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EN
The tradition of the studies of discourse derives from the famous de Saussure's distinction discerning two levels of linguistic description: 'langue' where language is treated as a system of signs and 'parole' in which language is the subject of study as the speech-act, performance, the socio-cultural event. The concept of discourse has defined the subject of interest for linguists (e.g. Barth), philosophers (e.g. Ricoeur), historians (Foucault) and sociologists (e.g. Hymes). In ethnology the first attempts to study speech-acts ( parole) reach back as far as Bronislaw Malinowski who was interested in the cultural function of incantations as well as the problem of constructing social relationships through speech-making. Currently the most popular meaning of the concept of discourse applied in ethnology is that suggested by Rapport who defines it as 'ways of speaking which are commonly practiced and specifically situated in a social environment' . This dictionary definition can be supplemented by the statement of Mohl pointing out the social functions of discourse: 'discourse in the broad sense of the term, not only reflects society, it creates and encompasses society. There is no society, no social outside discourse'. The local discourse on politics, which is the authoress' research subject, consists of everyday conversations about authority and persons in power. According to the assumptions of discursive analysis, notions and concepts should be distinguished, those around which conversations are organized as well as typical terms, phrases and frequently used comparisons. Strategies and lines of reasoning should be described. As the next step particular terms, phrases and expressions should be related to the historical, political economic and socio-cultural context within which they function and within which they have been coined.. As a result of such analysis the mental model of authority will be constructed, the one which emerges in the local discourse on politics.
EN
Heidegger's interpretation of Husserl's 'Logical investigations' as presented in his lectures 'History of the concept of time: Prolegomena' (1925) was a remarkable contribution to the development of phenomenology: First, Heidegger starts with the interpretation of intentionality and his considerations become thus methodologically transparent (contrary to the language of 'Being and time', in which the term is missing). Second, Heidegger managed to answer the question: Why is Husserl's phenomenology the philosophically decisive alternative when compared to the domination of reflexive consciousness and logical judgment in modern philosophy? It is because concepts are not the representations of things any more; as the 'states of things' they are explicit expressions ('parts') of an implicitly given meaning ('whole'). Third, Heidegger's interpretation includes the fundamental question of being in its three meanings (copula, the sentence about existence, the sentence about identity), due to which the status of the explanation of 'reality' (which is more than the 'reality' of single things) changes as well.
EN
The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that procedurally structured concepts are central to human communication in all cultures and throughout history. This thesis is supported by an analytical survey of three very different means of communication, namely Egyptian hieroglyphs, pictures, and Inca knot writing known as khipu. The author ś thesis is that we learn, communicate and think by means of concepts; and regardless of the way in which the meaning of an expression is encoded, the meaning is a concept. Yet we do not define concepts within the classical set-theoretical framework. Instead, within the logical framework of Transparent Intensional Logic, we explicate concepts as logical procedures that can be assigned to expressions as their context-invariant meaning. In particular, complex meanings, which structurally match complex expressions, are complex procedures whose parts are sub-procedures. The moral suggested by the paper is this. Concepts are not flat sets; rather, they are algorithmically structured abstract procedures. Unlike sets, concepts have constituent sub-procedures that can be executed in order to arrive at the product of the procedure (if any). Not only particular parts matter, but also the way of combining these parts into one whole ‘instruction’ that can be followed, understood, executed, learnt, etc., matters.
EN
Propositions about fiction pose a number of problems for referential semantics. They are caused by the underlying contention that can be named existential monism. In the paper the author presents some solutions for the problem of denoting the names of fictional objects, e.g. the rigid designation of names and the possible worlds framework. These approaches are nevertheless unsatisfactory because they were introduced to achieve two goals that cannot be realized at the same time: to solve the problem of the existence of the objects that the words refer to and to explain the understanding of language. In the paper he argues that the proper solution consists in distinguishing between existential ontology, e.g. that proposed by Roman Ingarden, and a theory of language that explains the phenomenon of understanding without any ontological commitments, e.g. Donald Davidson theory of meaning.
EN
The author argues that possible worlds semantics is counterintuitive and fails to achieve its goals. The definition of the meaning of a sentence as the set of possible worlds in which the sentence is true is criticized as inadequate; the semantics of modal expressions is claimed uninformative. Truth-conditions of counterfactuals on one hand, and definitions of law-like expressions (or statements expressing causal connection) on the other hand, are regarded as circular. A further development of indexical semantics - a more fine-grained one, involving interdisciplinary research into the relations among the indices - is advocated as an alternative.
6
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Prostomyslnosc odpowiedzia w poszukiwaniu sensu zycia

100%
EN
The issue of the meaning of life is the essence of humanistic reflection on life. More and more often, the contemporary human beings begin to search for the meaning of their existence when they can no longer understand the events in their life, the world, and the processes which take place. In the context of the meaning of life, I refer in this work to the philosophical thoughts of Andrzej L. Zachariasz, Józef M. Bocheński and Michał Heller, among others, and to the philosophical concept of Józef Bańka.According to J. Bańka, one problem of the modern world is combining the concept of the way of life with the concept of the meaning of life. The word ”meaning” is a logical category. However, in practice, people refer to it from the axiological or ethical perspective – subjectively rather than objectively. They understand a meaningful life as a valuable life. In my work, I stress that J. Bańka’s proposal concerning the meaning of life and the way of life helps to organize discussion on this subject.
Studia Psychologica
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2003
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vol. 45
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issue 2
103-110
EN
The collaborative role of life meaning and hope in positive human functioning is investigated. The research sample consisted of 94 persons in late adulthood (50-79). Reker's Personal Meaning Index (PMI) was used for measuring life meaningfulness and Snyder's Hope Scale for measuring the level of hope. As indicators of mental functioning use was made of Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (SES), Spielberger's State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI), which measures one positive characteristic (curiosity) and three negative characteristics (depressiveness, aggressiveness and anxiousness) of mental health, Rotter's internality-externality scale, and dimension neuroticism from NEO Five Factor Inventory. A model with three latent variables was set up: positive life regard (created by meaningfulness and hope), positive mental functioning (self-esteem, curiosity and internality) and negative mental functioning (depressiveness, aggressiveness, anxiousness and neuroticism). The model with a suggested statistical causal influence of positive life regard to positive and negative functioning was tested by LISREL analysis. This analysis showed a strong positive causal influence of positive life regard on positive functioning and a negative causal influence on negative functioning. The discussion deals with the possible contribution of internal locus of control to positive life regard index, as ensued from the results.
Filo-Sofija
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2008
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vol. 8
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issue 8
207-223
EN
In his article “On the very idea of the conceptual scheme”, Davidson rejected the dualism of content and conceptual scheme. The article is hard to understand for the following reasons: 1. Davidson seems to claim that the third dogma of empiricism is independent from the first one; 2. he seems to maintain that the idea of conceptual scheme may have sense even when the notion of meaning is rejected; 3. he does not fight conceptual relativism arguing that it breaks the principle of contradiction or that incommensurable conceptual schemes cannot speak about the same; 4. he considers only the question of how to identify an alien scheme at another person but passes over the possibility that one person has a few schemes; 5. contrary to his previous statements, he says that translatability is not necessary for the concept of conceptual scheme but in return he gives a few metaphors only.
EN
In his famous paper Demostratives (1989), David Kaplan distinguished three components in the meaning of indexicals. The first component shows what is said in using a given indexical. This is the propositional contribution or content. The second component is identical with the referent of the indexical. The third component constrains the content in various possible contexts. He called this kind of meaning 'character'. According to Kaplan, there are two kinds of context sensitive expressions: pure indexicals and true demonstratives. Pure indexicals refer automatically, whereas true demonstratives select their referent with the help of demonstrations. Contrary to Kaplan, I argue in this paper that the expression types 'here' and 'now' belong to the group of true demonstratives. I provide arguments supporting the view that their character must contain demonstrative elements.
EN
The author argues that possible worlds semantics is counterintuitive and does not to achieve its goals. The definition of the meaning of a sentence as the set of all possible worlds in which the sentence is true is criticized as inadequate; the semantics of modal expressions is shown to be uninformative. Truth-conditions of counterfactuals on one hand, and definitions of law-like expressions (or statements expressing causal connection) on the other hand, are exposed as circular. A further development of indexical semantics - more fine-grained and involving interdisciplinary research into the relationships among the indices - is advocated as an alternative.
EN
The paper aims to show how according to A. Camus it is possible for humans to cope with the absence of meaning in their lives. It covers the transformations the concept of human destiny underwent in Camus' works, beginning with his essay 'Myth of Sisyphus' up to his work 'The Rebel'. Given this context the paper focuses on the problem of the relationship between the absurd and the metaphysical revolt. The authoress argues, that according to Camus it is the revolt that makes it possible to create new values even on the background of the absurd and so in spite of the meaninglessness of human destiny to live a fulfilled life.
EN
The main aim of the text is to analyse the narratological category “unreliability” in relation to the basic domains within which it is defined by the post classical narratology. The basis for the analysis are various texts − both the fictional and the nonfictional nature. In the scope of this study are fictional and nonfictional speakers and characters in relation to the three dimensions of textual worlds which are here understood as the strategy of construction of the meaning: the first is the domain or the construction of “truth”, the second is the domain or construction of “self” and the third one is the domain or constructing of the whole of the fictional world − the domain of the text. The author suggests in his study that while the first two domains are clamouring extra textual control activities, which is the relationship between text and context, only the third domain allows us to perceive unreliability as a narrative category as a category of narrative analysis.
EN
The author of the paper asks basic questions about being and meaning and the relation that occurs between them. Taking as his point of departure the Leibnizian question 'Why there is something rather than nothing', he asks about reasons of being's existence, ways of this existence and justification for certain ways of existence. In particular, he deals with the question of the meaning of human existence. His view is that for none of these questions a satisfactory solution for all can be found. Philosophy remains in the face of such problems relatively helpless. Looking at philosophy's boundaries, one can say 'I don't know' or become absorbed into holy books that promise an answer.
EN
The first chapter of the paper provides a selective overview of the modern concepts of melancholy (e.g. S. Freud, J. Kristeva, S. Žižek, L. Földényi) as well as some of its literary forms (e.g. Chateaubriand, Amiel, Baudelaire etc.). The concepts contain a certain invariant of an existential melancholy mood, which is the state of a subject being attached (often unconsciously) to a certain historical idea of death seen as the ultimate end of an individual, nothingness. This attachment leads to the loss of meaning. For a melancholic person, the „benefit“ from a finite ephemeral life as, for example, once formulated by V. Jankelevitch, is just unacceptable. On the contrary, the ultimate end deletes the lived life in reverse order: if an individual autobiographic memory of this life ceases to exist, this life is deleted as if it had never existed – and the end deletes it as a life being lived rather than one already been lived, past, finalized. Therefore life cannot be lived at present any more. And because life has an inevitably ultimate end, it becomes unbearable, always already lost for a melancholic person. The next two chapters analyse the modalities of Modernist melancholy in two pieces of writing by Slovak Modernist authors.
EN
It has become a commonplace to regard Grice’s project in “Meaning” as plagued by circularity and almost as prevalent to dismiss such charges as unfounded. Much of the controversy surrounding Grice’s presumed circularity revolves around the question whether Grice is committed to a reductionist project of meaning, or whether it is merely meant to elucidate the nature of meaning without pretending to reduce it to something meaningless. Rarely, however, are these views developed as part of a systematic analysis of Grice's original paper, as this paper seeks to do. The author ś paper consists of two parts. In the first part, he tries to show how Grice can be defended from John Searle’s criticism relating to the famous American soldier example and argue that Searle’s suggested amendments run counter to Grice’s ambitions. In the second part of his paper, he illustrates – drawing on the first part –why “Meaning” both makes it necessary and seem impossible that the timeless meaning of utterances be fully reducible to individual utterances and thus to individual speakers’ intentions. The author argues that this seriously challenges the view that Grice is putting forward a theory of intention-based semantics in “Meaning” which would present a viable alternative to later developments of his theory.
16
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FIGURATIVE SPEECH AS A REPRESENTATION OF MEANING

88%
World Literature Studies
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2011
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vol. 3 (20)
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issue 3
62 – 71
EN
Complexity and plasticity of speech is manifested inter alia by the fact that there are not a few speech phenomena that cannot be understood literally. One of the tasks of contemporary psychology of speech and cognitive psychology is to reconstruct the structure and the process of the production and reception of figurative speech. The most important forms of the figurative speech are metaphor and irony. According to the classical rhetoric a metaphor substitutes the actual meant word another whereas the substitutive or comparative theory comprehended a metaphor as an analogy. According to the interaction theory the metaphoric meaning is generated by the mutual incidence of two ideas. As concerns the irony it is similar. The model of the process of understanding the figurative speech assumes first the reception of the literally meaning whose incoherence with the context influences the inference of actually meant (Searle). Gibbs created the contradictory model of “direct access” that assumes understanding the figurative meanings without the regress to literally meanings. Nevertheless, there is still open question left: What happens to the literally meaning in the end of the process of understanding the figurative expression? Neither conception of synchronous being aware of literally and non-literally meaning does not make it possible to explain the emotional and motivational dimensions of esthetical liking, endearment, and favour the research of which often starts from the figurative speech. The author ś contribution focuses on the figurative speech as a representation of meaning.
EN
Logical analysis of natural language (LANL) based on TIL defines meaning (Frege’s sense) in a procedural way, resulting in the following thesis: The meaning of an expression is independent of context. The meaning (in the case of non-indexical expressions concept) is thus an abstract procedure, which is explicated in TIL as (well-defined) construction. What does depend on context is the way in which the meaning has to be handled. From this viewpoint we can distinguish three kinds of contexts: (i) hyper-intensional context; (ii) intensional context; (iii) extensional context.
EN
The essay “Ideology as a cultural system” (Clifford Geertz) shapes scientific thinking about ideology for several past decades. In order with Geertzs notion, ideology represents symbolic system. We should understand this system in order with the rules of symbolic expression. My objection towards this notion lies in the argument that this is non-adequate if we don’t know what is just symbolized. The matter of misunderstanding lies in non-adequate definition of the object; in other words, in non-adequate definition of what ideology is.
Filozofia (Philosophy)
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2012
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vol. 67
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issue 7
582 – 591
EN
The paper discusses the concept of rule and its role in understanding and defining social facts. On the background of the main objections against Winch’s conception of rule as the necessary and sufficient means for identifying a social phenomenon (M. Hollis, J. Bohmann, M. Gilbert) it questions the analogy between the linguistic activity, the Wittgensteinian conception of meaning and conceiving of agency as a meaningful social activity.
Kwartalnik Filozoficzny
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2009
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vol. 37
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issue 1
123-155
EN
The thesis that meaning is normative, i.e. that statements ascribing meaning to sentences express norms, advocated by Kripke-Wittgenstein, has been subjected to numerous critical arguments. However, these doubts can be refuted if certain modifications are made. Firstly, one must reject Boghossian's requirement that a correct use is a true use and allow for correctness of speech acts which do not aim at truth. Secondly, one must reject conflation of correct use and correct application. Thirdly, the fact that the normativity of meaning sentences is not the normativity of moral sentences does not prove that meaning sentences are not normative in a different way. In line with the 'folk' theory of meaning, presented in the paper, the author accepts the meaning normativity thesis, which, however, does not mean embracing the existence of a set of rules shared by all users of a given language, which was questioned by Davidson. The idea that uses of language can be classified as correct or incorrect is central to our ordinary concept of meaning.
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