Monika Walczak

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of the interdisciplinary problem using the categories of the logic of questions. The problem is seen in a logical and epistemic sense: the problem is a meaning of the question, and the question is a formulation of the problem in a particular language. Demonstrating that the interdisciplinarity of an interdisciplinary problem is understood in terms of a particular kind of complexity, I indicate the places where it is realized in the structure of the problem-question, in the problem’s solution-answer to the question, and in the cognitive context of the problem solving - answering to the question. The paper also displays how an interdisciplinary problem is situated within the broader structure of an interdisciplinary research process. Thus, the paper provides not only a metatheoretical characterization of the interdisciplinary problem but also a general methodological tool for analyzing particular interdisciplinary problems.

The topic of the paper is the notion of intuition in Descartes’ philosophy and its epistemic functions. Descartes introduces his notion of intuition in the context of a description of his method and process of knowing and doing science. Intuition is a significant component of this process. I intend to show that the main epistemic functions of intuition in Descartes’ philosophy are differentiated. Intuition is essential not only in the context of justification (the Cartesian synthetic method of proof) but also and especially in the context of discovery (the Cartesian analytic method of discovery). It plays not only a role in the foundation of cogito but also on different stages of constructing the system of knowledge. Intuition has important functions in grasping simple natures, forming primary concepts, comprehending complex natures, forming primary propositions (including primary principles), and capturing relationships between them and building deductive reasoning (the role of intuition in deduction). Hence, intuition is the foundation for all primary stages of producing knowledge. It is active and important element of pure thinking (a priori) in human knowledge, and science. It fulfils these functions due to its specific epistemic properties. I also argue that intuition is not an autonomous and complete type of knowledge. Nor is it an intuitive thesis, but rather the basis of a justification for theses (including cogito).

The paper is an attempt to reflect on the valuing dimension of the category of the rationality of science, ontological and epistemological problems. Such problems should be solved should rationality be deemed a valuing category. Taking into consideration the discussions on the valuing character of the categories in ethics (good, evil) and the significance of moral judgements as the point of departure, I am posing a question about the importance of expressions with regard to the rationality of science, expressions treated as valuing expressions. Since the beginning of the reflections on science until now it has contained valuing and normative elements. This was irrespective of whether it took the form of logic, epistemology, methodology or philosophy of science. Moreover, the above disciplines were treated as, of their nature, formulating the ideal of knowledge and providing rules of a valuing cognition. In the twentieth century the central concept on which the discussions focused was the category of rationality. The question was how to define a valuable scientific knowledge and how to pursue science. We find some problems when we want to interpret the category of rationality as a valuing category. These problems seem to be good examples of questions that should be answered, while interpreting other epistemic categories as valuing. Including the category of the rationality of science in the valuing categories is tantamount to the conferral of a valuing sense on the statements about the rationality of science, the predicator ,,rational\" and its antonyms. The standpoints in question, the interpretations of valuing statements are as follows: anti-naturalism, naturalism, cognitivism, and acognitivism. They answer such questions as: 1) what kind of feature is rationality? 2) what are its relationships with other features, in particular with the features examined by the natural, or broadly, empirical sciences? 3) does the feature of being rational or the relationship of being a good reason on behalf of something really exist? 4) what kind of predicator of the predicator ,,rational\" and its antonyms? 5) what are their relations to other predicators, in particular those predicators which the natural, or broadly, empirical sciences make use of? 6) what kind of propositions are the statements about the rationality of science? 7) what do the statements about the rationality of science denote, or do they denote anything really existing? 8) what are the relationships of the statements of the rationality of science to other statements, in particular the statements formulated by natural sciences, e.g. cognitive psychology? The review of various manners by which to use the category of rationality in the philosophy of science speaks on behalf of the rejection of extreme interpretations: both extremely cognitivist and acognitivist. In the statements about rationality there are now two components: descriptive (object-related) and valuing. The valuing component may be understood in at least three inseparable and often coexisting manners: approving/disapproving, perfectionist and normative

The paper discusses notions of intuition and insight. The most typical features attributed to intuition in the history of philosophy – receptiveness, passivity, immediateness, directness, self-evidence, infallibility, and indubitability – are analyzed. A variability of the notion of intuition is shown, taking as its example the category of insight, central for the epistemology of Bernard J.F. Lonergan (1904–1984), the twentieth-century philosopher locating between phenomenology, Thomism and hermeneutics. Insight is still in some respects a kind of intuition although it is creative, active, mediated, indirect, fallible and open to revision.

Kategoria struktur metodologicznych wprowadzona przez Zygmunta Hajduka jest kategorią nową, nieużywaną dotąd w rozważaniach metodologicznych i niemającą w nich ugruntowanego miejsca. Dlatego można zapytać o funkcję, jaką miałaby ona pełnić w metodologii nauk, oraz ojej przydatność jako ogólnego pojęcia metodologicznego. Zasadnicze pytanie, jakie stawiam to: czy wprowadzony przez Z. Hajduka termin struktury metodologiczne może służyć jako najogólniejsza kategoria wyznaczająca przedmiot badań metodologii nauk? Odpowiadając negatywnie na to pytanie, przedstawiam argumenty, jakie przemawiają przeciwko używaniu pojęcia struktur metodologicznych w ten sposób. Moja argumentacja przebiega w następujący sposób. Przywołując funkcjonujące w metodologii nauk zasadnicze sposoby rozumienia nauki, ujęcie metodologii nauk wyznaczone przez Szkołę lwowsko-warszawską i tradycję metodologiczną KUL, będącą jej kontynuacją, typy metodologii, współczesne anglosaskie ujęcia filozofii nauki oraz rozumienie analizy metodologicznej, próbuję wskazać w miarę całościową mapę kategorii metodologicznych wyznaczających przedmiot badań metodologii nauk. Następnie odnoszę do niej kategorię struktur metodologicznych jako wyznaczającą, moim zdaniem zbyt wąsko, przedmiot badań metodologii nauk i przeprowadzam krytykę pojęcia struktur metodologicznych jako najogólniejszej kategorii wyznaczającej przedmiot badań metodologii nauk. Wskazuję także na niekompletność zaproponowanej przez Z. Hajduka listy struktur metodologicznych, którymi zajmuje się metodologia nauk.

This paper is a contribution to the comparison of – on the one hand – the understanding of knowledge and belief by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, whose philosophy is a version of transcendental philosophy, with – on the other hand – notions of knowledge and belief held by contemporary analytical philosophers. A crucial problem of contemporary analytical epistemology is the question: what is knowledge? Although in epistemology we find different conceptions of knowledge, the basic conception to which discussions appeal is the classical conception of knowledge. This limits knowledge to propositional knowledge, which is defined as justified true belief. The task of the paper is, first, to reconstruct the notion of belief used by B. Lonergan; second, to show how Lonergan’s notion of belief differs from that of analytical philosophers; and third, to show that the Lonerganian notion of belief is not the basic category involved in understanding propositional knowledge as it is understood by analytical philosophers.

The paper is a part of my research on the history of a concept of intuition and a category of insight in writings of Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984). The philosophical discussions make use of many partly or totally different concepts of intuition, and the variety of those concepts is related to many aspects of intuition: a type of “object” that intuition is; the way of grasping of its object by intuition; its epistemic functions, etc. From the metatheoretical point of view I am looking the answer to the question: what type of “objects” (designatum) was denoted in the history by the term intuition and its foreign languages counterparts? When I employ the term designatum of “intuition” I am looking for more general categories for intuition. In classical terms, it is about finding genus proximus for intuition. I distinguish and characterize three basic types of denotation the term intuition: 1) (intuitive) knowing, understood as cognitive acts (for example insight), as something that is not an act, and as process; 2) (intuitive) knowledge, as propositional knowledge (propositions, beliefs) or non-propositional knowledge (knowledge-how or knowledge by acquaintance), and 3) faculty (for example intellect) or ability (disposition) of mind to produce intuitive knowledge.

Este trabajo ofrece una presentación general del perfil personal y de la filosofía de Bernard Lonergan , en especial de su teoría cognitiva y su epistemología. Se centra en la exposición de sus ideas a partir de su obra filosófica más importante: Insight: A Study of Human Understanding . Para exponer la filosofía del conocer de Lonergan, se tratan los puntos siguientes: 1. Vida; 2. Influencia; 3. Obras; 4. Exposición general de la filosofía de Lonergan; 5. El conocer como objeto de la filosofía; 6. La auto-apropiación como meta y como método de la filosofía; 7. Cuestiones filosóficas fundamentales y jerarquía de las distintas áreas filosóficas; 8. La teoría cognitiva y la cuestión cognitiva: a. El método empírico generalizado; b. La estructura dinámica del conocer ; 9. La epistemología y la cuestión epistemológica: a. La finalidad del conocer; b. La noción de objetividad; 10. La metafísica del sujeto del conocer y la cuestión metafísica: a. La noción de ser ; b. El deseo infinito de conocer y de ser un auténtico conocedor

This paper presents views on the aim of science worked out by Stanisław Kamiński (1919–1986) supplemented with applications added by his followers from the methodological school at KUL. First, Kamiński offers general and convenient categories with which to grasp problems of the philosophy of science using the category of the aim of science. Second, he adopts his own stand on the aim of science. He prefers theoretical aims to practical ones, but he considers them as complementary. Similarly, he prefers explanation to description, but he maintains that they complement each other. His position is derivative of his broad and pluralistic notion of science, not limited to mathematical or natural sciences but including also (as antinaturalists do) human sciences, philosophy and theology as kinds of valuable knowledge. The paper does not discuss particular positions on the aim (aims) of science, but reports on the basic categories used to distinguish particular ways to understand it. They can help in the thoroughgoing analysis of the aim of science problems and they can be applied to characterize science in general, particular types of sciences, and studies that pass the limit of one discipline or one type of knowledge: interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary studies.

Stanisław Kamiński (1919-1986) was a philosopher, philosopher of science and historian of science. He defended in 1949 at the Catholic University in Lublin (KUL) his PhD thesis on Frege's axiomatic system of the sentence logic in the light of the contemporary methodology of deductive science. Since 1957 he was the head of the Chair of Methodology (the first one in Poland, founded in 1952 by J. Iwanicki) at the KUL, since 1965 the associate and since 1970 the full professor of KUL. He was for many years the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy KUL where he developed the methodological foundations of the »Lublin-school of philosophy«. The main interests of S. Kamiński (1919-1986) was history of science and logic, general and special methodology, methodology of philosophy and (medieval) semiotics. Himself he saw his main achievements in the domain of the theory of science and the methodology of classical philosophy, especially in the studies of the method and language of metaphysics; he gave a methodological description of general metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history and studies on religion (religiology); he investigated the beginnings of the mathematical induction in the Middle Ages and in modern times, modern history of the theory of definition (Th. Hobbes, B. Pascal, J. Locke, E. B. de Condillac, J. D. Gergonne), the theory of argumentation (reasoning), the structure and the evolution of scientific theory, the deductive method (B. Pascal, G. W. Leibniz, G. Frege), the achievements of logic and philosophy in Poland. A characteristic feature of S. Kamiński's philosophical and methodological approach was a specific historicism, consisting of referring to the heritage of the past and at the same time to the latest achievements in logic and philosophy of science. He looked to history for inspiration, for how to solve his own problems and for a partial confirmation of legitimacy of his answers. He also used history to better understand the context of the discussed problems. His methodological interests are characterized by a philosophical and historical approach. He had a broad concept of knowledge and was maximalist both in raising questions and in giving answers. He cultivated the ideal of rational knowledge. In accordance with classical philosophy he saw the substance of person as ens rationale, a being realizing himself in a disinterested search for a theoretical truth, whose highest expression is philosophy. He stressed the epistemological and methodological plurality of knowledge and distinguished (with Kant) a material and formal part of knowledge, assuming that the formal element manifests itself as the logical form in the formal procedures of the (scientific) cognitive processes, that is in the (scientific) method and the (scientific) language. Making many attempts at a methodological characterization of different types of cognition and knowledge he distinguished – besides commonsense knowledge that lies at the bottom of any other type of knowledge – the scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge. None of them can be reduced to other type of knowledge, because each of them has its own problems, goals and methods. At the top there is a kind of sapiential knowledge which is much more than a simple generalization of all particular kinds of knowledge. S. Kamiński indebted his understanding of science to contemporary philosophy and to the classical philosophy. The nature of science was determined by him from the point view of its subject matter, aims, methods, logical structure and genesis. The question of what science is concerned with, i.e. what is its subject matter, is a philosophical question, it presupposes an appropriate understanding of the nature of the world. S. Kamiński opted for a pluralistic approach to the world: the principal object of science is the objective world but so are subjective states of man and products of his mind and his language. The best diagnostic test of the scientific character of science is the scientific method. Also here – rejecting the scientism (i.e. the view, that the scientific method and knowledge is the pattern and the measure of each knowledge) – S. Kamiński takes a pluralistic attitude. Accepting that the scientific method is not simple, that there is not one uncomplicated ideal way of doing science, and that because of the multiplicity of questions and scientific aims it would be difficult to construct one universal scientific method as a uniform set of rules for every kind of science, S. Kamiński assumes that different subject matter and different goals of scientific cognition require different research strategies and types of cognitive procedures. One manifestation of S. Kamiński's methodological pluralism is his antinaturalistic position in the theory of the humanities where he supported the thesis of their methodological autonomy with regard to natural sciences. Closer to the philosophical cognition and knowledge, the humanities do not meet and can not meet the conditions imposed upon the natural sciences, as they differ from them in subject matter (the world of culture) and hence in method (understanding, interpretation) used. The publications of S. Kamiński include over 350 positions. During his life he published three books: Georgonne'a teoria definicji [Georgonne's Theory of Definition], Lublin 1958; Pojęcie nauki i klasyfikacja nauk [Concept of Science and Classification of Sciences], Lublin 1961, 19813; and [together with M. A. Krąpiec] Z teorii i metodologii metafizyki [On the Theory and Methodology of Metaphysics], Lublin 1962. After his death five volumes of Collected Papers have been published: vol. I: Jak filozofować? [How to Philosophize? Studies in Methodology of Classical Philosophy], edited by Tadeusz Szubka, Lublin 1989; vol. II: Filozofia i metoda. Studia z dziejów metod filozofowania [Philosophy and Method. Studies from the History of the Method of Philosophizing], edited by Józef Herbut, Lublin 1993; vol. III: Metoda i język. Studia z semiotyki i metodologii nauk [Method and Language. Studies in Semiotics and Philosophy of Science], edited by Urszula Żegleń, Lublin 1994; vol. IV: Nauka i metoda. Pojęcie nauki i klasyfikacja nauk [Science and Method. Concept of Science and Classification of Sciences], edited by Andrzej Bronk, Lublin 1992); vol. V: Światopogląd - Religia - Teologia [Worldview - Religion - Theology], edited by Monika Walczak and Andrzej Bronk, Lublin 1998.