The aim of the paper is to argue that the ontological setting of objects in Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' is a version of structural realism. According to our plan, one of the opening statements of the Tractatus - The world is the totality of facts, not of things - introduces structuralist perspective: structures are superior to their constituents. However, structuralists use the notion 'superior' in various senses, but this paper argues that the Tractatus places its objects within the framework of ontic structural realism in its moderate form. That form puts structures and individuals on the same ontological footing. Such thesis contradicts traditional object-ontology that dominates Tractarian literature.
Experiencing aesthetics and aesthetic experience has, for a long time, been perceived as the purpose and goal of art. The aesthetic features of a work of art have been the only criteria used in its evaluation. However, these modernist aspects cannot be applied to the conceptual and neo-avant-garde art of the 2nd half of the 20th century that has not only brought a radical change in the artistic form, but, especially, the ontological nature of the work itself. Modernist theories of art and normative rules which apply to perceptual art are no longer able to reflect the changes brought by the art of mind. The traditional history of aesthetics oriented towards the definition of art should, therefore, overlap with, for example, the history of ideas. In the text, I will thus focus on the crucial moments which stood on the border between the old, modernist traditions, and the new, which has brought radical changes into the study of aesthetics as well as the theory of art. The text is focused on three issues: ontological issues of art, the criticism of aestheticism and tautology as a possible problem in interpretation, which will be dealt with from the comparative viewpoint of the art of sense and art of mind.
Definite linguistic expressions, for example proper names and singular and plural pronouns are easy to introduce. Indefinite expressions may pave the way, but are not essential. It is also not essential that there be entities to which the successfully introduced definite refer. This is the underlying fact that makes fiction possible, and it gives guidance about fictional names: we have no need in general to suppose that there exist entities to which they refer.
In this dispute author puts these - more or less possibility of diagram which constitutes human subjectivity as possibility of the homestead in the own way. He marks - homestead of own will not to be understand as place order, objective, standing behind world of living; also it will be not a place of underlined space which keeps human in a safe borders. It will be a place understanding as homestead fund on consideration 'from outside'. In such a perspective, homestead will be a epistemological project and capacity for infinity. Homestead is also dealing with own potential of human interior. Author confirms, as the result question about place for living will be question about localization at all. That is crucial, if man would like to see his own subjectivity. Next part consists of analyze which is connected with Samuel Beckett's poem, called 'Fin de partie'. It is possible to treat Beckett's creativity as characteristic homestead ontology, especially if reader will make a trial of finding a way back into the place marked by address. For Beckett homestead is a manifestation of every single thing which is connected with everything what is located behind and what is consider as dangerous. That is why, homestead is located in paradigm of something which is inexpressible. In fact, every single calling makes a distance, removal as its own attribute. Calling is a perspective of new entrance into the changing language and world space. Homestead is possible to achieve, when human will discover, that it is not kind of work or terminal - as author has assured - it is a border crossing in insisting and solicitous way.
The article deals with the interdisciplinary character of evolutionary ontology. It shows the close interconnection between philosophy and the special sciences (in particular contemporary cosmology, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and evolutionary biology). The author considers also the prospects of the applied philosophy in solving the global ecological crisis.
Thesauri and classification systems are traditionally used in search and retrieval of content of documents (sources). One of their most important components is the generic chain of hierarchy of concepts (classes) in which the features of the concept of a more general meaning (a more comprehensive class) are 'inherited' by the more specific concepts (classes). In the wake of aspirations toward working out the semantic web there appeared the so-called ontologies which are made up of the generic chains of hierarchy of concepts (classes) and rules formulated according to a logic of first order linked up with them. A key task of these is to secure the aforementioned inheritance of the generic hierarchy and to enable the drawing of conclusions with it. Ontologies can indirectly be traced back, for one, to Aristotle's system of categories and, for another, to Ranganathan's multi-dimensional theory of classification, a stimulus to modern classification, and by virtue of the latter, to cultures of the Far East as well. Ontologies are employed in expert systems and knowledge bases in order to provide for an information retrieval more automated in terms of semantics. Their proposal for standardization was also compiled early in 2003 (OWL). In the concluding part of the study an example of application for thesauri and classification systems is presented.
The article is concerned with the most important threads of criticism of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as it was presented in 'Zagadnienie psychofizyczne' by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. The main objection refers to the formal character of Wittgenstein's ontology, which - says Witkiewicz - ignores the basic distinction between the aspects of the dualistic structure of being. The objection is closely connected with the problem of relation between logic and philosophy. At this point Witkiewicz criticized not only Wittgenstein, but also the Lvov-Warsaw school, highly influential in Polish philosophy.
The article refers to the concept of circulating reference, previously presented in 'Zagadnienia Naukoznawstwa'. The main question is then: what happens when there is more than one network of circulating reference? Traditionally, philosophy explained such a situation in terms of multiple competing pictures (representations) of a single object. It is offered then an epistemological perspectivism as a plausible explanation. Following the works of a Dutch philosopher, Annemarie Mol, the authors argue that the very problem should be posed as an ontological one, and not as epistemological, since what is crucial here are practices and material interventions in the 'pieces of the world' instead of just cognitive representations. The argument is build around the case of atherosclerosis of lower limbs. Multiplied atherosclerosis should be then viewed as an 'object' which is more than one, and less than many. To grasp this unclear situation, one may speak, referring to John Law, about an object and its fractions.
Research of arts and literature had moved from a striving for exact, structuralist handlings of its objects to observations of the world as mediated and experienced by humans. Research in aesthetics and literary studies not embedded in structuralism is often interdisciplinary in its nature and draws on a host of inspirations (anthropology, epistemology of imaginative processes, ontological transformations of existential meanings, etc.). The creative process and its product – the literary text – can be handled from various viewpoints. Traditionally, literary studies approached the text in terms of its structure, aesthetics, and poetics. Such observations do offer a systematic way in which the functioning and form of the literary work can be described; however, they are much less capable of grasping the ontological sources and origins of aesthetic experience. The latter are inherent to the engagement with an aesthetic object and as such need to be taken into account in the creation of knowledge and value of the literary work. Respecting the psychological subject of the writer and of communicative configurations of the literary text is crucial in this context. The article looks under the surface of textual structures and concentrates on imaginative processes in connection to the reception intention of the literary work.
The expression “world literature” is currently being used in several ways: about various culturally and temporally inclusive bodies of the literature and about various ways of studying such literature. In the article, special attention is devoted to the editorial concept of the world literature in The Cambridge History of World Literature (2021), edited by Debjani Ganguly. Formulations about world literature sometimes cast it as a mind-independent entity, sometimes as a scholarly construction. It is argued that the choice between these alternatives is important, since it has significant consequences for the logic of thinking and reasoning about world literature.
In the article, the author carries on a controversy with L. Smolin, who depreciates the philosophy of postmodernism; at the same time, he presents the possibility of finding common language for both the natural sciences and humanities. This possibility is offered by the theory of deterministic chaos and by ontology (metaphysics) implicated by this theory.
The paper is a presentation and analysis of negation and negative states of affairs, with particular emphasis on the ontological aspects of negation and negative states of affairs. It consists of three parts and has an introductory character. In the first two parts, I presents the views of Ingarden and Stróżewski on negation and negative states of affairs. The third part is polemical and is an attempt to answer analytic philosophers' criticisms of phenomenology.
The paper offers an outlook on St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument (stated famously in the Proslogion) which is a result of reconsidering the possibility that being a subject of the laws of logic (especially the laws that are relevant for the argument itself), constitutes itself a perfection (assuming, understandably, with many modern defenders of the ontological argument, that there is a sense of the term ‘perfection’ applicable within the line of thought in question). The more or less obvious parts of the historical context of such a hypothesis are noted, and some of its variants or alternatives, including negation, are assessed as well. It is argued that one of them, which states that God is “logically transcendent” (in a sense specified in the paper) may be perhaps of some use in defense of St. Anselm’s Argument, or indeed any argument of that sort.
My aim is to argue that Jean Luc Nancy’s conception of Being can be particularly valuable for underlining Everyday Aesthetics’ specificity and thus for revealing its philosophical worth, one that I believe is overshadowed when treating Everyday Aesthetics solely as an extension of traditional aesthetics. Nancy’s ontology is nevertheless rooted in the Heideggerian perspective of Being, and is thus seemingly opposite to an Anglo-American approach, which is the sort of ground that Everyday Aesthetics seems to rely on. This paper will be divided into three parts: first, I discuss what separates Everyday Aesthetics from the European approach – Heidegger included – and why this rupture is legitimate. Secondly, I present what I consider to be the strongest philosophical points that Everyday Aesthetics puts forward. Finally, I show why Nancy’s work, in its specific way of challenging Western thought, can make a considerable contribution to Everyday Aesthetics.
Currently an increasing number of initiatives in the domain of information retrieval aim at providing users with more relevant information. Information delivered in a response to a query should not only be relevant but also as concise as possible. This is especially important in the domain of public relations. The public relation practitioners daily process large amount of data that may influence company profiles. This paper describes two methods that may be applied for spatial indexing of documents retrieved from Internet sources. These methods may be used in a public relation search engine that would support work of PR analysts.
The main topic of the paper is a problem of locative sense of Parmenidean 'esti' - 'is' in frg. 8 and other places. The question whether being in Parmenides' poem is spherical, and in result, spatial is one of the most 'pregnant' questions in the investigations of the Pre-Socratic philosophy before and after this Father of Ontology. The author is analyzing the use of metaphors in Parmenides and Heraclitus from the Aristotelian point of view (Po. 1457 b 25-33) in order to prove that sphere of being in frg. 8.43 in comparison with line 1.29 about 'well-rounded Truth' is only an antilocative metaphor (cf. frg.5). He is examining many different interpretations of old and contemporary authors and textual testimonies of Simplicius. He is also analyzing pro et contra arguments. The conclusion might also serve as an premise in old controversy of modern semantics about primary locative presupposition of existential constructions in many languages, especially IE (Lyons, Kahn) - maybe in all of them.
This paper assesses Luhmann’s conception of language as structural coupling. Luhmann treated language as a medium, but also tried to incorporate the Saussurean concept of sign. The paper will deal with three conflictive points. The first one is the erasure of all psychic reference that Luhmann performs. The second issue is Luhmann’s refusal to consider language as a system. The third point poses the question about the ontological bases of language, in comparison to those of the auto-poietic systems.
The subject of this article is the ontological theory of causality presented in Roman Ingarden's 'Controversy over the Existence of the World'. The peculiarity of this theory is discussed, and some differences between it and Hume's and Kant's theories are shown. The article presents Ingarden's definition of cause, the principles of causality, and rarely discussed problems connected with the analysis and division of events. The changes in the method of inquiry which occur in the third part of the 'Controversy over the Existence of the World' and which are related to the problem of causality are also examined.
Relying on the philosophy of narrative the author focuses on Schelling's ontology. She presents the question of aestheticism and epistemological empiricism in Kant's philosophy, which means that she begins from the enfeeblement of reason also defined as depotentialisation of the philosophy of the subject. She shows how this topic is treated by Schelling in his System of Transcendental Idealism, and how it is connected with ontological pluralism, or with the conflict of mutually constraining wills, a conflict that tears apart the continuity of rationalistic deduction of a system from the original lack of differentiation between one I and the other. It is determined in the process that the concepts of dogmatic philosophy are derivative, dependent and partial. Such inquiries have been inspired by A. Renaut's: The Era of the Individual, and by the claim that Western metaphysics suffers from a discontinuity. The author also discusses the development of Schelling's thought. She shows how its early version is informed by Plato's Timaeus and finds its most characteristic expression in the philosophy of identity contained in the Philosophy of Arts. Its later version, due to its rich pluralistic and mythological themes can best be interpreted by recourse to the concepts of the philosophy of narrative proposed by M. Maesschalk.
This article presents arguments for the existential connectiveness of the summative whole. The summative whole is a type of whole in Ingarden's ontology. It occurs alongside the absolute whole (the inseparable whole) and is of great importance in formal ontology, especially in the analysis of objects of higher rank and subject domains. Establishing the existential status of the summative whole seems to be important and to contribute to the development of some fields of ontology. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that the moments of existential distinctiveness and connectiveness are themselves included in the context of such terms as 'object' and ‘whole'.
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