This paper reports some attempts undertaken in Poland in the 1930s to modernize Thomism by means of modern logic. In particular, it concerns J.M. Bocheski and J. Salamucha, the leading members of the CracowCircle. They attempted to give precise logical form to the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Other works concerned the concept of transcendentals, the levels of abstraction, and the concept of essence.

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. (shrink)

This paper discusses the concept of nothing from the point of logic and ontology. It is argued that the category of nothing as a denial of being is subjected to various interpretations. In particular, this thesis concerns the concept of negation as used in metaphysics. Since the Leibniz question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and the principle of sufficient reason is frequently connected with the status of nothing, their analysis is important for the problem in question. Appendix contains (...) a short critical analysis of Heidegger’s famous statement Das Nichts nichtet. (shrink)

This volume portrays the Polish or Lvov-Warsaw School, one of the most influential schools in analytic philosophy, which, as discussed in the thorough introduction, presented an alternative working picture of the unity of science.

Les débats qui ont eu lieu, lors du Congrès de philosophie scientifique de 1935, sur la sémantique et sa portée philosophique présentent un grand intérêt historique pour deux raisons. Tout d’abord, on s’accorde à y reconnaître un des évènements majeurs du congrès. En second lieu, et de façon plus substantielle, ils ont joué un rôle décisif dans le développement de la sémantique comme discipline philosophique. C’est Carnap qui en a pris l’initiative en invitant Tarski à donner deux conférences. Ce sont (...) eux qui, avec Kokoszyńska, deviendront les porte-parole de la sémantique. Neurath, qui a préparé le résumé de la discussion, avait plusieurs objections contre la sémantique à la Tarski. En particulier, il craignait que la sémantique n’introduise la métaphysique dans la philosophie. La suite a montré que les partisans de la sémantique ont gagné. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of aletheia in ancient philosophy from the pre-Socratics until Aristotle. The meaning of aletheia in archaic Greek is taken as the starting point. It is followed by remarks about the concept of truth in the Seven Sages. The author discusses this concept as it appears in views and works of philosophers and historians. A special section is devoted to the epistemological and ontological understanding of truth. On this occasion, influential views of Heidegger are examined. The (...) paper is concluded by a review of various meanings of truth in Aristotle. (shrink)

This paper investigates relations between truth and consistency. The basic intuition is that truth implies consistency, but the reverse dependence fails. However, this simple account leads to some troubles, due to some metalogical results, in particular the Gödel-Malcev completeness theorem. Thus, a more advanced analysis is required. This is done by employing the concept of ω-consistency and ω-inconsistency. Both concepts motivate that the concept of the standard truth should be introduced as well. The results are illustrated by an interpretation of (...) the well-known logical square and its generalization. (shrink)

This papers discuss the place, if any, of Convention T (the condition of material adequacy of the proper definition of truth formulated by Tarski) in the truth-makers account offered by Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith. It is argued that although Tarski’s requirement seems entirely acceptable in the frameworks of truth-makers theories for the first-sight, several doubts arise under a closer inspection. In particular, T-biconditionals have no clear meaning as sentences about truth-makers. Thus, truth-makers theory cannot be considered as (...) the semantic theory of truth enriched by metaphysical (ontological) data. The problem of truth-makers for sentences about future events is discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

The brief article of 1910 which is translated here is, as the prefatory note explains, significant for understanding both the way in which ?ukasiewicz came to many-valued logic and the influences under which he stood at the time.

This paper critically discusses two points concerning some recent views about the concept of truth. Firstly, contrary to Davidson, it shows that meaning of sentences cannot be explicated by T-equivalences. In particular, “is true” is an extensional predicate, but “means that” an intensional one. Secondly, the minimalist account of truth does not provide a satisfactory analysis of the concept of falsity. In this respect, minimalism does not satisfy Russell’s claim that any adequate truth-theory must be a theory of falsity as (...) well. (shrink)

. This papers examines formal properties of logical squares and their generalizations in the form of hexagons and octagons. Then, several applications of these constructions in philosophical analysis are elaborated. They concern contingency (accidentality), possibility, permission, axiological concepts (bonum and malum), the generalized Hume thesis (deontic and epistemic modalities), determinism, truth and consistency (in various senses. It is shown that relations between notions used in various branches of philosophy fall into the same formal scheme.

This paper examines two arguments againstpsychologism advanced by Frege andHusserl. The first argument says that thelaws of logic cannot be justified by thelaws of psychology, because the formerand a priori and certain, but the latterare probable only. The second argumentpoints out that the status of logicallaws as universal principles of thinking isnot intelligible on the psychologisticinterpretation of logic. The author tries toshow how to examine both arguments bymetalogical devices.

This paper describes and compares the first step in modern semantic theory for deontic logic which appeared in works of Stig Kanger, Jaakko Hintikka, Richard Montague and Saul Kripke in late 50s and early 60s. Moreover, some further developments as well as systematizations are also noted.

This paper examines how the work of Frege was known and received in Poland in the period 1910?1935 (with one exception concerning the later work of Suszko). The main thesis is that Frege's reception in Poland was perhaps faster and deeper than in other countries, except England, due to works of Russell and Jourdain. The works of ?ukasiewicz, Le?niewski and Cze?owski are described.

The book under review consists of two parts closely related to its title: I Introduction to Deontic Logic, II Logic and Legal Systems. Each part is divided into chapters. Part I brings the following units: 1. The Language of Logic and the Possibility of Deontic Logic; 2. Paradoxes and Shortcomings of Logic; 3. Norm-propositions, Conditional Norms, and Defeasibility, and Part II the following: 4. Legal Systems and Legal Validity; 5. Legal Indeterminacy: Normative Gaps and Conflicts of Norms; 6...

This paper discusses the distinctions indicated in its title. It is argued that the distinction between syntax and semantics is much more important for the present situation in logic than other distinctions. In particular, doing formal syntax and formal semantics requires the use of an informal melanguage based on ordinary mathematics.

In this article the author first described the developments which brought to focus the importance of consistency proofs for mathematics, and which led Hilbert to promote the science of metamathemat-ics. Further comments and remarks concern the (partly analogous) beginnings of the work on the decision problem, Gödel?s theorems and related matters, and general metamathematics. An appendix summarizes a text by the author on completeness and categoricity.

This paper proposes a formal framework for the cognitive relation understood as an ordered pair with the cognitive subject and object of cognition as its members. The cognitive subject is represented as consisting of a language, conequence relation and a stock of accepted theories, and the object as a model of those theories. This language allows a simple formulation of the realism/anti-realism controversy. In particular, Tarski’s undefinability theorem gives a philosophical argument for realism in epistemology.