Jan Wolenski

This paper compares Kotarbiński’s reism and naturalism. It argues that basic ontological and epistemological reistic principles fit naturalism very well. In particular, the thesis claiming that there are only spatiotemporal things (bodies) gives a very simple naturalistic account of reality. Radical realism defended by Kotarbiński is a version of direct realism, a view about perception which is very accurate for naturalism. On the other hand, since difficulties of reism are also problems for naturalism, the former illuminates typical challenges for the latter

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

Poland has played an enormous role in the development of mathematical logic. Leading Polish logicians, like Lesniewski, Lukasiewicz and Tarski, produced several works related to philosophical logic, a field covering different topics relevant to philosophical foundations of logic itself, as well as various individual sciences. This collection presents contemporary Polish work in philosophical logic which in many respects continue the Polish way of doing philosophical logic. This book will be of interest to logicians, mathematicians, philosophers, and linguists.

Metalogic (as a part of metamathematics) deals with the properties of formalised mathe- matical theories. Its applicability to empirical theories is an object of debate. The paper defends the moderate view that although it is difficult to expect such spectacular results, as have been obtained on mathematical theories, nevertheless the metalogical analysis of the first two gives us some benefits. Empirical theories may be understood as axiomatised sets of propositions closed with the operation of logical consequence. Two questions illustrate the thesis of this paper, namely the question of the elimination of theoretical terms and the question of the so- called philosophical presuppositions of science. As regards the second problem, a negative thesis is defended here: science is not based on philosophical presuppositions as premises of scientific reasonings

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.

This papers discuss the place, if any, of Convention T (the condition of material adequacy of the proper definition of truth formulated by Tarski) in the truth-makers account offered by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. It is argued that although Tarski’s requirement seems entirely acceptable in the frameworks of truth-makers theories for the first-sight, several doubts arise under a closer inspection. In particular, T-biconditionals have no clear meaning as sentences about truth-makers. Thus, truth-makers theory cannot be considered as the semantic theory of truth enriched by metaphysical (ontological) data. The problem of truth-makers for sentences about future events is discussed at the end of the paper.

Ancien etudiant de Brentano et de Zimmerman, Kazimierz Twardowski, apres son election a la chaire de philosophie a Lvov en 1895, crea autour de lui un cercle d'etudiants et de collaborateurs exceptionnel, connu aujourd'hui sous le nom d'Ecole de Lvov-Varsovie. A mi-chemin entre Vienne et Cambridge, c'est a Lvov, et puis partiellement a Varsovie, que Jan Lukasiewicz, Stanislaw Lesniewski, Alfred Tarski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski et bien d'autres encore, repenserent dans un esprit d'analyse les questions fondamentales de la philosophie du langage, de la logique, de la philosophie des sciences et des mathematiques. Plus qu'une simple traduction, ce livre est une version revisee de la monographie desormais classique que Jan Wolenski, connu pour ses travaux non seulement en histoire de la philosophie analytique, mais aussi en epistemologie et en theorie de la verite, a consacree a l'Ecole de Lvov-Varsovie.