“The Heritage of Jerzy Łoś’s Philosophical Logic and the Polish Question”. An Introduction to the Volume

In the introduction, we discuss the inadequate reception of Polish scientists and scholars in the world of scientific and academic ideas. This nonreception can be attributed to the tragic historical situation of the country – the Hecatomb suffered by Poland. The philosophical logic heritage of Jerzy Łoś is one such forgotten discovery. The present volume is devoted to this very heritage as well as its reception. The four works printed herein are discussed in the introduction. Although they deal with different problems and their approach to the problem varies (some are of a historical nature while others propose some scientific activities), they all have one thing in common: the use of realisation operator. The operator is a logical connective that makes it possible to express various ideas. The realisation operator was introduced by Jerzy Łoś.In the introduction, we discuss the poor reception of Polish scientists and scholars in the world of scientific and academic ideas. This non-reception can be attributed to the tragic historical situation of the country – the Hecatomb suffered by Poland. The philosophical logic heritage of Jerzy Łoś is one such forgotten discovery. The present volume is devoted to this very heritage as well as its reception. The four works printed herein are discussed in the introduction. Although they deal with different problems and their approach to the problem varies (some are of a historical nature while others propose some scientific activities), they all have one thing in common: the use of  realisation operator. The operator is a logical connective that makes it possible to express various ideas. The realisation operator was introduced by Jerzy Łoś

Introduction. The School: Its Genesis, Development and Significance

The Introduction outlines, in a concise way, the history of the Lvov-Warsaw School – a most unique Polish school of worldwide renown, which pioneered trends combining philosophy, logic, mathematics and language. The author accepts that the beginnings of the School fall on the year 1895, when its founder Kazimierz Twardowski, a disciple of Franz Brentano, came to Lvov on his mission to organize a scientific circle. Soon, among the characteristic features of the School was its serious approach towards philosophical studies and teaching of philosophy, dealing with philosophy and propagation of it as an intellectual and moral mission, passion for clarity and precision, as well as exchange of thoughts, and cooperation with representatives of other disciplines.The genesis is followed by a chronological presentation of the development of the School in the successive years. The author mentions all the key representatives of the School (among others, Ajdukiewicz, Lesniewski, Łukasiewicz,Tarski), accompanying the names with short descriptions of their achievements. The development of the School after Poland’s regaining independence in 1918 meant part of the members moving from Lvov to Warsaw, thus providing the other segment to the name – Warsaw School of Logic. The author dwells longer on the activity of the School during the Interwar period – the time of its greatest prosperity, which ended along with the outbreak of World War 2. Attempts made after the War to recreate the spirit of the School are also outlined and the names of followers are listed accordingly. The presentation ends with some concluding remarks on the contribution of the School to contemporary developments in the fields of philosophy, mathematical logic or computer science in Poland

Rational Cognition and Approximate Truth in the Lvov-Warsaw School

The Lvov-Warsaw School’s logistic anti-irrationalism, especially as it has been examined in the works of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Izydora Dąmbska, and Jan Woleński, offered an intellectually distinct alternative to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle. However, the Lvov-Warsaw School’s attempt to critique the Franco-German currents of mysticism and romanticism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in the works of Henri Bergson, open it up to the question of whether its members fully appreciated the consequences of accepting that rational cognition is abstract and schematic. We argue that the abstract nature of rational cognition provides reasons to countenance approximate truth; but doing so seems to put the goal of knowledge out of reach. The consequences of these arguments seem not to have been anticipated in the works of Ajdukiewicz, Dąmbska, or Woleński, and point to a new direction for research about the achievability of certain ambitious goals of the Lvov-Warsaw School’s logistic anti-irrationalism

Semantics without Toil? Brady and Rush Meet Halldén

The present discussion takes up an issue raised in Section 5 of Ross Brady and Penelope Rush’s paper ‘Four Basic Logical Issues’ concerning the (claimed) triviality – in the sense of automatic availability – of soundness and completeness results for a logic in a metalanguage employing at least as much logical vocabulary as the object logic, where the metalogical behaviour of the common logical vocabulary is as in the object logic. We shall see – in Propositions 4.5–4.7 – that this triviality claim faces difficulties in the face of Halldén incompleteness, for essentially the same reasons that Halldén thought this phenomenon raised seman- tic difficulties for the modal logics of C. I. Lewis exhibiting it. To counter any inclination to dismiss the phenomenon as providing at best a marginal range of counterexamples to the triviality claim, a Postscript assembles some reminders of the extent of – and the varied considerations favouring – Halldén incompleteness

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963)

Między stronami 6/7 umieszczona jest wklejka 2stronna kolorowa na kredzieProf. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890-1963) – logik i filozof – był w latach 1948-1952 dwukrotnie rektorem Uniwersytetu Poznańskiego. Autorzy szkicują unikalny portret osobowości niezwykłej – człowieka niezłomnego i odważnego, pełnego pasji wybitnego uczonego, myśliciela radykalnego i niezwykle rzetelnego. Ajdukiewicz zostaje przypomniany jako konsekwentny racjonalista, autor pionierskich prac w zakresie logiki i jej zastosowań – także w odniesieniu do najbardziej fundamentalnych i najtrudniejszych problemów filozoficznych, który zdecydowanie dbał o rozumne uformowanie życia publicznego w Polsce po II wojnie światowej. Systematycznie realizował on projekt imperium logicznego, które miały stanowić wysiłki uczonych prowadzących prace na polu szeroko rozumianej logiki, obejmującej zarówno refleksję nad praktyką naukową zgodnie z programem metodologii rozumiejącej, jak i wyniki badań w zakresie semiotyki logicznej oraz logiki formalnej. Książka ukazuje się jako kolejna pozycja serii Biografie Rektorów UAM

Towards scientific metaphysics.Vol. 1In the circle of the scientific metaphysics of Zygmunt Zawirski : development and comments on Zawirski's concepts and their philosophical context

Lively discussions about developing a general theory of reality are magnified at the time of the emergence of new scientific theories. This situation occurred in the first half of the 20th century: in the natural sciences there appeared two fundamental theories of macro- and microcosmos: theory of relativity and quantum mechanics; whereas, in the formal sciences, a breakthrough was to be observed – among others manyvalued logic systems and the so-called limitation theorems were elaborated. Groundbreaking achievements in detailed sciences have changed the view of the world of natural phenomena. The mechanic image of reality was removed and in its place new insights into traditional problems that carried a philosophical charge began to be introduced. What we are referring here to is not only the change in the understanding of space, time or matter, the principles of causality, but also the development of systems distant from thermodynamic equilibrium and basic natural sciences research. The testimonies of the philosophical struggle with the development of specific sciences and new concepts appearing in them can be, developed by Zygmunt Zawirski and Benedykt Bornstein, two different concepts of scientific metaphysics[...

Criteria of Empirical Significance: Foundations, Relations, Applications

This dissertation consists of three parts. Part I is a defense of an artificial language methodology in philosophy and a historical and systematic defense of the logical empiricists' application of an artificial language methodology to scientific theories. These defenses provide a justification for the presumptions of a host of criteria of empirical significance, which I analyze, compare, and develop in part II. On the basis of this analysis, in part III I use a variety of criteria to evaluate the scientific status of intelligent design, and further discuss confirmation, reduction, and concept formation

Criteria of Empirical Significance: Foundations, Relations, Applications

This dissertation consists of three parts. Part I is a defense of an artificial language methodology in philosophy and a historical and systematic defense of the logical empiricists' application of an artificial language methodology to scientific theories. These defenses provide a justification for the presumptions of a host of criteria of empirical significance, which I analyze, compare, and develop in part II. On the basis of this analysis, in part III I use a variety of criteria to evaluate the scientific status of intelligent design, and further discuss confirmation, reduction, and concept formation