Dialectical logic or logical dialectics? The Polish discussion on the principle of non-contradiction (1946–1957)

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.

A model-based approach to social ontology

This paper argues for theoretical modeling and model-construction as central (but not necessarily the only) types of activities that philosophers of social ontology (in the analytic tradition) engage in. This claim is defended through a detailed case study and revisionary interpretation of Raimo Tuomela’s account of the we-perspective. My interpretation is grounded in Ronald Giere’s account of scientific models, and argued to be compatible with, but less demanding than Tuomela’s own description of his account as a philosophical theory of the social world. My approach is also suggested to be applicable to many (but not necessarily all) other methodologically naturalist accounts of collective intentionality and social ontology.

Audience Agency in Social Performance

Cultural pragmatics is a fruitful analytic tradition in sociology. However, theoretical use of this six-element model has largely focused on actors. Despite fusion’s definition as a product made between actor, audience, and text, the audience has been treated as a passive abstraction. Further, there is no methodical way to parse out the performative actions of the actor from those of the audience in a way that reveals the substantive similarities and differences that comprise fusion or de-fusion. This article seeks a solution via a rigorous theorization of the audience in cultural pragmatics, and argues that they are the sole arbiters of performative outcome. In their arbitration, audiences become performers themselves; they perform fusion or de-fusion in dialogic relation back to the actor, and to other audience members around them. With illustrations from US Senator Bernie Sanders’ political rise over the last decade, this process is visualized with a new analytic tool – arcs of fusion – so as to better trace varying trajectories of performative outcome.

Feminist Philosophy of Language in the Analytic Tradition

This chapter offers an overview of some central themes and issues in analytic feminist philosophy of language. Ways in which parts of language, language as a whole, or our study of it involve assumptions about gender are discussed. More recent feminist applications of the tools of analytic philosophy of language to social phenomena are also explored. This includes slurs, generics, silencing, and the speech act approach to both pornography and hate racist hate speech. Ways in which extent feminist work has changed or entered the mainstream of the field, and current and future directions in analytic feminist philosophy of language are also briefly discussed.

Knowledge

This chapter carries out a detailed analysis of Dharmakīrti’s definitions of the term pramāṇa. After elucidating his definitions and subsequent Indian interpretations of them, it is argued that we can characterize the standard post-Dharmakīrtian account of knowledge as a novel, truth-tracking cognition. The second half of the chapter explores how this Buddhist account of knowledge compares to analyses of knowledge in the contemporary analytic tradition of epistemology. It is argued, for example, that the Buddhist account cannot be assimilated to analyses of knowledge that appeal to justification, nor to standard versions of reliabilism. Instead, it more closely resembles the theory of knowledge defended by David Armstrong.

The Analytical Metaphysics of Time and the Recent Theory of History

The longstanding line of research that the analytic tradition calls metaphysics of time remains quite ignored by the theory of history. To bring them closer, this study proposes to introduce to historians and theorists of history the metaphysics of time theses about the presentism/eternalism and the linear/closed time. For such purpose, we drew correspondences between the theory of history and the analytical metaphysics of time concerning some characteristics of the emerging concepts of historical time. These characteristics are related to the recent debate about presentism regarding the regimes of the historical time (multiple temporalities and pluritemporality); plural time in the analytical metaphysics and synchronous/asynchronous historical time; linear/closed time in the analytic tradition and being affected by historical time. As a result, this article presents how the analytical metaphysics of time theses disclose unnoticed contours related to the history theorists’ understanding about the relation with the past.

Aquinas’ Reception in Contemporary Metaphysics

This chapter reviews Aquinas’ reception in contemporary metaphysics as it is practised today in the analytic tradition, focusing on issues that make this reception problematic. I identify the main trouble spots based on the historical development of the analytic tradition. The discussion will target those major conceptual hurdles inherent in the analytic tradition that Aquinas’ genuine reception faces regarding his metaphysical notions of being and essence and his conception of the hylomorphic composition of material substances. This strategy will allow me to introduce an ‘analytically acceptable’ sketch of the metaphysical foundations of Aquinas’ unique position on the ontological status of the human intellective soul, which places it on a razor-thin borderline between the material and purely spiritual realms of reality, running right across our very being. I conclude with a summary of the conceptual prerequisites of a genuine and full reception of Aquinas’ thought in contemporary metaphysical discourse.

Language and Idealism

In the philosophical inquiry adopted by logical empiricists, analysis of scientific language becomes something similar to a metaphysical endeavor which is meant to establish the bounds of sense, and this stance may be easily traced back to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. On the other hand, the analytic tradition transferred this conception to the analysis of ordinary language, and this move, eventually, was able to restore the confidence of many philosophers in their own work. After all they were doing something important and worthwhile, that is to say, something no one else was doing, since linguists are certainly concerned with language, but from quite a different point of view. At this point we may well ask ourselves: What is wrong with this kind of approach, given the present crisis of the analytic tradition and the growing success of the so-called postanalytic thought? At first sight it looks perfectly legitimate and, moreover, it produced important results, as anybody can verify just reading the masterpieces of contemporary analytic philosophy. To answer the question: What is wrong?, we must first of all take into account language itself and check what it is meant to be within the analytic tradition. This will give our question a clear answer. We have to verify, furthermore, what kind of knowledge philosophy needs to be equipped with if it wants to preserve its autonomy. The logical positivists clearly claimed in their program that there is no synthetic a priori knowledge such as the one envisioned by Immanuel Kant. There is, however, an analytic and a priori knowledge which is supplied by mathematics and logic alone. Within this field, the techniques of contemporary formal logic are exalted because they allow us to build artificial languages which - at least theoretically - eliminate the ambiguities of everyday speech.

Analytic Tradition in Law: Through the Analysis of Language to the Reconstruction of Social Order

The article reconstructs the premises of the reception of analytic philosophy in jurisprudence and shows that the development of a method for clarifying the meanings of legal concepts is not least connected with the problem of legitimizing law enforcement. The article analyzes H.L.A. Hart’s approach to the problem of correlation between the “letter” and “spirit” of the law in the process of interpreting legal norms. The article argues that the process of interpretation is determined teleologically. In its limit, the interpretation of legal norms presupposes the re-creation of the desired image of society, the reconstruction of such social ontology that is most consistent with the ideal of achieving social welfare. The article examines the collision of the “ideal of order” and the “ideal of justice” as two regulations of law enforcement. The author believes that the interpretation of this collision within the analytical tradition was characterized by a gradual movement from the ideal of “mechanical” law enforcement, which minimizes the creative role of the interpreter, to the ideal of flexible interpretation focused on achieving legal goals in a changing environment. It is noted that, according to analytic approach, a theoretical solution to this conflict was proposed due to the development of the ideas of an “open texture” of law (H.L.A. Hart, F. Waismann). The author demonstrates that the development of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence has shown that the criticism of language and the interpretation of meanings are not technical tasks, but it presupposes the construction of a metaphysics of law. In this regard, the author concludes: the development of the ideas of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence demonstrates that the thesis about the absence of a positive program in analytic philosophy, put forward in the first (A.L. Nikiforov’s) article of the discussion, can be challenged.