preparation

This paper investigates relations between truth and consistency. The basic intuition is that truth implies consistency, but the reverse dependence fails. However, this simple account leads to some troubles, due to some metalogical results, in particular the Gödel-Malcev completeness theorem. Thus, a more advanced analysis is required. This is done by employing the concept of ω-consistency and ω-inconsistency. Both concepts motivate that the concept of the standard truth should be introduced as well. The results are illustrated by an interpretation of the well-known logical square and its generalization.

This paper investigates the concept of aletheia in ancient philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Aristotle. The meaning of aletheia in archaic Greek is taken as the starting point. It is followed by remarks about the concept of truth in the Seven Sages. The author discusses this concept as it appears in views and works of philosophers and historians. A special section is devoted to the epistemological and ontological understanding of truth. On this occasion, influential views of Heidegger are examined. The paper is concluded by a review of various meanings of truth in Aristotle