The Philosophical Basis of the method of antilogic

The paper is devoted to the sophistic method of "two-fold arguments" (antilogic). The traditional understanding of antilogic understood as an expression of agonistic and eristic tendencies of the sophists has been in recent decades, under the influence of G.B. Kerferd, replaced by the understanding of antilogic as an independent argumentative technique, having its own sources, essence, and goals. Following the interpretation of G.B. Kerferd, according to which the foundation of the antilogic is the opposition of two logoi resulting from contradictions or opposites, necessarily associated with the contradictory character of the sensual world, in the paper it is argued that the philosophical basis of antilogic should be sought in the presentation of the views attributed to Protagoras and "adherents of flux" in Plato's dialogue Theaetetus

A Correspondence Theory of Objects? On Kant's Notions of Object, Truth, and Actuality

Ernst Cassirer claimed that Kant's notion of actual object presupposes the notion of truth. Therefore, Kant cannot define truth as the correspondence of a judgment with an actual object. In this paper, I discuss the relations between Kant's notions of truth, object, and actuality. I argue that Kant's notion of actual object does not presuppose the notion of truth. I conclude that Kant can define truth as the correspondence of a judgment with an actual object

Animals and Objectivity

Starting from the assumption that Kant allows for the possible existence of conscious sensory states in non-rational animals, I examine the textual and philosophical grounds for his acceptance of the possibility that such states are also 'objective'. I elucidate different senses of what might be meant in crediting a cognitive state as objective. I then put forward and defend an interpretation according to which the cognitive states of animals, though extremely limited on Kant's view, are nevertheless minimally objective

Kant on the Logical Form of Singular Judgments

At A71/B96–7 Kant explains that singular judgements are ‘special’ because they stand to the general ones as Einheit to Unendlichkeit. The reference to Einheit brings to mind the category of unity and hence raises a spectre of circularity in Kant’s explanation. I aim to remove this spectre by interpreting the Einheit-Unendlichkeit contrast in light of the logical distinctions among universal, particular and singular judgments shared by Kant and his logician predecessors. This interpretation has a further implication for resolving a controversy over the correlation between the logical moments of quantity (universal, particular, singular) and the categorial ones (unity, plurality, totality)

Confluence: the Galician Origins of Polish Analytic Philosophy

Separate Austrian influences, those of Bolzano and Brentano, came together in the work of Kazimierz Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov–Warsaw School and Polish analytic philosophy. From Bolzano he took the ideas of abstract content and absolute truth; from Brentano the centrality of intentionality and the role of psychology, and from both an awareness of the historical depth of philosophy. These streams flowed together in and through him to form central doctrines, attitudes and practices of that School, from its origins in 1895 to its continuation in contemporary Polish philosophy

Language universals and interlinguistic variation

Actually, the title should include intralinguistic variation along with the interlinguistic one. For variation within one and the same language is the thing which directly presents itself to the observation while it still remains to be demonstrated that phenomena in different languages can be regarded as variants to be assigned to one and the same invariant principle. There are two senses in which the terms of variant, variation are used in the following remarks: one, which has just been mentioned, concerns the assignment of variants to some definite invariant. The other implies the possibility of gradient transitions and opposes the notions of discreteness and of yes-or-no. I shall not try here to reconcile these two senses and I trust that what I intend to show will become intelligible nevertheless. Henri Delacroix (1924:126f) has reformulated an old hypothesis which seems worth exploring in connection with the search for language universals: "Une langue est une variation historique sur le grand thème humain du langage." It remains to be seen what "le grand thème" or rather "les grands thèmes" are about and what particular language-specific properties could be shown to be variants of one and the same theme. One such major theme which we shall now investigate is the interrelation between, on one side, a word or a sequence of words, and, on the other, a sentence. As this for us is not only a syntactic but also a semantic problem, we might rephrase the anti thesis as that between a term or sequence of terms and a proposition. Two alternative views on the nature of this interrelation seem conceivable: A. The interrelation is yes-or-no, i. e. an element or a string of elements either constitutes a term (sequence of terms) or a proposition. B. The interrelation is of gradient nature, i. e. we find intermediary stages. Both alternatives are appropriate, but under different circumstances