Jiri Raclavsky

Although finding does not seem to be logically and philosophically so much interesting as seeking, the present study gives exhaustive survey of logical analyses corresponding to kinds of finding. There are four basic groups of findings : I) finding by accidence, II) finding after seeking which is typically relation between an agent and an intension, III) finding after finding an instance of intension to which was an agent related by seeking, IV) finding pejorativelly reported. Only type II) can be considered as a notional attitude because it is a relation to an intension ; moreover, this relation is unique in the sense that agent is related just and only to one exact intension.

In his conception of worlds 1-3 Popper did not make clear how the world 3 can influence on world 2 or 1 . On example of music we can see that any human invention of “new” tone combination cannot affect already given tone combinatorics which is in world 3 . Similarily “new” scientific theory cannot make any change in world 3 where all theories are – according to Popper – settled. Opposite direction of influence seems neither possible: human mind can only feel that it is somehow touched by abstract object during its creative activity; to all appearance abstract objects cannot causaly affect on – presumably material – medium of human thinking

In the first part of continuation of our study we classify and analyze passive forms which belong to four kinds of findings. Further we investigate cases of unsuccessful finding; they do not trivially correspond to kinds of succesful finding. We can distinguish: 1) not-finding for the reason of not-seeking, 2) not-finding for the reason of not finished seeking, 3) not-finding for the reason of stopped seeking whereas a) an instance of the respective seeked intension is not existing, b) an agent was not enough skilful and the question of existence of an instance of the respective seeked intension remains open.