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The Minimalist Conception of Truth and Philosophy of Science. Ajdukiewicz’s Account of Scientific InquiryIn Artur Rojszczak, Jacek Cachro & Gabriel Kurczewski (eds.), Philosophical Dimensions of the Unity of Science, Kluwer Academic Publisher. 2003.
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34An Austinian alternative to the Gricean perspective on meaning and communication,Journal of Pragmatics 201 60-75. 2022.My aim in this paper is to contribute to the debate on the foundations of semantics and pragmatics by developing an Austinian alternative to the Gricean programme. The Gricean approach has been criticised by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone who claim that most of the interpretive effects that are usually accounted for as inferentially recognized aspects of meaning are in fact determined by grammar. I argue, however, that it is the Austinian perspective rather than the extended-grammar outlook, tha…Read more
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23Self-Expression in Speech ActsOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 2 (28): 326-359. 2021.My aim in this paper is to examine Mitchell S. Green’s notion of self-expression and the role it plays in his model of illocutionary communication. The paper is organized into three parts. In Section 2, after discussing Green’s notions of illocutionary speaker meaning and self-expression, I consider the contribution that self-expression makes to the mechanisms of intentional communication; in particular, I introduce the notion of proto-illocutionary speaker meaning and argue that it is necessary…Read more
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16Intention and Responsibility in Demonstrative Reference. A View From the Speech Act TheoryStudia Semiotyczne 36 (63): 84-82. 2022.Korta and Perry (2011) argue that the object a speaker refers to with a demonstrative expression combined with a pointing gesture is determined by her directing intention rather than by her demonstration. They acknowledge that our use of the ordinary concept of “what is said” is affected by our judgements about the speaker’s responsibility for the results of her careless pointing; however, they claim that the effects are perlocutionary and have no bearing on determining the referential content o…Read more
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17Interactional NegotiationIn Laura Caponetto & Paolo Labinaz (eds.), Sbisà on Speech as Action, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 2147483647-2147483647. 2023.My aim in this chapter is to use Marina Sbisà’s idea of interactional negotiation to consider what it is for conversing agents to follow illocutionary conventions or, as John L. Austin would put it, what it is for an illocutionary act to be done as conforming to a convention. The chapter is organized into two parts. In the first one, I use the Austinian notions of uptake and response as well as the Lewisian concept of accommodation to discuss a few examples of force negotiation and develop a mod…Read more
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6Accommodation in Linguistic Interaction. On the So-called Triggering ProblemIn Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Philosophical Insights Into Pragmatics, De Gruyter. pp. 163-192. 2019.
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Prosody in recognizing dialogue-specific functions of speech acts. Evidence from PolishLanguage Sciences 93 101499. 2022.In this paper we evaluate the role of prosodic information in inferring dialogue-specific functions of speech acts. We report the results of an empirical study in which participants are exposed to recordings of certain utterances and, next, asked to recognize discursive contexts from which the heard utterances may come. The recorded utterances are quotations: staged utterances produced by speakers asked to read aloud dialogues specially constructed for the study. We analyse prosodic cues produce…Read more
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68Irony as a speech actionJournal of Pragmatics 190 76-90. 2022.The paper develops a speech act-based model of verbal irony. It argues, first, that ironic utterances are speech actions performed as conforming to a socially accepted procedure and, second, that they are best understood as so-called etiolated uses of language. The paper is organized into four parts. The first one elaborates on Austin's doctrine of the etiolations of language and distinguishes between the normal or serious mode of communication and its etiolated mode. The second part discusses t…Read more
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105The Polish School of Argumentation: A ManifestoArgumentation 28 (3): 267-282. 2014.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 …Read more
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116Non-Inferential Aspects of Ad Hominem and Ad BaculumArgumentation 28 (3): 301-315. 2014.The aim of the paper is to explore the interrelation between persuasion tactics and properties of speech acts. We investigate two types of arguments ad: ad hominem and ad baculum. We show that with both of these tactics, the structures that play a key role are not inferential, but rather ethotic, i.e., related to the speaker’s character and trust. We use the concepts of illocutionary force and constitutive conditions related to the character or status of the speaker in order to explain the dynam…Read more
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194Naturalising Illocutionary RulesIn Marcin Młlkowski & Konrad Talmont-Kaminski (eds.), Beyond Description. Naturalism and Normativity, College Publications. 2010.In this paper I consider the concept of an illocutionary rule - i.e., the rule of the form "X counts as 7 in context C" - and examine the role it plays in explaining the nature of verbal communication and the conventionality of natural languages. My aim is to find a middle ground between John R. Searle's view, according to which every conventional speech act has to be explained in terms of illocutionary rules that underlie its performance, and the view held by Ruth G Millikan, who seems to sugge…Read more
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177How to Establish Authority with Words: Imperative Utterances and Presupposition AccommodationIn Anna Brożek (ed.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science at Warsaw University, Warszawa 2013, . pp. 145-157. 2013.The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at providing an account of an indirect mechanism responsible for establishing one's power to issue biding directive acts; second, it is intended as a case for an externalist account of illocutionary interaction. The mechanism in question is akin to what David Lewis calls presupposition accommodation: a rule-governed process whereby the context of an utterance is adjusted to make the utterance acceptable; the main idea behind the proposed accou…Read more
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48Truth and ConversationPhilosophica 75 (1): 103-135. 2005.The paper develops an argument in favour of a version of inflationism about thruth. I claim that in order to explain the conversational validity of T-equivalences one should assume that there is a constitutive connection between the concept of truth for statements and the concept of speaker meaning. The justification of my claim proceeds in two steps. Firstly, I formulate an inflationary account of the conversational validity of T-equivalences in terms of conversational implicatures generated by…Read more
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63Linguistic underdeterminacy: A view from speech act theoryJournal of Pragmatics 76 15-29. 2015.The aim of this paper is to reformulate the Linguistic Underdeterminacy Thesis by making use of Austin’s theory of speech acts. Viewed from the post-Gricean perspective, linguistic underdeterminacy consists in there being a gap between the encoded meaning of a sentence uttered by a speaker and the proposition that she communicates. According to the Austinian model offered in this paper, linguistic underdeterminacy should be analysed in terms of semantic and force potentials conventionally associ…Read more
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688Three Approaches to the Study of Speech ActsDialogue and Universalism 23 (1): 129-141. 2013.The paper reconstructs and discusses three different approaches to the study of speech acts: (i) the intentionalist approach, according to which most illocutionary acts are to be analysed as utterances made with the Gricean communicative intentions, (ii) the institutionalist approach, which is based on the idea of illocutions as institutional acts constituted by systems of collectively accepted rules, and (iii) the interactionalist approach the main tenet of which is to perform illocutionary act…Read more
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76Mechanisms of Illocutionary GamesLanguage and Communication 42 11-22. 2015.The paper develops a score-keeping model of illocutionary games and uses it to account for mechanisms responsible for creating institutional facts construed as rights and commitments of participants in a dialogue. After introducing the idea of Austinian games—understood as abstract entities representing different levels of the functioning of discourse—the paper defines the main categories of the proposed model: interactional negotiation, illocutionary score, appropriateness rules and kinematics …Read more
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15The theory of a theory meaning (teoria teorii znaczenia)Filozofia Nauki 17 (2 (66)): 92-112. 2009.
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627A Contextualist Account of the Linguistic RealityIn Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska (ed.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science at Warsaw University 4, Semper. 2008.In this paper I consider the idea of external language and examine the role it plays in our understanding of human linguistic practice. Following Michael Devitt, I assume that the subject matter of a linguistic theory is not a psychologically real computational module, but a semiotic system of physical entities equipped with linguistic properties. 2 What are the physical items that count as linguistic tokens and in virtue of what do they possess phonetic, syntactic and semantic properties? Accor…Read more
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Zgodność z rzeczywistością. Uwagi o Jacka J. Jadackiego teorii prawdyFilozofia Nauki 3. 2005.The author starts with the assumption that a popular idea, according to which a true sentence corresponds with reality, is adequate. Therefore, any adequate theory of truth has to account for it. It turns out, however, that it is the epistemic conception, not the correspondence one, that meets such a demand. In order to justify his claim, the author discusses Jacek J. Jadacki's theory of truth. Roughly speaking, the theory in question states that if a given sentence refers to a certain state of …Read more
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71Wittgenstein and the Internalism-Externalism DilemmaIn W. Löffler & P. Weingartner (eds.), Knowledge and Belief. Contributions of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2003.It can be said that Wittgenstein"s Private Language Argument initiated the internalism-externalism dilemma. In one of its interpretations the argument is read as a criticism of methodological solipsism. Internalism, in turn, assumes that methodological solipsism is an adequate account of mental content. Therefore some externalists refer to Wittgenstein as their forerunner. I argue, first, that the Private Language Argument does not support the claim of externalism that meanings are not in the he…Read more
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Linguistic Underdeterminacy from the viewpoint of the Reflexive Truth Conditions TheoryFilozofia Nauki 17 (3): 57. 2009.
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29Searle, Burge and Intentional ContentIn M. E. Reicher & J. C. Marek (eds.), Experience and Analysis: Papers of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 2004.
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Jakie skojarzenia ma umysł obliczeniowy? Obrona tezy o izolacji informacyjnej systemu wczesnego widzeniaStudia Z Kognitywistyki I Filozofii Umysłu 6 (2). 2012.Celem artykułu jest obrona tezy o izolacji informacyjnej systemu wczesnego widzenia przed zarzutami odwołującymi się do eksperymentów świadczących rzekomo o wpływie przekonań o typowych barwach przedmiotów na budowę płytkich reprezentacji wzrokowych. Przez płytkie reprezentacje wzrokowe rozumiem doznania percepcyjne reprezentujące bodźce zewnętrzne wyłącznie za pomocą takich własności, jak kształt, wielkość, położenie i barwa. Twierdzę, że doniesienia eksperymentalne przytaczane przez przeciwnik…Read more
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15The Minimalist Conception of Truth and Philosophy of Science. Ajdukiewicz’s Account of Scientific InquiryIn A. Rojszczak, J. Cachro & G. Kurczewski (eds.), Philosophical Dimensions of Logic and Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 251--266. 2003.
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10Normativity and Variety of Speech Actions (edited book)Brill | Rodopi. 2019.Normativity and Variety of Speech Actions embraces papers focused on the performative dimension of language. While all texts in the volume recognize speech primarily as a type of action, the collection is indicative of the multifaceted nature of J.L. Austin’s original reflection, which invited many varied research programmes. The problems addressed in the volume are discussed with reference to data culled from natural conversation, mediated political discourse, law, and literary language, and in…Read more
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21The Expressive Dimension and Score-changing Function of Speech Acts from the Evolutionist Point of ViewGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (3): 381-398. 2019.The aim of this paper is twofold. First, the author examines Mitchell Green’s account of the expressive power and score-changing function of speech acts; second, he develops an alternative, though also evolutionist approach to explaining these two hallmarks of verbal interaction. After discussing the central tenets of Green’s model, the author draws two distinctions – between externalist and internalist aspects of veracity, and between perlocutionary and illocutionary credibility – and argues th…Read more
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Jakiej teorii prawdy relatywiści potrzebują?Filozofia Nauki 3. 2003.The aim of this paper is to justify the claim that relativism assumes a deflationary account of truth. In the first section the author articulates some terminological conventions regarding the use of the terms "relativism" and "deflationism". It is assumed that relativism advocates two theses. The first one is the thesis of relativity. It says that opinions adopted by members of some community depend on social or cultural factors determining their cognitive point of view. The second one is the t…Read more
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17The many faces of speech act theory — editorial to special issue on speech actionsLodz Papers in Pragmatics 5 (1): 1-8. 2009.The many faces of speech act theory — editorial to special issue on speech actions
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