Tomasz Puczyłowski

Building on our diverse research traditions in the study of reasoning, language and communication, the Polish School of Argumentation integrates various disciplines and institutions across Poland in which scholars are dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of the force of argument. Our primary goal is to craft a methodological programme and establish organisational infrastructure: this is the first key step in facilitating and fostering our research movement, which joins people with a common research focus, complementary skills and an enthusiasm to work together. This statement—the Manifesto—lays the foundations for the research programme of the Polish School of Argumentation

The paper concerns the semantics of belief reports. The following definition is proposed: if rational agent x does not accept any sentence, which is true under x’s interpretation of expressions iff not-p, and x does not reject any sentence, which is true under x’s interpretation iff p, then (x believes that p iff x accepts  which is true under x’s interpretation iff p). The term ‘x’s interpretation of an expression e’ is to be understood: something which x actually refers to by using e (rather than a object she intends to refer). This is to say that to ascribe a belief to rational agent one should use words which have the same reference as words used by the agent. We believe it could solve Krpike’s puzzles about belief on the price that sometimes names used by the agent refer to others entities than when we use them.

The Gettier problem concerns the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. In the paper I argue that Gettier's cases are not cases of justified true belief because Gettier's examples rely on some problematic assumptions. The first is rather elementary definition of justification and the other is that justification is preserved by entailment, that is, (A) for all agents X, if X is justified in believing that p , and X realizes that the truth of p entails the truth of q , then X would also be justified in believing that q . For the simplistic conception of justification has some alarming consequences we pursue more adequate definition of justification which would satisfy the idea that a necessary condition of justification is to entail or to be entailed by a true proposition. We also show that the (A) is not necessary to provide an elegant counter-example to the definition of knowledge if the elementary definition of justification is adopted