DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix1.12 Reply to commentators in Semiotic Studies special issue on Unreal Beliefs. I defend the position developed in this book, i.e., minimal non-realism, against various charges. First, I defend the way I reconstructed folk commitments to realism about beliefs. Second, I deal with the arbitrariness charge against my definition of belief realism. Third, I critically evaluate a counterproposal to my view, namely the idea that beliefs are socially constructed natural kinds. Then I deal with the challenges levelled against my arguments against realism about belief. Finally, I reconsider some of the consequences of minimal non-realism and consider potential alternatives to it.
In this text, I am going to discuss when things go wrong when using language. In particular, I would like to address a special kind of ungrammaticality: contrary to what is expected within the generativist tradition, there seem to be word-sequences that are syntactically unacceptable for logical reasons. The semantic works exploring this line of research are usually grouped under the rubric “logicality of language hypothesis”. The aim of this paper is to examine the recent literature that attempts to subsume the observed ungrammaticalities under the umbrella of semantic anomaly, and thus to offer alternative (typological) explanations with respect to language logicality. Some critical issues of these alternative explanations will be highlighted and, while also drawing attention to the weaknesses of the logicality of language hypothesis, the latter will be re-proposed as an explanation that can be sensibly supported (for the time being, at least).
The article addresses the issue of nonsense, in a detailed and comprehensive manner scrutinised in the book Nonsens i zjawiska pokrewne. Studium semantyczne [Nonsense and Related Phenomena. A Semantic Study] (Wo & lstrok;k, 2014). The aim of the present text is to juxtapose elements that make it possible to determine convergences and divergences between the category of nonsense in philosophy and logic and the expression of general (more precisely: Polish) language, which undergoes linguistic research. The study focuses on a structuralist linguistic perspective. The analysis is based on a distinction which is crucial in the description of language: a term vs. an expression of general language. In line with this distinction, the rules of defining a word functioning in two registers-in specialist language and in general language-differ. This is due, among other factors, to differences in the functioning of such a word. The undertaken linguistic research is preceded by a theoretical and methodological introduction, the latter outlining the adopted assumptions and linguistic description methods, as well as the theories employed for the proposed analysis (including the concept of the unit of language). The results of the study, with a synthesis of relationships established between the compared categories, are presented in the conclusion.
This paper explores the distinction between sense and nonsense starting from a notion of practical sense. Using the austere conception of nonsense associated with certain readings of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus as a foil, I argue that beginning with practically articulated senses brings into view a kind of nonsense – practical nonsense – which does not adhere to the austerity of the austere conception. Practical nonsense is not sheer nonsense, but instead can be understood as involving cartoon senses. Rather than a wholesale repudiation of the austere conception, the category of practical nonsense offers a further way of enlisting the category of nonsense as a form of philosophical criticism. Work by Cora Diamond and Stanley Cavell, both of whom appeal to animated cartoons at crucial junctures, is illustrative of this form of criticism.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix2.05 This article attempts to reconstruct Jerzy Pelc’s metaphilosophical and metascientific position. The issues raised in the text relate to the style of work and approaches characteristic of the Lvov-Warsaw School, whose achievements Pelc cultivated and sought to continue, and which influenced his understanding of the role of the philosopher and the tasks of philosophy (including logical semiotics). The paper presents Pelc’s position on the status of philosophy and the pattern (standard) he postulated for conducting philosophical research, the methodological model for the humanities. It also examines the research stance Pelc assumed and discusses the fundamental criteria for scientific evaluation he presented. In addition, Pelc’s requirements related to the use of the language of the humanities are addressed, and his role and his guidelines for teaching at the university level are discussed. Furthermore, the paper addresses issues related to the institutional and organisational dimensions of scientific activity, a field in which Pelc had extensive experience. The final part of the text contains a summary of key theses, accepted general methodological standards, recommendations and guidelines regarding the issues under consideration.
This article attempts to reconstruct Jerzy Pelc's metaphilosophical and metascientificposition. The issues raised in the text relate to the style of work and ap-proaches characteristic of the Lvov-Warsaw School, whose achievements Pelc cultivated and sought to continue, and which influenced his understanding of the role of the philoso-pher and the tasks of philosophy (including logical semiotics). The paper presents Pelc's position on the status of philosophy and the pattern (standard) he postulated for conduct-ing philosophical research, the methodological model for the humanities. It also examines the research stance Pelc assumed and discusses the fundamental criteria for scientific evaluation he presented. In addition, Pelc's requirements related to the use of the language of the humanities are addressed, and his role and his guidelines for teaching at the univer-sity level are discussed. Furthermore, the paper addresses issues related to the institutional and organisational dimensions of scientific activity, a field in which Pelc had extensive experience. The final part of the text contains a summary of key theses, accepted general methodological standards, recommendations and guidelines regarding the issues under consideration.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix1.03 In the paper, I criticize the contemporary natural-kind approach to the reality of belief. My first argument is intended to show that the framework’s focus on concepts, to the exclusion of theories and practices, conjoined with causal-historical views on the reference of natural-kind terms, has been pushing the debate into irrelevance by stripping it of content. My second argument aims to show that the natural-kind framework offers an illusory sense of tractability. On weak accounts of natural kinds endorsed by Posłajko, the central question of whether belief is a natural kind might be tractable, but these accounts prove too weak to secure the conclusion that natural kinds are real. Strong accounts, by contrast, are descriptively inaccurate. At the end, I suggest that there is also a tradeoff between tractability and validity of the natural-kind framework.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix1.10 In this commentary, I invite Krzysztof to adopt a dispositionalist analysis of the belief concept and to draw the distinction between what is real and what is not in a way that does not beg the question against dispositionalism. Because his arguments against the dispositionalist analysis of the belief concept fall short, he certainly could do so.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix1.01 Recent years have brought a revival of the debate on the ontological status of beliefs. The debate was originally shaped in the 1980s by a controversy between representationism, most notably Fodor’s psychofunctionalism (1987), on the one hand, and eliminativism, which treated belief as a relic of an outdated theory of mind to be replaced by a mature cognitive science free of the propositional attitudes vocabulary, on the other (Churchland, 1981; Stich 1983). Nowadays, hardly anyone is willing to defend this radical form of antirealism about belief, chiefly due to the apparent indispensability of the central concepts of folk psychology both in everyday social cognition and in the sciences of the mind. For this reason, scepticism toward robustly realist views on belief tends to take one of two main forms: either mental fictionalism (Demeter, 2022; Parent, 2013; Toon, 2023), which treats talk about belief as a useful fiction, or superficialism (Curry, 2021; Mölder, 2010; Schwitzgebel, 2026), which accepts belief’s existence but denies its status as a deep, scientifically respectable component of our mental architecture [...].
DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxxix1.09 Posłajko’s minimal non-realism about belief combines a deflationary account of belief’s existence, a denial that beliefs are natural properties, and a revisionary stance toward the current folk concept of belief. This paper argues that rejecting or revising the folk concept is not necessary for anti-realism and develops a framework that allows for a more nuanced articulation of realist and anti-realist options about belief. The second half of the paper defends interpretivism, another deflationary position alongside minimal non-realism. In particular, it clarifies the constitutive role of interpretation in what it takes to have mental states, and the relationship between canonical ascribability and the possession of mental properties.
This paper concerns the contribution of female philosophers of science from Poland and Czechoslovakia in the first half of the twentieth century. They belonged to the first generations of women who were allowed to study at universities in those countries. The paper gives a brief introduction to the historical and sociological background to their study and further academic work. The main part, however, focuses on their contributions to philosophy. It lists the differences in their focus but also provides details of the similarities that can be found in their work, namely, the focus on the teaching of logic, the methodology of science, metaphysics in science, the laws of empirical sciences, determinism and the unity of science. Since there was no contact between these female philosophers in the interwar period, the similarities might stem from the fact that the philosophers in Czechoslovakia and Poland came from the same scientific tradition.
The founder Kazimierz Twardowski made the requirement for clarity of philosophical style one of the important features of the Lvov-Warsaw School. However, there was no widely accepted definition of clarity. Certain members adopted radical positions on this question and rejected all unclear philosophical texts. By contrast, other members of the School felt that this position was too radical and had several drawbacks. Among those members was Seweryna & Lstrok;uszczewska-Romahnowa. She was aware of the importance of a clear style in philosophy and pedagogy, and saw it as one of the great contributions of the Lvov-Warsaw School. However, she also stressed that the swift discarding of obscure texts can do more harm than good. She argued that, in philosophy as well as in science, even unclearly formulated theories can produce valuable results.
The first Ottoman musician to use Western notation to write down melodies was Ali Ufk & icirc; (ca. 1610-1675), born as Wojciech Bobowski (named also Albertus Bobovius or Ali Beg), later convert and lived at the Ottoman palace as a slave at the beginning of his stay in the Ottoman Empire. He gained fame thanks to his versatile personality and became a great dragoman in 1673. He wrote down the Turkish melodies by using European Music Notation and was compiling an anthology of vocal and instrumental melodies called Ali Ufk & icirc;'s Mecmua, which is a unique document of Turkish musical culture of the seventeenth century. He eliminated the cumbersome transliteration, wrote all the music from right to left, and added the words of the songs written in Turkish with Arabic script, partly under the notes, and partly below the music. The evolution of his method is a case in point of acculturation between the Western system and the Islamic concept of graphism. We learn many things from Ali Ufk & icirc;, not only about music culture but also Ottoman culture and life as well. His manner to working with music recalls Umberto Eco's conception of The Open Work. While he was at the Ottoman Court, he thought to arrange and create symbols for Turkish Music. He kept his former identity in this way and was assigned to carry the Ottoman Sound as an absolute.
In Unreal Beliefs, Krzysztof Pos & lstrok;ajko argues that socially constructed beliefs exist but are not real. In this commentary, I argue that the grounds for taking socially constructed beliefs to exist are also grounds for taking them to be real (per Pos & lstrok;ajko's own definition of reality).
In this paper, I argue that Conceptual Semantics, a framework in the study of meaning developed by Ray Jackendoff and Steven Pinker, is preferable to the dominant truth-conditional approach. The structure of the paper is as follows. After a brief introduction, in Section 2, I present briefly the dominant approach. In Section 3, I outline what I take to be the main challenge to it, namely radical contextualism. In Section 4, I present the conceptualist approach and show why I think it successfully avoids this challenge, while offering satisfying explanations. I conclude with the point that Conceptual Semantics is also more naturalistic than Truth-Conditional Semantics, which I take to be a desirable goal.
This paper investigates how interrogative sentences, typically not regarded as a means of lying, can nonetheless be used to deceive and mislead. While most definitions of lying restrict it to assertions, questions can subtly lead listeners to adopt beliefs that the speaker does not endorse. By examining the semantic and pragmatic features that enable interrogatives to function as tools of deception, this paper explores non-canonical uses such as rhetorical and suggestive questions, as well as the lesser-known categories of questions conveying questions and questions conveying propositions, in misleading others. These uses demonstrate how interrogatives can operate deceptively, potentially challenging traditional conceptions of lying.
In the paper, I outline the general, logical conception of meaning which is based on understanding it as a creation determined trough the way of using linguistic expressions. The concept of meaning is based on ideas deriving from L. Wittgenstein (1953) and independently from K. Ajdukiewicz (1931, 1978), and it is connected with the so-called functional approach to analysis of natural language - the notion introduced by Jerzy Pelc (1971, 1979). This is marked by taking into consideration the manner of use expressions. Following Pelc, we distinguish two understandings of this statement: in the first of them, the manner of use concerns only expression-tokens (material sings); in the other - the manner of Use (usage) characterizes the meaning of expression-types (classes of expression-tokens). This manner is somehow built into the meaning. The relation of use, concerning all the relations of physical object-based reference of expression-tokens made by users of language, will be a primitive notion of the theory outlined here. The relation Use, usage, is, on the other hand, a relation defined by means of the relation of use and applied by users of language to expression-types. The meaning of the expression-type e is defined as the equivalence class of the relation possessing the same manner of Use (usage) of types determined by type e. It may intuitively be understood as a common property of all expression-types possessing the same manner of Use (usage) as the expression e. In accordance with the well-known differentiations: Sinn-Bedeutung of G. Frege and intension-extension of R. Carnap, the notion of denotation differs from that of meaning and, in the paper, is defined by means of the relation referring of expression-type to objects of reality described by the given language.
Pos & lstrok;ajko's "Unreal Beliefs" (2024) provides a lucid and compelling overview of competing ontological views on belief, and his minimal anti-realist proposal is well-argued and persuasive. This article calls into question a less central thesis of the book: that ordinary speakers see beliefs as concrete, real, internal causes of behaviour. I offer a plausible alternative explanation of why everyday discourse appears to treat beliefs as discrete, concrete causes of behaviour. While endorsing Pos & lstrok;ajko's core anti-realist insights, I show that folk attributions of belief arise from a communicative necessity to translate holistic, nonverbal mindreading into discrete linguistic units. This translation does not reflect a genuine ontological commitment; it simply facilitates the exchange of information about one's own and others' perspectives. Philosophical reconstruction then mistakes these linguistic shortcuts for evidence of folk realism, leading to a theoretical ontology that exceeds the minimal metaphysical stance of everyday speakers. By distinguishing between holistic mindreading, language-driven segmentation, and academic reification, I propose a stance aligned with minimal anti-realism that does not aim to decide the question so much as to move the burden of proof.
Pos & lstrok;ajko (2024) suggests viewing beliefs (and possibly other mental attitudes) as holding a unique ontological status: they exist but are not real. This is Pos & lstrok;ajko's belief non-realism. Pos & lstrok;ajko also argues that the folk concept of belief is realistic in the sense in question (it is a concept of natural entities), and the conjunction of this claim and belief non-realism yields his belief anti-realism, namely the view that beliefs do not satisfy this folk concept. The purpose of the present paper is to challenge Pos & lstrok;ajko's case for belief non-realism. In part I, I argue that since Pos & lstrok;ajko's argument for the claim that mental kinds are not natural kinds because they fail to ground similarities presupposes that functional similarities cannot fulfil the similarity requirement for naturalness, this argument establishes the claim that beliefs are non-natural and hence non-real in a rather weak sense. In part II, I argue that Pos & lstrok;ajko's claim that beliefs are not causally relevant states, as well as its entailment of the claim that beliefs are non-real, depends upon a terminological choice. In part III, I take issue with Pos & lstrok;ajko's claim that the soundness of the success argument for the existence of beliefs requires, first, that we be successful at prediction and coordination because we use the theory of folk psychology, and second, that folk psychology provide an accurate description of the internal structure of the mind (requirements that are not met). However, I will point out my own reasons for the view that the success argument fails to establish the existence or reality of beliefs qua psychofunctional content-bearing states, and further, that there are no such states, though, in my opinion, predictively and explanatorily successful ascriptions of propositional attitudes do expose aspects of the mind's architecture, namely its logico-syntactic structures.
This paper defends realism about beliefs by presenting the rational indispensability argument, which claims that beliefs are indispensable for explaining how norms of rationality shape human behaviour. I begin by examining the normative aspect of belief ascription and the essential connection between beliefs and rationality highlighted in logic and cognitive psychology. Mild anti-realism, as articulated by Pos & lstrok;ajko, allows beliefs to exist for explanatory purposes but denies them natural properties, claiming they are not causally efficacious or strictly individuatable. Against this, I argue-drawing on Wundt's argument about the relationship between normative disciplines and descriptive sciences-that if rationality norms influence human reasoning, then beliefs must be real in a robust, naturalistic sense: causally efficacious and individuatable. I adapt the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument from the philosophy of mathematics to argue that our best theories of rationality require ontological commitment to beliefs as real entities. I conclude, contra Pos & lstrok;ajko, that recognising the explanatory role of rationality norms commits us to a realist metaphysics of belief.
