•  1689
    World and Logic
    College Publications. 2021.
    What is the relationship between the world and logic, between intuition and language, between objects and their quantitative determinations? Rationalists, on the one hand, hold that the world is structured in a rational way. Representationalists, on the other hand, assume that language, logic, and mathematics are only the means to order and describe the intuitively given world. In World and Logic, Jens Lemanski takes up three surprising arguments from Arthur Schopenhauer’s hitherto undiscovered …Read more
  •  848
    In previous research, Schopenhauer is regarded as a consistent representative of a classical picture theory of language. The paper shows, however, that Schopenhauer does not only present a use theory of meaning in his lectures on logic, but also justifies it with the help of the context principle. Furthermore, it is discussed to what extent Schopenhauer's use theory of meaning is similar to the semantic theory of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his successors.
  •  708
    Fichte’s Formal Logic
    Synthese 202 (1): 1-27. 2023.
    Fichte’s Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre 1794 is one of the most fundamental books in classical German philosophy. The use of laws of thought to establish foundational principles of transcendental philosophy was groundbreaking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century and is still crucial for many areas of theoretical philosophy and logic in general today. Nevertheless, contemporaries have already noted that Fichte’s derivation of foundational principles from the law of id…Read more
  •  704
    Means or end? On the Valuation of Logic Diagrams
    Logic-Philosophical Studies 14 98-122. 2016.
    From the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century, there were not less than ten philosophers who focused extensively on Venn’s ostensible analytical diagrams, as noted by modern historians of logic (Venn, Gardner, Baron, Coumet et al.). But what was the reason for early modern philosophers to use logic or analytical diagrams? Among modern historians of logic one can find two theses which are closely connected to each other: M. Gardner states that since the Middle Ages certain…Read more
  •  689
    Logic Diagrams as Argument Maps in Eristic Dialectics
    Argumentation 37 (1): 69-89. 2023.
    This paper analyses a hitherto unknown technique of using logic diagrams to create argument maps in eristic dialectics. The method was invented in the 1810s and -20s by Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered the originator of modern eristic. This technique of Schopenhauer could be interesting for several branches of research in the field of argumentation: Firstly, for the field of argument mapping, since here a hitherto unknown diagrammatic technique is shown in order to visualise possible situa…Read more
  •  686
    Periods in the Use of Euler-type Diagrams
    Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 5 (1): 50-69. 2017.
    Logicians commonly speak in a relatively undifferentiated way about pre-euler diagrams. The thesis of this paper, however, is that there were three periods in the early modern era in which euler-type diagrams (line diagrams as well as circle diagrams) were expansively used. Expansive periods are characterized by continuity, and regressive periods by discontinuity: While on the one hand an ongoing awareness of the use of euler-type diagrams …Read more
  •  656
    Reism, Concretism and Schopenhauer Diagrams
    Studia Humana 9 (3/4): 104-119. 2020.
    Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this paper we argue for the following two theses: (…Read more
  •  651
    Discourse Ethics and Eristic
    Polish Journal of Aesthetics 62 151-162. 2021.
    Eristic has been studied more and more intensively in recent years in philosophy, law, communication theory, logic, proof theory, and A.I. Nevertheless, the modern origins of eristic, which almost all current researchers see in the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, are considered to be a theory of the illegitimate use of logical and rhetorical devices. Thus, eristic seems to violate the norms of discourse ethics. In this paper, I argue that this interpretation of eristic is based on prejudices th…Read more
  •  649
    “Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positi…Read more
  •  641
    Kant’s Crucial Contribution to Euler Diagrams
    Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 55 (1). 2024.
    Logic diagrams have been increasingly studied and applied for a few decades, not only in logic, but also in many other fields of science. The history of logic diagrams is an important subject, as many current systems and applications of logic diagrams are based on historical predecessors. While traditional histories of logic diagrams cite pioneers such as Leibniz, Euler, Venn, and Peirce, it is not widely known that Kant and the early Kantians in Germany and England played a crucial role in popu…Read more
  •  595
    Logikdiagramme und Logikmaschinen aus der Zittauer Schule um Christian Weise
    Neues Lausitzische Magazin 141 (1): 39-57. 2019.
    A particularly promising trail on the search for forgotten logic diagrams leads to Upper Lusatia in the 17th century, more precisely to Christian Weise and his students. Samuel Grosser, who later became rector in Görlitz, and Johann Christian Lange, who later became professor of logic at the University of Gießen, are the most prominent to have published remarkable logic diagrams. Even more remarkable, however, is the fact that Lange's interest in these diagrams ultimately gave rise to the idea o…Read more
  •  584
    Analyzing the philosophy of travel with Schopenhauerian argument maps
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 61 (4): 588-606. 2023.
    Emily Thomas's seminal book The Meaning of Travel has brought the philosophy of travel back into the public eye in recent years. Thomas has shown that the topic of travel can be approached from numerous different perspectives, ranging from the historical to the conceptual‐analytical, to the political or even social‐philosophical perspectives. This article introduces another perspective, which Thomas only indirectly addresses, namely the argumentation‐theoretical perspective. It is notable that c…Read more
  •  581
    Transcendental Philosophy and Logic Diagrams
    Philosophical Investigations 48 (1): 91-117. 2024.
    Logic diagrams have seen a resurgence in their application in a range of fields, including logic, biology, media science, computer science and philosophy. Consequently, understanding the history and philosophy of these diagrams has become crucial. As many current diagrammatic systems in logic are based on ideas that originated in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is important to consider what motivated the use of logic diagrams in the past and whether these reasons are still valid today. This pape…Read more
  •  502
    In this paper, we analyze and discuss Schopenhauer’s n-term diagrams for eristic dialectics from a graph-theoretical perspective. Unlike logic, eristic dialectics does not examine the validity of an isolated argument, but the progression and persuasiveness of an argument in the context of a dialogue or even controversy. To represent these dialogue situations, Schopenhauer created large maps with concepts and Euler-type diagrams, which from today’s perspective are a specific form of graphs. We fi…Read more
  •  497
    On the Origin of Venn Diagrams
    Axiomathes 32 (3): 887-900. 2022.
    In this paper we argue that there were several currents, ideas and problems in 19th-century logic that motivated John Venn to develop his famous logic diagrams. To this end, we first examine the problem of uncertainty or over-specification in syllogistic that became obvious in Euler diagrams. In the 19th century, numerous logicians tried to solve this problem. The most famous was the attempt to introduce dashed circles into Euler diagrams. The solution that John Venn developed for this problem, …Read more
  •  456
    This article compares the research literature published by Goethe and Schopenhauer on the subject of evolutionary theory. The metatheoretical thesis is supported that the results of any comparison between Schopenhauer or Goethe and a concrete theory of evolution always depend on three dimensions: 1. the scientific point of view of the comparative, 2. the meaning and definition of the central terms and 3. the selection of the analyzed primary literature. It is also argued that no previously publi…Read more
  •  436
    Schopenhauer's World. The System of The World as Will and Presentation I
    Schopenhaueriana. Revista Española de Estudios Sobre Schopenhauer 2. 2017.
    in recent years, the research on Schopenhauer has shown a change in the interpretation of his main work, «The World as Will and Presentation», from (1) a normative and linear instruction which guides the reader from idealism to mysticism, pessimism and nothingness to (2) value-free and independent descriptions of the world with all phenomena (like idealism, mysticism, nothingness etc.) in it. thus Schopenhauer’s main work has become an empirical or baconian approach—something like a «philosophic…Read more
  •  436
    Does Logic Have a History at All?
    Foundations of Science 1-23. forthcoming.
    To believe that logic has no history might at first seem peculiar today. But since the early 20th century, this position has been repeatedly conflated with logical monism of Kantian provenance. This logical monism asserts that only one logic is authoritative, thereby rendering all other research in the field marginal and negating the possibility of acknowledging a history of logic. In this paper, I will show how this and many related issues have developed, and that they are founded on only one p…Read more
  •  428
    Schopenhauers Logikdiagramme in den Mathematiklehrbüchern Adolph Diesterwegs
    Siegener Beiträge Zur Geschichte Und Philosophie der Mathematik 16 97-127. 2022.
    Ein Beispiel für die Rezeption und Fortführung der schopenhauerschen Logik findet man in den Mathematiklehrbüchern Friedrich Adolph Wilhelm Diesterwegs (1790–1866), In diesem Aufsatz werden die historische und systematische Dimension dieser Anwendung von Logikdiagramme auf die Mathematik skizziert. In Kapitel 2 wird zunächst die frühe Rezeption der schopenhauerschen Logik und Philosophie der Mathematik vorgestellt. Dabei werden einige oftmals tradierte Vorurteile, die das Werk Schopenhauers betr…Read more
  •  414
    Inspired by various research results on the history of philosophy that have not yet been compiled, the paper pursues the thesis that the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" was formulated long before Leibniz. In reviewing this thesis, the 'fundamental question' is differentiated into two individual questions: "Why is there something at all" and 'Why isn't rather nothing?". On the basis of this systematic distinction, the paper examines the history of philosophy from early histo…Read more
  •  384
    Normally in nowadays philosophical research the term 'Neoplatonism' is coined and it was used the first time by Jacob Brucker in the first half of the 18th century. But there are signs that the concept is much older. So this essay follows the trace of the term 'Neoplatonism' from german philosophical historians, like Büsching and Brucker, back to the Cambridge Platonists and tries to demonstrate that the origin of the concept is based on some texts of the late antiquity which act first on the re…Read more
  •  371
    ショーペンハウアーにおける意味の使用理論と文脈原理 : ヴィトゲンシュタイン
    ショーペンハウアー研究 = Schopenhauer-Studien 22 150-190. 2017.
    Japanese translation of ""Schopenhauers Gebrauchstheorie der Bedeutung und das Kontextprinzip. Eine Parallele zu Wittgensteins Philosophischen Untersuchungen". In: 97. Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch (2016), S. 29–51" by Tadahiro Oota (太田 匡洋 [訳])
  •  324
    Can Non-Causal Explanations Answer the Leibniz Question?
    Metaphysica 23 (2): 427-443. 2022.
    Leibniz is often cited as an authority when it comes to the formulation and answer strategy of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Yet much current research assumes that Leibniz advocates an unambiguous question and strategy for the answer. In this respect, one repeatedly finds the argument in the literature that alternative explanatory approaches to this question violate Leibniz’s intention, since he derives the question from the principle of sufficient reason and also de…Read more
  •  300
    Seneca’s and Porphyry’s Trees in Modern Interpretation
    In Jens Lemanski & Ingolf Max (eds.), Historia Logicae and its Modern Interpretation, College Publications. pp. 61-87. 2023.
    This paper presents an analysis of Seneca's 58th letter to Lucilius and Porphyry's Isagoge, which were the origin of the tree diagrams that became popular in philosophy and logic from the early Middle Ages onwards. These diagrams visualise the extent to which a concept can be understood as a category, genus, species or individual and what the method of dihairesis (division) means. The paper explores the dissimilarities between Seneca's and Porphyry's tree structures, scrutinising them through th…Read more
  •  168
    This article examines the evolution of the concept of existence in modern visual representation and reasoning, highlighting important milestones. In the late eighteenth century, during the so-called golden age of visual reasoning, nominalism reigned supreme and there was limited scope for existential import or individuals in logic diagrams. By the late nineteenth century, a form of realism had taken hold, whose existential commitments continue to dominate many areas in logic and visual reasoning…Read more
  •  130
    Why logic has not taken a step forward or backward
    Con-Textos Kantianos 19 187-196. 2024.
    The criticism of Immanuel Kant’s logic commenced with the advent of the so-called ‘new logic’ in the 20th century. One particular passage from the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason has been a source of contention, where Kant asserted that logic has not taken a step forward or backward since Aristotle (B VIII). In Kant scholarship, one current strategy to avoid this criticism is to relocate Kant within the domain of philosophy of logic or by segregating his general logic from modern f…Read more
  •  109
    A Diagrammatic Representation of Hegel’s Science of Logic
    In Viana P. Manalo E. Legg C. Linker S. Stapleton G. Basu A. (ed.), Diagrams 2021: Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. pp. 255-259. 2021.
    In this paper, we interpret a 19th century diagram, which is meant to visualise G.W.F. Hegel’s entire method of the `Science of Logic' on the basis of bitwise operations. For the interpretation of the diagram we use a binary numeral system, and discuss whether the anti-Hegelian argument associated with it is valid or not. The reinterpretation is intended to make more precise rules of construction, a stricter binary code and a review of strengths and weaknesses of the critique.
  •  87
    Oppositional Geometry in the Diagrammatic Calculus CL
    South American Journal of Logic 3 (2): 517-531. 2017.
    The paper presents the diagrammatic calculus CL, which combines features of tree, Euler-type, Venn-type diagrams and squares of opposition. In its basic form, `CL' (= Cubus Logicus) organizes terms in the form of a square or cube. By applying the arrows of the square of opposition to CL, judgments and inferences can be displayed. Thus CL offers on the one hand an intuitive method to display ontologies and on the other hand a diagrammatic tool to check inferences. The paper focuses mainly on the …Read more
  •  83
    Logic Diagrams in the Weigel and Weise Circles
    History and Philosophy of Logic 39 (1): 3-28. 2017.
    From the mid-1600s to the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were two main circles of German scholars which focused extensively on diagrammatic reasoning and representation in logic. The first circle was formed around Erhard Weigel in Jena and consists primarily of Johann Christoph Sturm and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; the second circle developed around Christian Weise in Zittau, with the support of his students, particularly Samuel Grosser and Johann Christian Lange. Each of these schola…Read more
  •  78
    Schopenhauer Diagrams for Conceptual Analysis
    In Ahti Veikko Pietarinen, P. Chapman, Leonie Bosveld-de Smet, Valeria Giardino, James Corter & Sven Linker (eds.), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12169.. 2020.
    In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) used spatial logic diagrams for philosophy of language. These logic diagrams were applied to many areas of semantics and pragmatics, such as theories of concept formation, concept development, translation theory, clarification of conceptual disputes, etc. In this paper we first introduce the basic principles of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language and his diagrammatic method. Since Schopenhauer often giv…Read more