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Abstract

The author argues in favor of a claim concerning a version of radical skepticism that he calls ‘dubitative’. Unlike the radical skepticism once described by Jan Woleński that consists in the skeptic’s total refraining from making any definite statements, ‘dubitative skepticism’ consists in the skeptic’s expression of his/her doubt as regards to whatever he/she is presented with, including his/her own putative statements. ‘Doubt’ equals ‘lack of having a justification’ for a given definitive statement. This attitude is incontrovertibly possible for both a relevant p and a not-p. But ‘doubt about having a justification for p’ is incompatible with ‘doubt about not having a justification for p’. Whatever choice is made in the end, it is contained in the skeptic’s actual statement to the effect that he/she has knowledge concerning something, i.e. a knowledge that concerns his/her state of mind plus the knowledge that he/she has expressed it in the statement itself (and so on, ad infinitum). This extirpates radicalism from the skepticism of a dubitative skeptic, who, as it appears, by no means denounces any commitment to making a statement or to having knowledge. The article closes with an appropriate formal argument expressed in standard terms.

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Authors and Affiliations

Andrzej Bogusławski
ORCID: ORCID
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Abstract

The author develops a non‑literary, theistic Weltanschauung. It is based on the acceptance of the role of ‘did’ and ‘knows’ as non‑empirical conceptual (indefinable) ‘primes’. The basic argument of this paper is derived from a detailed linguistic observation of the idiosyncratic behaviour of the concepts ‘why’ and ‘because’ vis‑à‑vis other questioners and the functor ‘can’. The item ‘because’ presupposes a conjunction with a clause indicating an obligatorily altogether different state of affairs than one that is given in ‘a because ...’, as an expression patterned on * ‘a because a’ that constitutes a case of one of the most extreme linguistic deviances. Such a putative phrase cannot belong to any natural linguistic code, nor can it be its real product (that is no other than a quip in a purely perlocutionary utterance in J.L. Austin’s sense). Similarly, a generalized version of ‘did’ or ‘knows’ ( someone did / knows something without any specification) cannot be positioned in such a conjunction on pain of engaging in a destructive infinite regress, unless they are coupled with some further, different concept (i.e. a concept other than ‘did’ resp. ‘know’) in a concatenation with ‘because’. According to the author, this shows that precisely the two indicated concepts are conceptual ‘primes’, or the fundamental synthetic a priori’s whose denotata underlie the whole of the reality. The author tries to show that it is unacceptable to reduce Reality to a single and unique empirical universe conceived of as an effect of ‘doing’. He claims that Ockham’s idea of multiplicity of universes represents a logical necessity. But he rejects the mystical höheres in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as including „pure logic”, ethics and aesthetics. All the three areas, he claims, belong to the created natural realm of speaking beings. Reality, grasped by logic, is broader than that realm.
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Authors and Affiliations

Andrzej Bogusławski
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. prof. em., Uniwersytet Warszawski, Wydział Neofilologii, Katedra Lingwistyki Formalnej, ul. Dobra 55, 00-312 Warszawa
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Abstract

The article aims to show that the criticism of the psychophysiological theory of cognition formulated by Roman Ingarden in the work U podstaw teorii poznania (‘The Groundwork of Epistemology’) is in some aspects still sound. The psychophysiological theory of cognition is the forerunner of modern naturalized epistemology. Thus the author of this article undertakes to show that Ingarden’s critique applies to this modern epistemology. The paper focuses on an issue that is discussed in both theories, i.e. the problem of causal generation of cognition. Moreover, it investigates two allegations that Ingarden has formulated. The first concerns the causal explanations of the possibility of knowledge, namely the objection of a vicious circle in theory. The second concerns the objection that causal theory is unable to provide essential epistemological concepts and criteria that are necessary for the analysis of cognition. The author supports the charge of the vicious circle and agrees with the purport of the second objection by showing that it can be interpreted as the claim that causal theory is incapable of solving the problem of causal underdetermination of cognition. These responses seem to hold irrespective of whether one adopts foundationalism or anti‑foundationalism in epistemology.
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Authors and Affiliations

Rafał Lewandowski
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Uniwersytet Gdański, Szkoła Doktorska Nauk Humanistycznych i Społecznych, ul. W. Stwosza 63, 80-308 Gdańsk

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