Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

W XX-wiecznej filozofii zaczęto dostrzegać brak precyzji i wieloznaczność twierdzeń filozoficznych, które uznano za źródło nierozwiązywalności poszczególnych sporów filozoficznych. Obserwacja ta skłoniła wielu do próby przedefiniowania tych sporów oraz wyodrębnienia ich poszczególnych płaszczyzn. Narzędziem, które miało stać się najważniejszym dla tych prób okazała się analiza języka, z której starano się wyprowadzić odpowiednie wnioski filozoficzne. Ta zmiana w podejściu do analizy problemów filozoficznych znana jest dzisiaj jako zwrot lingwistyczny.
    W prezentowanym artykule przedstawię i porównam koncepcje dwóch przedstawicieli tego zwrotu – Michaela Dummetta i Kazimierza Ajdukiewicza. To co łączy tych filozofów, to próba przeniesienia sporu o realizm na grunt analizy języka. Możliwe jest to jedynie wówczas, gdy dysponujemy odpowiednimi narzędziami, które pozwalają dokonać parafrazy wspomnianego sporu. Postaram się wykazać, że w przeciwieństwie do Ajdukiewicza. Dummettowi nie udało się dokonać odpowiedniej parafrazy.

Conventionalism is a thesis according to which there is an empty space between the experience and theories which must be “conventionally filled”. Because of empirical equivalence, scientists have nothing but to choose a theory on “soft”, that is non-evidential grounds. As the experience does not “impose” any theory, scientists are free to choose one. Yet, the thing to remember is that conventionalism is not a “homogenous movement”. It is more convenient to speak about conventionalisms. Jindřich Černý’s task is to sketch a line between two basic ways – instrumentalism and constructivism – and to develop the idea of latter with reference to French conventionalism (Poincaré 1902, Le Roy 1901) and Lwow-Warsaw School (Ajdukiewicz 1934). Both instrumentalism and constructivism are, as Le Roy used to say, “philosophies of freedom”, yet respective consequences of freedom are quite different, for, in case of constructivism, the freedom pertains not only to form of knowledge but to its content too.
Constructivism” is an “anti-instrumentalism”, for it denies two emblematic consequences of instrumentalism. First, according to Constructivists, there is no essential difference between empirical and theoretical expressions; both kinds are meaningful. Second, not all statements formulated in vocabulary of empirical theories are “on a par”: epistemic status of some them is more “privileged” than others one. These statements could be termed “paradigmatic propositions”, or in Poincaréan fashion, “principles”. Paradigmatic propositions are constitutive of meanings and of object of cognition, so the theories which differ with respect to principle are not only untranslatable, yet quite literally incommensurable. There is no “invariant” factual or otherwise in virtue of which theories underlaid by different principles could be compared. 
The task amounts to find a new interpretation of relationships between spontaneity and receptivity. “A priori”, as already shown by Poincaré at the end of 19th century, cannot be taken as synonymous with “apodictic”. Yet it does not mean that Kantian spirit goes by the board. The emergence of non-Euclidean geometries calls for the substitution of relative linguistic concept of a priori for the absolute psychological one. The experience is still a result of mesh between receptivity and spontaneity, yet paradigmatic propositions (or principles) are not “innate”. What more, paradigmatic propositions do not “hang in the air”, for they have sensorial genealogy (Poincaré 1902). Even if principles cannot be empirically tested (for the experience depends on them), still they can be abandoned and substituted by different propositions, hence the facts – these primary targets the scientist aim at – are not made out of “nothing”. Freedom of choice is not whimsical. So to speak, constructivism, due to two-way relation between spontaneity and receptivity it postulates, overcomes traditional dichotomy between an “absolutistic” and a relativistic view on science.

Qu'est-ce que le conventionnalisme ? Spéculant sur la modestie de leurs connaissances en philosophie, je me suis habitué à répondre aux "non-philosophes" qui voulaient en savoir un peu plus : le conventionnalisme est une théorie de la connaissance qui, s'exprimant sur la façon de justifier les connaissances verbalisées, s'oppose à l'empirisme aussi bien qu'à la philosophie kantienne. Et pour ceux qui étaient encore plus avancés : c'est une philosophie selon laquelle il existe, dans nos connaissances, des éléments qui, n'étant pas imposés par l'expérience, ne sont ni apodictiques (au sens kantien) ni arbitraires. En d'autres termes, le conventionnalisme est une philosophie sel on laquelle il existe une liberté de choix en ce qui concerne le domaine cognitif. Les connaissances dépendent non seulement de la réalité mais également du choix des théories qui servent à la représenter.

In his book Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought: Explication as Enlightenment,
André W. Carus pointed out that Carnap’s proposed concept of philosophy
is the most effective attempt to solve fundamental problems of the Enlightenment.
Carus emphasized in his monograph the role of the explication.
According to him, Carnap applied the method of explication in the ‘translation’
of sentences from material mode to formal mode. In the article, I will attempt
a polemic with the thesis mentioned above. I will present an argumentation indicating
that Carnap used the paraphrase method, not the explication method,
to ‘translate’ sentences from the material to the formal mode. In order to justify
this argumentation, I will refer to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s comments from the
article O tzw. neopozytywizmie, in which he summarized the achievements of logical
empiricism.

This article will address the views of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz-the leading representative of the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will present arguments proving that the Polish philosopher could have anticipated contemporary metaontological discussions. In the first part, I will provide a profile of Ajdukiewicz as a representative of the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will outline the assumptions of his metaepistemological projects: radical conventionalism and semantic epistemology. In the second part, I will argue that the former project resulted in views on existence similar to Hilary Putnam's and Eli Hirsch's, whereas the outcomes of the other project are views similar to those of Amie Thomasson and her easy ontology project.

The discussion on the principle of non-contradiction (1946-1957) between Marxist and non-Marxist philosophers was one of the major philosophical discussions in Polish philosophy of this period. In my text, I carefully reconstruct this discussion and outline its relation to Soviet debates on the subject. I show that the change in Schaff's position happened in the early 1950s under the combined influence of the Lvov-Warsaw School and the changes in the official Soviet position regarding formal logic. I discuss the aftermath following Schaff's change in attitude towards the analytic tradition for the development of Polish philosophy, as well as the critique of this change by Jarosław Ładosz. In my reconstruction of the latter, I focus on the problem of the historical development of science. I refer to Ilyenkov's critique of Schaff, opposing synchronic ("positivist") and diachronic ("dialectical") concepts of knowledge. As I argue, these opposing concepts of science can be seen as a genuine issue at stake in the Polish discussion as well, especially in the polemic between Schaff and Ładosz.

The subject of present article is Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s argument against idealism. The argument has been presented in „On the Notion of Existence“. Our aim is to show that the argument has some imperfectness, which allows us to doubt in its validity. As a result we will present two alternative forms of the main thesis of idealism. These modified theses ought to be immune to Ajdukiewicz’s critique. The first one is based on the notion of metaphysical grounding. The second one – on the distinction between pretheoretical and theoretical languages.

Through a historical comparison of the first categorial models (Ajdukiewicz 1935, Bar-Hillel 1953 and Lambek 1958), this paper traces the evolution of the notion of category (or type) and analyses the different kinds of rules which govern these grammars. Finally, it considers the changes induced by the syntactic rules on structure representation.

The purpose of this article is to argue with a thesis that Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz's views on ontology prove that he could have accepted the consequences of Amie Thomasson's "easy ontology”, which is a stance that ontological problems are relatively easy to solve. Thus, some attempts were made to embed Ajdukiewicz's position in the contemporary metatological discussion. Therefore there are arguments for a thesis that his views on ontology should be regarded as deflated.

There is little serious doubt about the role of inductive inference in scientific inquiry, as it has proven to allow knowledge to grow. The concerning lack of agreement, however, is about the justification of induction itself: Induction has been associated with fallible reasoning and therefore its reliability has been brought into question. Philosophers, famously Hume and Popper, have been very harshly critical of inductions, for reasons that will be spelt out below. This paper presents the philosophical stance of the pragmatistic approach of induction, championed by many philosophers and scientists, but most notably and interestingly in the cases of Charles Peirce (1839–1914, the famous polymath founder of Pragmatism) and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963, a prominent member of the Polish logical movement and Lvov–Warsaw School). These two philosophers belong to different historical periods of philosophical development, but share a common interest of ascribing priority to the practical consequences of adopting beliefs, attitudes, methods and practices. Both Peirce and Ajdukiewicz were brilliant logicians and, last but not least, both were deeply involved in the science of their time, for which direct experience in scientific endeavours helped them to contrast the value of their theoretical constructs. These facts make the establishment of a connection between the two philosophers philosophically interesting and illuminating, as their considerations on the value of induction seem to converge in the priority of a self-controlled scientific practice. In the following lines I will introduce
STUDIA METODOLOGICZNE NR 35 @BULLET 2015

Celem artykułu jest analiza porównawcza poglądów R. Carnapa i W.V. Quine’a z poglądami K. Ajdukiewicza. Wykazuję, że poglądy Ajdukiewicza na ontologię można uznać za zbieżne z poglądami Carnapa i Quine’a. Wobec tego nie tylko stanowisko obydwu filozofów anglosaskich, ale także stanowisko polskiego filozofa należałoby określić jako deflacyjne.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the views of Willard van Orman Quine and compare them with the views of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, an eminent philosopher from the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will argue that Ajdukiewicz's approach to ontology is deflationary and, in that respect, similar to Quine's. In my analysis of these two ontological stances, I would like to refer to Price's deflationist interpretation of Quine's views in order to highlight the similarity between Ajdukiewicz's views and Quine's stance on ontology. Additionally, as both Ajdukiewicz and Quine used a method of paraphrase, my paper also discusses similarities and differences in the methods used by these central representatives of two philosophical environments – Polish and Anglosphere.

Tekst  jest  myślowym fragmentem większej 'całości konceptualnej' z epistemologii religii, mającej prezentować internalistyczne i eksternalistyczne uwarunkowania problematyki tzw. racjonalności sądów, przekonań czy wierzeń religijnych. Przedstawiam w nim epistemologiczne uwarunkowania tzw. standardowej koncepcji racjonalności sądów teistycznych, zgodnie z którą warunkiem racjonalnego utrzymywania sądu teistycznego jest ufundowanie go w rozumowaniu filozoficznym lub filozoficzno-naukowym, poprawnym formalnie, którego to rozumowania przesłanki są akceptowane jako prawdziwe przez dowolną osobę. Ujmując rzecz inaczej jest to koncepcja uzależniająca dopuszczalność utrzymywania sądów o Bogu pod warunkiem oparcia ich w argumentach filozoficznych lub filozoficzno-naukowych na istnienie Boga / dowodach na istnienie Boga.  Wskazuję na dwa główne źródła tej koncepcji - to jest na racjonalistyczną teorię uprawomocnienia epistemicznego połączoną z antyirracjonalistyczną postawą wiążącą nadzieję, że myślenie naukowe - intersubiektywne stanie się lekiem na irracjonalizm i przesądy.

This is a semi-final version of paper  in Polish  titled  "Niektóre uwarunkowania epistemologiczne zagadnienia racjonalności sądów dotyczących Boga i standardowego, racjonalistycznego rozwiązania tej kwestii/ Some epistemological determinants of problem of rationality of  theistic belief  and its standard evidentialist solution". The paper will be published in  S. Janeczek, A. Starościc,  eds. Filozofia Boga,  2017. The paper presents two main sources of some contemporary account of rationality of theistic belief - evidentialism with classical foundationalism and second, anti-irrationalism, as social policy concerning proper use of reason and ethics of belief.

● Source: Pawel Tarasiewicz, “The Principal Assignment of Philosophy in Culture,” trans. Jan R. Kobylecki, Studia Gilsoniana 1 (2012): 133-146 [ISSN 2300-0066] ● Summary: The following article is focused on the question of the primary task of philosophy in culture. The problem of philosophy itself is the starting point here. The author observes a chronic discord among philosophers on what philosophy is that undermines the identity of the afore-mentioned as well as disables it from determining its tasks in the culture. Thus, he attempts to determine the nature of philosophy indirectly. The author indicates what philosophy is not and has never been from its beginning, and can not be if it be itself. According to the author, myth is an effective negative criterion with which to determine the true character of philosophy. Philosophy’s aspiration to emancipate itself from myth’s influence justifies the effort to search the foundation of philosophy in contradistinction from myth, and enabling a determination of philosophy directly by indicating its constitutive factors. To philosophize is to know things as they are in the real world, or as they are related to the real world. A reflection on philosophy is not only possible, but also necessary. Since philosophy is part of human culture, the author concludes that the primary task of philosophy in culture consists in justifying the identity of philosophy as such. ● Keywords: Philosophy; Idealism; Truth; Culture; Philosophy of Culture; Skepticism; Theories of Truth; Myth; Identity; Realism; Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz; Reality; Coherentism; Peter A. Redpath.

[Paper forthcoming in "Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present." Studies in Universal Logic series, Springer (2017)]

The relation between indicative conditionals in natural language and material implication wasn't a major topic in the Lvov-Warsaw school. However, a major defense of the claim that the truth conditions of these two are the same has been developed by [Ajdukiewicz, 1956]. The first, major, goal of this paper is to present, assess, and improve his strategy. It turns out that it is quite similar to the approach developed by [Grice, 1991], so our second goal is to compare these two and to argue that the accuracy of Ajdukiewicz's explanation is less dependent on controversial properties of a systematic but convoluted general theory of cooperative communicative behavior. In Lvov-Warsaw school the relation between material implication and indicative conditionals was also discussed by [Gol¸ab, 1949] and [Slupecki, 1949], so the third part of our paper is devoted to their discussion and relating it to Ajdukiewicz's views.

ABSTRACT
In this paper we argue that inferentialist approach to meaning does not, by itself, show that meaning is normative in a prescriptive sense, and that the constitutive rules  argument  is  especially  troubling  for  this  position.  To  show  that,  we  present  the  proto-inferentialist theory developed by Ajdukiewicz and claim that despite the differences  between  his  theory  and  contemporary  inferentialism  rules  of  language  in  both  theories function more like classificatory devices than prescriptions. Inferentialists can respond by claiming that in their
theory meaning is essentially social and hence normative, but we claim that then semantic normativity becomes derivative of social normativity.

KEYWORDS: Ajdukiewicz; Brandom; inferentialism; normativity of meaning.

This paper discusses the problem of applying Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz's method of syntactic analysis to incomplete expressions that occur in natural languages. The author defends the claim that it is impossible effectively to apply syntactic analysis to any expressions of natural languages, due to the presence of incomplete expressions. First, the author outlines the basic concepts and describes Ajdukiewicz's selected views on incomplete expressions, as well as his method of syntactic analysis. Second, using the example of various types of incomplete expressions, the author presents problems that arise when syntactic analysis is applied to expressions of natural languages.

This paper is a comparison of two structural theories of propositions: the theory proposed by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz in the 1960s and the theory developed by Jeffrey King at the beginning of the 21st century. The first section of the paper is an overview of these theories. The second part is a detailed discussion of significant similarities shared by them. In this section, I also identify and analyze ways in which these theories differ and attempt to determine if these differences are substantial or apparent. The last part is an attempt to deter- mine if the discussed theories are capable of coping with the Benacerraf Problem.

The goal of the paper is to expound a notion of conceptual apparatus, by revealing structure and functions of objects it designates. The notion has been developed by Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz in the mid of 30ties, within a standpoint of radical conventionalism. According to its proponents, a picture of world one bears is not stated directly by the data of experience, but depends on conceptual apparatus chosen. Ajdukiewicz defines the notion consequently, referring it to a set of all meanings attributed to expressions in a closed and compact language. Nevertheless, it turns out to be vague, since it inherits the vagueness from presupposed categories, especially from ambiguously used category of meaning.

The article comprises therefore a progressive reconstruction of assumed notions, including idea of closed and compact language, idea of meaning rules and idea of matrix of a language. As inquiry exposes, the structure of conceptual apparatus consists of: (1) meaning rules forcing to assert a set of statements within a closed and compact language and (2) the set of statements, which may be asserted. Its function is to force the user of the language to assert some of those statements, while facing data of experience. The notion, however, seems to be inconsistent, in order to the presupposed idea of closed and compact language. Bearing on its basis, it is impossible to face the same data of experience within two different conceptual apparatuses. Apart of the critique, article arises a set of new problems worth further studies within the topic, including the issue of relation of the notion to some related ones, e.g. to interpretative framework or cognitive scheme.

Historia filozofii jest historią układów zdań, wyrażających w formie metaforycznej osobliwe koncepcje. Poglądy filozofów jawią się nam jako mgliste intuicje. Twierdzenia metafizyczne były formułowane w języku obrazowym. Dlatego we współczesnej filozofii analitycznej szukano pewnych metod ich przekładu, w celu wydobycia z nich dyskursywnego sensu. Najodpowiedniejsza ku temu okazała się metoda parafrazy. Korzystając z niej, próbowano rozwiązać wiele problemów ontologicznych, np. Bertrand Russell, stosując ją, starał się wykazać, że bogate uniwersa ontologiczne, w których, oprócz przedmiotów realnych (stół), uznawano fikcyjne (Apollo), były wynikiem nieodpowiedniej interpretacji wyrażeń językowych. Także skorzystał z niej Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz przy rozwiązaniu klasycznego sporu o realizm. Również użył ją do ukazania zaangażowania ontologicznego zdań W. V Quine. Wspólnym dla trzech wymienionych przeze mnie filozofów, jest założenie o uprzywilejowanej formie języka. Zastosowanie metody parafrazy, pozwoliło ją wydobyć i opisać. Dopiero po dokładnej jej analizie, powyżsi filozofowie wyprowadzali wnioski dotyczące natury rzeczywistości. Dlatego w pierwszej części artykułu zamierzam podać definicję parafrazy oraz dokładnie opisać jej zastosowanie w powyższych przykładach, aby przedstawić, jak założenie o uprzywilejowanej formie języka, przyczyniło się do udzielenia odpowiedzi na następujące pytania ontologiczne: czy istnieją byty fikcyjne? czy istnieje świat zewnętrzny? co istnieje? W drugiej części artykułu zapytam o miejsce parafrazy wśród innych metod uprawiania filozofii, aby ustalić różnice między parafrazą

Ancien étudiant de Brentano et de Zimmerman, Kazimierz Twardowski, après son élection à la chaire de philosophie à Lvov en 1895, créa autour de lui un cercle d’étudiants et de collaborateurs exceptionnel, connu aujourd’hui sous le nom d’École de Lvov-Varsovie. À mi-chemin entre Vienne et Cambridge, c’est à Lvov, et puis partiellement à Varsovie, que Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanislaw Leśniewski, Alfred Tarski, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbiński et bien d’autres encore, repensèrent dans un esprit d’analyse les questions fondamentales de la philosophie du langage, de la logique, de la philosophie des sciences et des mathématiques.
Plus qu’une simple traduction, ce livre est une version révisée de la monographie désormais classique que Jan Woleński, connu pour ses travaux non seulement en histoire de la philosophie analytique, mais aussi en épistémologie et en théorie de la vérité, a consacrée à l’École de Lvov-Varsovie.