This volume is a result of the international symposium “The Tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School in European Culture,” which took place in Warsaw, Poland, September 2015. It collects almost all the papers presented at the symposium as well as some additional ones. The contributors include scholars from Austria, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Poland. The papers are devoted to the history and reception of the Lvov-Warsaw School, a Polish branch of analytic philosophy. They present the School’s achievements as well as its (...) connections to other analytic groups. The contributors also show how the tradition of the School is developed contemporarily. The title will appeal to historians of analytic philosophy as well as historians of philosophy in Central Europe. (shrink)

Maria Kokoszyńska-Lutmanowa was one of the most outstanding female representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School. After achieving her PhD in philosophy under Kazimierz Twardowski’s supervision, she was Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s assistant. She was also influenced by Alfred Tarski whose results in semantics she analyzed and popularized. After World War II, she got the chair of logic in University of Wrocław and she organized studies in logic in this academic center. In the 1930s, Kokoszyńska kept in contact with members of the Vienna Circle (...) and became a kind of connecting factor between Polish logicians and the Viennese group. In Poland, she presented the views of members of the Vienna Circle. In Vienna, she emphasized the results of her Polish colleagues. In the present paper, some of Kokoszyńska’s results connected with the matters discussed in the Vienna Circle are presented, namely with the problem of metaphysics, the status of logic and the idea of unity of science. (shrink)

The volume aims to show the variety of research currents of the Lvov-Warsaw School and the ways in which these currents are developed today. The content of the book is divided into three parts: “Logic and Semiotics”, “Metaphysics and Ontology”, and “Psychology and Sociology”.

Artykuł przedstawia metodę opisu analitycznego w zastosowaniu do teorii pytań. Metoda ta, zrekonstruowana przez Tadeusza Czeżowskiego, a aplikowana szeroko w Szkole Lwowsko-‑Warszawskiej, znajduje zastosowanie przede wszystkim na preteoretycznym etapie badań, tj. do konstrukcji siatki pojęciowej danej dyscypliny i klasyfikacji dziedziny badań. Jako przykład zastosowania tej metody wskazana została teoria pytań Kazimierza Ajdukiewicza oraz jej rozwinięcia, a zwłaszcza opublikowana niedawno monografia Adama Jonkisza. Omówione zostały metody alternatywne względem opisu analitycznego ze względu na dobór materiału empirycznego i perspektywę teoretyczną. Na tym tle (...) pokazane zostały różnice między odmiennymi nurtami w badaniach erotetycznych i źródła nieporozumień między przedstawicielami tych nurtów. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The first part of the article contains a logical reconstruction and a methodological analysis of some aspects of the famous Władysław Witiwcki’s work “Faith of Enlightened”. In particular, the classifications of believers and the principles of these classifications are analyzed; methodological errors committed by Witwicki are indicated. In the second part of the text, Witwicki's distinctions are illustrated by attitudes towards God and faith represented by four representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School: Kazimierz Twardowski, Jan Łukasiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and Józef Maria (...) Bocheński. (shrink)

Kazimierz Twardowski was the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School, one of the greatest phenomena in the European culture. The School had its representatives in all scientific disciplines, logic and mathematics including. Among his pupils are such great figures of European philosophy like: Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Władysław Tatarkiewicz and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. The paper presents his life and various fields of his rich activity, as well as the list of his main works and the greatest achievements in philosophy. He (...) is best known in the world as the author of the distinction presentation-object-content, act-product, as well as the supporter of the postulate of clarity of thought and speech and the critic of psychologism, relativity of truth, symbolomania and pragmatophobia in science. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Izydora Dąmbska was a Polish philosopher; a student of Kazimierz Twardowski, and his last assistant. The present volume includes twenty eight translations of her representative papers.

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. (shrink)

In March 1930, Alfred Tarski visited Vienna and delivered few lectures which presented the achievements of the logical branch of the Lvov-Warsaw School. Rudolf Carnap was one of the most careful listeners of these lectures. The same year, in November, Carnap, invited by the Warsaw Philosophical Society, visited Warsaw where he gave three lectures. This was an opportunity for him to meet such members the Lvov-Warsaw School as Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, and others. Many years later, Carnap reminisced (...) that he left Warsaw “grateful for many stimulating suggestions and the fruitful exchange of ideas”.In the paper, I reconstruct the details of Carnap’s visit in Warsaw based on Carnap’s diaries, reports published in the Polish Journal Ruch Filozoficzny [Philosophical Movement] and some correspondence. I also discuss some problems presented by Carnap in Warsaw lectures and compare his views to the positons of members of the Lvov-Warsaw School. These problems are: the foundations of psychology, the status of metaphysical sentences, and the character of reasoning. (shrink)

The paper presents the academic personality of Kazimierz Twardowski (1866-1938). Twardowski was born and educated in Vienna, where he was a student of Franz Brentano. After achieving habilitation, he moved to Lvov, where he organized serious philosophical research and became the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School of philosophy and logic. The Twardowski’s achievements in three dimensions: as a teacher, as an organizer and as a scientist are briefly described.

The main intuitions underlying presented analyses may be expressed as follows. Any question corresponds to a certain incomplete image of situation – an image with a gap – and expresses the will of filling this gap. For example, the question "Who loves Isolde?" refers to the image of the situation in which the relation of love occurs; Isolde is the second argument of this relation, and the first argument of it is "empty". Asking "Who loves Isolde?" we express our desire (...) of filling the gap. To identify correctly ontic correlates of questions we ought to accept the view that semantic function of questions consists in indicate a certain image of situation and questioner's attitude to this image. On the basis of these assumptions, semantic functions of questions as well as many other important erotetic notions are explicated. Analyses are illustrated by fragments from Roman Ingarden's famous work "Essential questions" ("Essentiale Fragen"). (shrink)

We assume that the imperative reasoning is a reasoning containing at least one step which is an imperative (or rather its content). At the same time, we understand the term "imperative" as a synonym of "imperative sentence". We assume that in its main usage, imperatives express a certain volitional act: namely, a will of realizing a certain state of affairs. In our opinion, such characterization is related to the contents of imperatives; we call these contents "prescriptions", remembering that in untypical (...) usages prescriptions are not expressed by imperatives. Traditional approach to the processes of reasoning takes into account only these mental processes steps of which are declaratives or declarative sentences (or rather their contents – i.e. judgments). If processes of imperative reasoning are to belong to the range of the term "reasoning", the notion of reasoning has to receive a new, enlarging explication. We propose such an explication in the paper. (shrink)

In the paper, Jan Łukasiewicz’s program of the logicization of philosophy is presented and discussed. Łukasiewicz, known mostly for his invention of trivalent logic as well as his achievements in propositional calculus and metalogic, had always been concerned with the methodological condition of philosophy. He finally found “the measure of exactness” in mathematical logic. According to him, only the use of logical tools may provide philosophical investigations with an appropriate level of exactness. He expressed his views most firmly and directly (...) in the paper, “A call for the method of Philosophy”. Łukasiewicz proposed giving philosophical theories the form of axiomatic systems by indicating the primitive terms of their language, selecting suitable axioms, and explicitly determining the applied rules of inference. All the theses of these systems should be consequences of the accepted axioms and confronted with the data of experience and the results of science. Łukasiewicz’s program is presented together with its inspirations and prospects. (shrink)

The title of this book refers to the tension between formal and informal elements in the ways analytical philosophy is practiced. The authors examine questions of the scopes and limits of both kinds of research methods.

The article proposes some extension of the concept of reasoning that includes also operations on interrogative sentences and imperative sentences , or rather on their contents — interrogations and prescriptions. Key words REASONING.

The article discusses the metaethical views of the philosophers associated with the Lvov-Warsaw School, namely Tadeusz Czeżowski, Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Marian Przełęcki, and Władysław Tatarkiewicz. The common feature of their views is the presence of axiological intuition, understood as direct cognition of values. The similarities as well as the differences between the views of the mentioned authors are listed. These analyses are preceded by conceptual distinctions between types of intuition and kinds of intuitionism.

Before presenting the analysis of logical form of questions, I shall make some comments concerning questions in natural language. By utilizing examples of such questions I shall try to justify my conception of the semiotic function of questions and provide a basis for my analysis of their structure. One of the main aims of this chapter is to introduce definitions of erotetic concepts which I will use in the subsequent parts of the book and to sketch definitional connections between elements (...) of the erotetic conceptual scheme. (shrink)

Survey - or research conducted with the help of questionnaires - is one of the most important methods in sociology. That is why I shall present the problems concerning of surveys and questionnaires on the example of sociology. But one has to remember that the remarks made in this chapter also refer to questionnaires in other disciplines in which one examines human beings and communities.

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. (shrink)

Problems of the philosophy of music may be divided into three domain: ontological, epistemological and axiological one. In the ontological domain, the ontological status of such objects as sounds and wholes composed of them, especially of musical compositions, is a leading problem. In the epistemological domain, the problem of how to obtain the adequate cognition of music plays a similar role. Finely, in the axiological domain, one finds the problem of what is the general value of musical composition which is (...) based on partial values of different kinds as a crucial problem. In the paper, I analyze these problems from the point of view of traditional music and describe how the perspective changes if we take new music into considerations. (shrink)

Izydora Dąmbska was one of the most creative women-representatives of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The paper presents her extraordinary personality, life, as well as the list of her main works and the greatest scientific achievements. The main area of her interest was the logic of natural language, methodology and the history of Greek semiotics. She gave meticulous analysis of the relation between conventionalism on one hand, and relativism, scepticism and agnosticism on the other. In semiotics, she proposed new approach to the (...) problem of empty names and material implication, of the correct definition of truth, as well as of pragmatic functions of silence and namelessness. In methodology, her reconstruction of the notion of scientific laws is of great importance. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this article, Józef M. Bocheński is presented as a representative of the methodological tendencies of the Lvov–Warsaw School. Special attention is given to the reconstructive analysis of concepts, the categorial trait of this procedure, and examples of its application by Bocheński. First, some historical and substantial arguments are presented for including Bocheński in the LWS. Secondly, the procedure of the reconstruction of concepts applied in the LWS is characterized. Then the attention turns to the categorial trait of the analysis (...) as indicated by Bocheński. Finally, two examples of Bocheński’s categorial reconstruction of concepts are presented. The article ends with a recapitulation and general remarks. (shrink)

The article contains the results of the analysis of concepts connected with semantic functions of names. The conception of Jacek Jadacki, exposed in his "Spór o granice jezyka" ("Controversy on the limits of language"), is the point of departure of this analysis. The following theses are formulated and argued for. (1) There are two basic semantic functions of names: the referential and the descriptive one. The first function consists in indicating some objects; the second one consists in ascribing properties to (...) some objects. (2) The concepts of indicating and ascribing are primitive ones. (3) The referential function of denotation and the descriptive function of connotation are mutually independent. The term "connotation" can be defined without using the term "denotation" and vice versa . (4) Names perform not only the function of designating, i.e. referring to particular objects, but also the function of denominating, i.e. referring to universal ( resp. postulated) objects. (5) The connotation of a given name is genetically or conventionally connected with the pragmatic function of ascribing properties to respective objects. (6) In sciences, such connotations of names are sought after, which are, at the same time, essences of designates of these names. (shrink)

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. (shrink)