FROM THE ACT OF JUDGING TO THE SENTENCE

FROM THE ACT OF JUDGING TO THE SENTENCE The Problem of Truth Bearers from Bolzano to Tarski by ARTUR ROJSZCZAK f Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland Edited by JAN WOLENSKI Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland ^J Springer

Summary Contents Preface 1. INTRODUCTION: ALFRED TARSKI'S PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS 1933 DEFINITION OF TRUTH 1 2. THE NOTION OF THE TRUTH BEARER 23 3. DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY: THE THEORY OF JUDGEMENT AS THE THEORY OF COGNITION AND KNOWLEDGE 33 4. JUDGEMENT, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LANGUAGE 57 5. THE ONTOLOGY OF JUDGEMENT 83 6. REISM 103 7. THE OBJECTIVITY OF TRUTH 111 8. ONTOLOGISM, ABSTRACT OBJECTS AND NOMINALISM 161 9. BRENTANISM AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE SEMANTICS OF THE LVOV-WARS AW SCHOOL 171 10. JUDGMENT, BELIEF, AND SENTENCES: REMARKS ON THE TRUTH BEARER IN THE LVOV-WARSAW SCHOOL 191 r 11. FINAL COMMENTS 213 References _ 221 c Appendices: Publications of Artur Rojszczak 235 Index 239 vii

Contents Preface 1. INTRODUCTION: ALFRED TARSKI'S PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS 1933 DEFINITION OF TRUTH 1 1 The Question of the Truth Bearer in Tarski's Theory of Truth? 1 2 The Ambiguity of Tarski's Concept of a Sentence 4 3 Alfred Tarski as Philosopher? 5 3.1 Tarski's Philosophical Background 5 3.2 Some Facts and Genetic Connections 6 3.3 Brentanism in Tarski's Philosophical Background? 7 3.4 Tarski and the Vienna Circle 8 3.5 Tarski and Brentano? 11 4 The Content of this Study and what is not Included in Previous Studies on this Topic 14 4.1 The Wolenski-Simons Thesis 14 4.2 The Content of the Study 16 2. THE NOTION OF THE TRUTH BEARER 23 1 The Place of the Notion of the Truth Bearer in the Theory of Truth 23 2 The Problem of the Truth Bearer 25 3 The Definition of the Truth Bearer 26 4 The Variety of Truth Bearers 27 3. DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY: THE THEORY OF JUDGEMENT AS THE THEORY OF COGNITION AND KNOWLEDGE 33 1 Franz Brentano (I): The Act of Judging as the Truth Bearer 33 1.1 The Variety of Entities Related to the Act of Judging 33 xiii vn

viii FROM THE ACT OF JUDGING TO THE SENTENCE 1.2 The Primacy of the Notion of Knowledge in Relation to the Notion of Truth. 34 1.3 An Argument Based on the Gnoseological Concept of Truth 36 1.4 An Argument Based on the Idiogenetic Theory of Judgement 36 1.5 The Definition of the Act of Judging as the Truth Bearer 38 2 Kazimierz Twardowski (I): Act-Content-Object 41 2.1 Presentation 42 2.2 The Judgment 43 2.3 The Truth of the Object of Presenting 44 3 Alexius Meinong (I): Thinking and True Objectives 45 3.1 Thinking 45 3.2 The Object of Thinking 46 3.3 Cognition and Knowledge 47 3.4 A True Objective and a True Act of Judging 48 4 Anton Marty (I): The Adequate Act of Judging as the Truth Bearer 49 4.1 The Ambiguity of the Notion of the Primary Truth Bearer 49 4.2 An Argument Based on the Epistemological Notion of Truth 50 4.3 The Content of a Judgment 51 5 Summary of Chapter 3: the Epistemic Notion of Truth 53 4. JUDGEMENT, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LANGUAGE 57 1 Franz Brentano (II): Linguistic Analysis 57 1.1 Language and Thinking 57 1.2 The Use of Linguistic Expressions 59 1.3 'Truth'as a Syncategorematical Expression 59 1.4 A Note on Brentano's Theory of Meaning and Reference 60 1.5 An Argument from the Reducibility of Sentences 61 2 Kazimierz Twardowski (II): Determining and Modifying Adjectives 61 2.1 The Meaning and Function of Names 62 2.2 Attributing and Modifying Predicates 62 2.3 The Logic of Adjectives, 64 3 Alexius Meinong (II): Truth-Predicates in Ordinary Use 65 3.1 An Expression and Its Meaning 65 3.2 Communication 68

Contents ix 3.3 Meinong's Argument from the Ordinary Usage of Epistemic Operators 69 3.4 An Argument from True Hypothesis 71 4 Anton Marty (II): Speech Acts 72 4.1 Autosemantic Expressions and the Basic Types of Mental Phenomena 72 4.2 Linguistic Forms and their Basic Functions 73 4.3 Communication of Content 74 4.4 The Truth of Objects 76 4.5 The Truth-Predicate in Expressions of Direct and Indirect Judging Acts 77 4.6 On Arguments from the Natural Use of Adjectives 78 5 Summary of Chapter 4 78 5. THE ONTOLOGY OF JUDGEMENT 83 1 What is the Ontology of Judgement? 83 1.1 The Link Between Psychology and Language 83 1.2 Where Are Objects of Judgement? 84 1.3 The Immanentistic Reading of Brentano's Doctrine of Intentionality 85 2 Carl Stumpf (I): On Act and Content 85 3 Kazimierz Twardowski (III): On the Object of Judgement 87 4 Edmund Husserl (I): The Psycho-Linguistic Content of Judgement 88 4.1 Formal Ontology 88 4.2 The Theory of Meaning 89 4.3 The Theory of the Cognition of Meaning 91 4.4 Truth as Species 93. 5 Anton Marty (III): The Temporal Ontology of the Content of Judgements 95 6 Adolf Reinach (I): A Platonistic Ontology of Judgement 99 7 Summary of Chapter 5 100 6. REISM 103 1 Franz Brentano (III): The Judger as the Truth Bearer 103 1.1 What is Presentable? 103 1.2 r The Reistic Theory of Meaning 104 1.3 What is Presented from the Point of View of Reism? 105 1.4 The Judger. 105 2 Tadeusz Kotarbifiski (I) 106 2.1 Ontological and Semantical Reism 106 2.2 The Sentence from the Reistic Standpoint 106

x FROM THE ACT OF JUDGING TO THE SENTENCE 2.3 Candidates for the Truth Bearer from the Point of View of Reism 108 2.4 The Sentence as the Bearer of Truth 109 3 Summary of Chapter 6 109 7. THE OBJECTIVITY OF TRUTH 111 1 Bernard Bolzano (I): Sentences in Themselves 111 1.1 What Are Sentences in Themselves? 112 1.2 The Meanings of 'Truth': Ordinary Language Analysis 112 1.3 The Cognition of Truth 114 1.4 The Objective Truth Bearer as a Guarantee of Objective Truth 115 2 Franz Brentano (IV): Identity and Evidence 116 2.1 The Theory of Evident Judgement 116 2.2 Brentano's Extensional, Eyidentional and Criteriological Definition of Truth 116 2.3 The Evidence as Mental Phenomenon 117 2.4 The Evidence of Factual Judgements 117 2.5 The Evidence of Axioms 118 2.6 Indirect Evident Judgements 118 2.7 Assertive and Apodictic Evidence 119 2.8 The Obj ectivity of Truth and of Evidence 119 3 Edmund Husserl (II): Evidence of Species 121 3.1 Knowledge and Evidence 121 3.2 The Extra-Temporality of Relations Between Meanings 122 3.3 Factual Truths 124 4 Kazimierz Twardowski (IV): The Eternal Truth of Temporal Truth-Bearers 125 4.1 So-called Relative Truths 126 4.2 Acts of Judging as Bearers of Eternal Truths 127 5 Kazimierz Twardowski (V) and Jan Lukasiewicz (I): On Psychologism, Acts and Their Products 128 5.1 Logic and Psychology 129 5.2 Acts and Products 130 5.3 Types of Acts and Products 131 5.4 Language as a Product 132 6 Tadeusz Kotarbinski (II) and Stanislaw Lesniewski (I): s The Absoluteness of Truth 134 6.1 Free Creation and the Sempiternity of Truth 134 6.2 The Notion of Existence 136

Contents xi 6.3 Note on Truth with a Beginning and on the Principle of the Excluded Middle 13 8 6.4 Lesniewski's Response 138 6.5 The Eternity of Truth and the Principle of the Excluded Middle 139 6.6 What Does 'Absolute Truth' Mean? 141 7 Maria Kokoszynska (I): The Relativity of the Semantic Notion of Truth 142 7.1 The Absoluteness of the Classical Conception of Truth 143 7.2 Relativization to Language 143 8 Summary of Chapter 7: Objective Truth and Objective Knowledge 144 8.1 Objective Knowledge 144 8.2 How Knowledge Becomes Objectivized 146 8.3 The Objectivization of Truth 150 8.4 Concluding Remarks 153 8. ONTOLOGISM, ABSTRACT OBJECTS AND NOMINALISM 161 1 The Choice of Truth Bearers and Ontological Preferences 161 2 Ontologism and Nominalism in Poland 162 2.1 Ontologism as the Brentanian Heritage? 162 2.2 Nominalism as a Special Case of Ontologism 162 2.3 Tadeusz Kotarbinski (III) and Stanislaw Lesniewski (II) on General Objects 163 2.4 Stanislaw Lesniewski (III): Constructive Nominalism 166 3 Summary of Chapter 8 168 9. BRENTANISM AND THE BACKGROUND OF THE SEMANTICS OF THE LVOV-WARS AW SCHOOL 171 1 Stanislaw Lesniewski (IV): On the Sense of Inscription 171 1.1 Ontologism as the Primacy of Semantics 171 1.2 Language and Metalanguage 173 1.3 Existential Sentences 176 2 Maria Ossowska (I): Expressing and Semantics 177 2.1 The Notion of Expression 178 2.2 The Presentational Function of the Sentence and the Expressing Function of the Sentence 180 2.3 Expressing and the Meaning-Intention. 181 3 Stanislaw Ossowski (I): On Semantic Products 183 3.1 Semantic Products and the Function of Expressing 183 3.2 Linguistic Products 185

xii FROM THE ACT OF JUDGING TO THE SENTENCE 3.3 Truth and the Property of Sentences 187 4 Summary of Chapter 9 188 10. JUDGMENT, BELIEF, AND SENTENCES: REMARKS ON THE TRUTH BEARER IN THE LVOV-WARS AW SCHOOL 191 1 Kazimierz Twardowski (VI) and Tadeusz Czezowski (I): The Product of the Judging Act 191 1.1 The Theory of Knowledge and the Theory of Cognition 191 1.2 Elementary Judgments as Truth Bearers 192 2 Jan Lukasiewicz (II): The Sentence in the Logical Sense 193 2.1 Judgment and Belief 193 2.2 The Truth of Judgments: An Argument from the Judgment's Function of Reconstructing 195 3 Tadeusz Kotarbinski (IV): The Judgment and the Sentence 197 3.1 The Judgment and States of Affairs 197 3.2 The Sentence: Another Semantic-Reistic Argument 198 4 Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (I): The Picturing Sentence 199 4.1 The Motives of True Belief 200 4.2 An Argument from the Possibility of Describing a Judgment 202 5 Alfred Tarski on the Truth Bearer 205 5.1 The Sentence and Syntax 205 5.2 The Sentence as a Function without Variables 206 5.3 The Sentence as a Product 206 5.4 The Sentence as a Physical Body 208 5.5 The Sentence as an Inscription 209 5.6 The Sentence-Type and a Sentence-Name of a Type 210 5.7 Summary of Chapter 10 210 11. FINAL COMMENTS 213 1 The Weakened Thesis 213 2 The Heritage of Brentano 216 3 The Truth Bearers 217 References 221 Appendices: Publications of ArturRojszczak 235 Index 239