Spanning the period between Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 and the first version of Philosophical Investigations in 1936, Piotr Dehnel explores the middle stage in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical development and identifies the major issues which engrossed him, including phenomenology, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. Contrary to the dominant perspective, Dehnel argues that this period was intrinsically different from the early and late stages and should not be viewed as a mere transitional phase. The distinctiveness of (...) Wittgenstein's middle work can be seen in his philosophical thinking as it unfolds in a non-linear trajectory: thoughts do not follow upon each other, ideas do not appear sequentially one by one, and insights do not form a straight chain. Dehnel portrays the diffused and multifarious quality of Wittgenstein's middle thinking, enabling readers to form a more comprehensive view of his entire philosophy and acquire a better grasp of his conceptual trajectory, complete with the intricacies and challenges that it poses. (shrink)

Samuel J. Wheeler defends Wittgenstein's criticism of Cantor's set theory against the objections raised by Hilary Putnam. Putnam claims that Wittgenstein's dismissal of the basic tenets of this set theory concerning the noncountability of the set of real numbers was unfounded and ill‐conceived. In Wheeler's view, Putnam's charges result from his failure to grasp Wittgenstein's intention and, in particular, to consider the difference between empirical and logical impossibility. In my paper, I argue that Wheeler's defence is unsuccessful and, at the (...) same time, that Putnam's objections go too far. (shrink)

This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that maelstrom of history, psychology was particularly affected by the effects of geopolitical changes, which led to its symbolic ‘arrest’ in 1952, when psychological practice was prohibited and all psychology courses were abolished at universities. Amnesty was declared only in 1956, with the demise of the so-called Stalinist ‘cult of personality’ and the onset (...) of a turbulent period when the crimes of the Stalinist era were prosecuted. We have adopted three time frames for our description and analysis of this dramatic period in the development of psychology in Poland. ‘The past’ is a story about the flourishing of Polish psychology before World War Two and the hopes for the discipline’s restoration after the war. ‘The present’, as the core of this narrative, represents the events of 1950–56. ‘The future’ refers to the period when Stalinist abuses were prosecuted during the Thaw, following the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorship, and the resurgence of Polish psychologists’ hopes for resurrecting their discipline. In all these periods, the narrative is interwoven with the story of the Polish psychologist Mieczysław Kreutz, who offers a model example of the hypothesized dependence of scientific research on sociopolitical change. (shrink)

The paper discusses a relatively underexamined element of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics associated with his critique of set theory. I outline Wittgenstein’s objections to the theories of Dedekind and Cantor, including the confounding of extension and intension, the faulty definition of the infinite set as infinite extension and the critique of Cantor’s diagonal proof. One of Wittgenstein’s major objections to set theory was that the concept of the size of infinite sets, which Cantor expressed by means of symbols אₒ and (...) c, had no application, i.e. that there was no grammatical technique that could show how such expressions were to be used. Notions of set theory are, so to speak, exterior – they find themselves outdoors, outside of what we usually do. They form a discourse that takes us beyond the horizon of everydayness and commonality. They are like an engine idling of the language of mathematics. (shrink)

Maria Kokoszyńska-Lutmanowa (1906-1981) was a Polish philosopher and student of Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School. In 1938 she went to the University of Cambridge (Newnham College) on a Sarah Smitton Fellowship. There she attended George Edward Moore’s lectures as well as one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics in 1939. In this interview which was conducted with Alois Eder she talks about her encounter with Wittgenstein. It was published in 1978 in the Polish art (...) and culture magazine Odra and is her only published memoir about Wittgenstein. The interview is republished here both in English translation and as facsimile of the original publication with the kind permission of the Odra magazine. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to present Marek Siemek’s interpretation of modernity, focusing on problems related to understanding of the modern subject that arose from the reading of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. Siemek seems to endorse a general drive of Habermas’ theory of intersubjective communication intended to overcome the dialectics of Enlightenment and to complete the project of modernity. However, his position is that its foundation can be traced back to the philosophies of Fichte (...) and Hegel and their mutually complementary intersubjectivity models. Siemek seeks to reconcile the idea of the philosophy of intersubjectivity underlying Fichte’s and Hegel’s philosophies with the tenets of the philosophy of consciousness. (shrink)

This article aims to analyse Wittgenstein’s 1929–1932 notes concerning Frege’s critique of what is referred to as old formalism in the philosophy of mathematics. Wittgenstein disagreed with Frege’s critique and, in his notes, outlined his own assessment of formalism. First of all, he approvingly foregrounded its mathematics-game comparison and insistence that rules precede the meanings of expressions. In this article, I recount Frege’s critique of formalism and address Wittgenstein’s assessment of it to show that his remarks are not so much (...) a critique of Frege as rather a defence of the formalist anti-metaphysical investment. (shrink)

This is a reply to ‘Defending Wittgenstein’, Piotr Dehnel's critique of my article, ‘Defending Wittgenstein's Remarks on Cantor from Putnam’. I first show that my position is much more in agreement with Felix Mühlhölzer than Dehnel takes it to be, and that his criticism of me is nothing more than a failure to recognize this. I then show how Dehnel incorrectly reads Wittgenstein as rejecting set theory as false. It is an overemphasis on and a much too (...) narrow picture of ‘applicability’ which leads him to this view. Finally, I conclude by rejecting Dehnel's view that Wittgenstein was a finitist about mathematics. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of Jacek Dehnel’s presence in Spain. On the one hand, it contains references to Spain within his works: the Francisco Goya family in the novel Saturn. Czarne obrazy z życia mężczyzn z rodziny Goya (W.A.B. Publishers, Warsaw 2011; translated into English as Saturn: Black Paintings from the Lives of the Men in the Goya Family by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Dedalus, Cambridgeshire 2012) and two maps: Ancient Spain and Modern Spain in the book Kosmografia, czyli trzydzieści (...) apokryfów tułaczych (Biblioteka Narodowa, Warsaw 2012). On the other hand, the paper refers to the translation of Dehnel’s works into Spanish: the novel Lala (W.A.B. Publishers, Warsaw 2006) translated by Jerzy Sławomirski and Anna Rubió as El jardín de Lala (Duomo ediciones, Barcelona 2012; translated into English as Lala by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Oneworld Publications, London 2019) and eight poems by the poet inside the volume Poesía a contragolpe. Antología de poesía polaca contemporánea (autores nacidos entre 1960 y 1980), selected and translated by Abel Murcia, Gerardo Beltrán and Xavier Farré (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, Zaragoza 2012). Analysis covers one of the poems from the anthology, entitled El abogado Federico G. L. dicta una citación. (shrink)

Komparatystyczna analiza wybranych utworów z nurtu literatury zombi z Argentyny (Ávalos Blacha, Pailos) oraz Polski (Dehnel, Ostachowicz) wskazuje na pewne paralelizmy w wykorzystaniu motywu żywego trupa w literaturach narodowych, jako metafory społecznej, politycznej, związanej z pamięcią historyczną i zmianami kulturowymi.