Anna Magdalena Brożek

The term “performative” is used in at least two different senses. In the first sense, performatives are generatives, i.e. expressions by the use of which one creates new deontic states of affairs on the ground of extralinguistic conventions. In the second sense, performatives are operatives, i.e. expressions which contain verbal predicates and state their own utterances. In the article, both these types of expressions are compared to the class of imperatives which are characterized as expressions of the form “Let x see to it that p” and typically express wishes. It is claimed that (1) only these imperatives are generatives which are uttered by deontic authorities, (2) no imperative is an imperative sensu stricto; (3) imperative operatives are used instead of “pure” imperatives in order to emphasize the force of resolution.

The previous volume of the series Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science at Warsaw University---entitled Imperatives from Different Points of View---was the first result of the project Theory of Imperatives and Its Applications realized by the group composed by Anna Brożek, Jacek Jadacki and Berislav Žarnić. The project was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science within the program Homing Plus. One of the most important points of this project was the International Symposium Imperatives in Theory and Practice which took place in Warsaw, on the 18th and 19th May, 2012. The symposium was the meeting of many specialists in the domain of the theory of imperatives – from China, Croatia, Japan, Poland and The United States. Contents: Berislav Žarnić, Logical Root of Linguistic Commitment; Jacek Jadacki, Witwicki’s Square; Tomoyuki Yamada, On the Very Idea of Imperative Inference; Fengkui Ju, Semantics of Sentences in Mixed Moods of Indicative and Imperative; Piotr Kulicki & Robert Trypuz, Two Faces of Obligation; Bartosz Brożek, Types of Obligations; Anna Brożek, Functional Ambiguity of Imperatives; Anna Brożek, Logic of Prescriptions and Instruction; Aleksandra Horecka, Imperative Sentence as a Performative Sentence, which Refers to the Optative State of Affairs; Jakub Bazyli Motrenko, The Concept of Praxiological Directive; Maciej Witek, How to Establish Authority with Words: Imperative Utterances and Presupposition Accommodation; Wojciech Załuski, Remarks on the Lexical Order of Rawls’s Two Principles of Justice; Natalia Miklaszewska, Acts of Will as Convictions; Anna Brożek, Imperatives in the Gospel.

Józef Maria Bocheński introduced an important distinction between deontic and epistemic authority. A typical example of epistemic authority is the relation of a teacher to his students; a typical example of deontic authority is the relation between an employer and his employee. The difference between the two lies in domains of authority: declarative sentences make up the domain in the case of epistemic authority, orders—in the domain of deontic authority. In the article, I analyze in detail the concepts of the two kinds of authority and propose some new explications. The concept of epistemic authority is distinguished from the concept of infallibility and expertise; and the concept of deontic authority is distinguished from the concept of sovereign. I interpret various kinds of deontic authority in the light of the theory of imperative sentences. The concepts of gradation and de-gradation of authority are introduced and explicated

It is hard to imagine our life without questions. They facilitate orientation in our environment, enable interpersonal communication and make the acquisition of knowledge possible. Questions direct scientific research, are used as research tools and are an important medium of transferring knowledge in teaching. The book is intended as a par excellence philosophical monograph of the theory of questions, presenting the most important erotetic problems, their general background and selected practical applications. It is prepared in all fairness to results acquired in the framework of the logical theories of questions but goes beyond this framework

The authors proposes a philosophical hinterland of nomological type for various conceptions of alethic modalities. Differences among these conceptions are explained by the fact, that moda­lizators can be relativized to various types of laws. Thus one can speak respectively about logic and definitional, ontical and physical, technical and dispositional, psychological and methodo­logical, and finally deontic modalities. The authors shows that in their conceptual appa­ratus modal logics find intuitive interpretation more clear and ontologically more cautious than the semantics of possible worlds philosophically interpreted. The nomological explication of main notions of this semantics (like “possible world” and “accessibility relation”) is also given

Artykuł zawiera zarys rekonstrukcji poglądów etycznych Tadeusza Kotarbińskiego. Analiza pism etycznych Kotarbińskiego — niestety dalekich od ideału precyzji — pozwala sądzić, że na jego system etyczny składają się m.in. następujące tezy. Podstawową negatywną normą moralną jest norma „Nie powinieneś nikomu czynić zła ponad niezbędną potrzebę”, a podstawową pozytywną normą moralną jest norma „Powinieneś komuś czynić dobro”; stąd etykę Kotarbińskiego wolno nazwać „altruizmem lokalnym”. Za naczelną cnotę moralną uznaje Kotarbiński opiekuńczość ; stąd jego system etyczny nazywany bywa „etyką spolegliwego opiekuna”. Działanie opiekuna polegać powinno przede wszystkim na zapobieganiu i usuwaniu nieszczęścia; stąd system etyczny Kotarbińskiego wolno nazwać „minimalistycznym”. Normy etyczne uzasadniane są za pomocą procedury indukcyjnej wspartej intuicją etyczną. Najpierw intuicyjnie rozpoznajemy czyny ewidentnie dobre lub ewidentnie haniebne, a następnie wyabstrahowujemy z nich istotę czcigodności i haniebności. System etyczny Kotarbińskiego pretenduje do niezależności: względem poglądów filozoficznych i religijnych; pozostaje jednak «treściowo» bliski etyce ewangelicznej.

The volume contains almost thirty papers by Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The papers are published in English for the first time. The papers concern fundamental problems of philosophy: the methods of philosophizing, the boundary of psychology and semiotics, the conceptual apparatus of metaphysics, ethical skepticism, the question of free will and ethical obligation, the aesthetics of music and so on. The systematic considerations are complemented by concise but excellent sketches of the philosophical views of Socrates, Aquinas, Leibniz, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Bergson.

In this chapter, I sketch the aspects of erotetic which, on the one hand, are not presented in previous chapters, and, on the other hand, are important with respect to some practical applications of erotetics which are presented in the third part of the book. I start from describing the modifications of a typical erotetic situation and indicating some kinds of questions put in untypical situations. Furthermore, I shall concentrate on the situational concepts of an answer. The last part of the chapter is devoted to the concept of the lie in questions and answers.

Let us assume that the expression A is a segment of the expression B. Now, let us assume that we try to transform the expression B into the expression B', removing A from B or replacing A with another expression, say A'. When shall we say that A is irremovable or occurs in B essentially? We shall do it, if we can neither remove A from B nor replace A with A', not influencing upon important properties of B. On the other hand, when shall we say that the occurrence A in B is essential? We shall do it, if we can transform B into B' changing no properties of B. Let us say it more precisely. Let us assume - as concerns expressions x, y, x' and y' - that: (a) x occurs in y; (b) the only structural difference between y and y' is that x does not occur in y', or x' occurs in y instead of x. Then: x occurs in y inessentially-with-respect-to-w of y, iff y' is the same as y with respect to p. Correspondingly: x occurs in y essentially-with-respect-to-w of y, iff y' is different as y with respect to p. The occurrence x in y may be essential or inessential with respect to syntactic, semantic or pragmatic properties of y. In my paper, I discuss a variety of detailed concepts of the (in)essential occurrence of expressions in another expressions with respect to semantic properties of these expressions, i.e. with respect to semantic category, logical value, denotation and connotation. I also discuss some philosophical and methodological implications of presented solutions of the problem