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1

Scepticism about reflexive intentions refuted

100%

Witek M.

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

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2009

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vol. 5

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issue 1

69-83

EN

The aim of this paper is to resist four arguments, originally developed by Mark Siebel, that seem to support scepticism about reflexive communicative intentions. I argue, first, that despite their complexity reflexive intentions are thinkable mental representations. To justify this claim, I offer an account of the cognitive mechanism that is capable of producing an intention whose content refers to the intention itself. Second, I claim that reflexive intentions can be individuated in terms of their contents. Third, I argue that the explanatory power of the theory of illocutionary reflexive intentions is not as limited as it would initially seem. Finally, I reject the suggestion that the conception of reflexive communicative intentions ascribes to a language user more cognitive abilities than he or she really has.

2

What is the Theory of Truth that Relativists Need?

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Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2003

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vol. 11

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issue 3-4

143-158

PL

The aim of this paper is to justify the claim that relativism assumes a deflationary account of truth. In the first section the author articulates some terminological conventions regarding the use of the terms "relativism" and "deflationism". It is assumed that relativism advocates two theses. The first one is the thesis of relativity. It says that opinions adopted by members of some community depend on social or cultural factors determining their cognitive point of view. The second one is the thesis of symmetry. It claims that the idea of the absolute and objective correctness has no sense. In other words, the choice of a cognitive point of view cannot be objectively justified. Nevertheless, it can be explained by describing its social causes. Next, the author analyses the most popular deflationary views on truth. It is assumed that the most reliable form of deflationism is the so-called disquotational conception. According to the conception in question the meaning of a concept of truth is entirely captured by instances of the disquotational scheme: "S" is true if and only if s. It is stressed that the instances of the scheme define the immanent notion of truth. The point is that the notion so defined can be predicated only on sentences one understands. In the second section the author develops the main argument of this paper. A few relativistic accounts of truth are analysed. It is argued that relativists have no alternative but to accept the deflationary account of truth. The main idea of the argument is that rejecting the notion of transcendent truth relativism makes the notion of truth empty and strictly immanent. In other words, it makes the notion deflationary. The third section contains some remarks on possible ways of arguing against relativism.

3

The Theory of a Theory Meaning

100%

Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2009

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vol. 17

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issue 2

99-112

PL

The aim of the paper is to evaluate critically Wacław Janikowski's radically empiricist theory of meaning. In the first section, the author offers a critical analysis of the main theses and definitions proposed by Janikowski. His conclusion is that Janikowski fails to provide a coherent theory of meaning, balancing between functionalism, mentalism and behaviorism. In the second section, the author offers a more general reflection on the actual aim and expected form of a theory of meaning. He claims that in order to construct a comprehensive and adequate account of meaning one should start with the ontological question on the nature of linguistic items, and then ask the epistemological question on the structure of linguistic or communicative competence and end with considerations on the methodology of linguistic studies. In other words, the author rejects the approach tacitly adopted by Janikowski, who starts his theoretical reflection by deriving ontological conclusions on the nature of meaning from the previously accepted methodological principles.

4

Correspondence with Reality: Remarks on Jacek J. Jadacki's Theory of Truth

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Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2005

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vol. 13

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issue 3

115-126

PL

The author starts with the assumption that a popular idea, according to which a true sentence corresponds with reality, is adequate. Therefore, any adequate theory of truth has to account for it. It turns out, however, that it is the epistemic conception, not the correspondence one, that meets such a demand. In order to justify his claim, the author discusses Jacek J. Jadacki's theory of truth. Roughly speaking, the theory in question states that if a given sentence refers to a certain state of affairs - that function a the sentence's semantic value - then the sentence is true if and only if the relevant state of affairs holds. In short, the theory defines the truth of a given sentence in terms of the holding of the state of affairs to which the sentence refers. It remains to be explained, therefore, what it is, for a given state of affairs to hold. The author considers three possible accounts of the holding of the state of affairs. According to the first one, the sentence's semantic value is either a mental representation or an ideal entity grasped in the subjective episode of understanding. Such a mental or ideal state of affairs holds if it has its real counterpart. The second ac-count is based on the idea that real states of affairs constitutes a subclass of all describeable states of affairs. A given state of affairs holds if and only if it belongs to this special class. According to the third interpretation, a holding state of affairs is the semantic value of a true sentence. The author argues that the first account gives rise to the suspect question on the nature of either the relation of mental representation or the relation of exemplification. The second account, in turn, seems to require a controversial assumption that existence is a property. Taking into account those and similar problems, we have no alternative but to embrace the third option, according to which a given state of affairs holds because it is the semantic value of a true sentence. The truth of a sentence, in turn, has to be conceived as its rational acceptability.

5

Linguistic Underdeterminacy from the Viewpoint of the Reflexive Truth Conditions Theory

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Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2009

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vol. 17

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issue 3

57-97

PL

The aim of the paper is to present the theory of reflexive truth conditions with particular reference to the literalist account of communicative competence it offers. Like contextualist conceptions, the theory allows for the phenomenon of linguistic underdeterminacy. Unlike most popular accounts of communicative competence, however, it takes the phenomenon to be a property of the semantic, rather than the cognitive correlate of an utterance; it is claimed, namely, that the semantic correlate of an utterance is to be identified with the state of affairs the utterance signifies, whereas its cognitive correlate is best understood as the conventionally determined, token-reflexive description of the signified state. The paper consists of four parts. In the first section the author offers a few terminological conventions. The second section provides a synthetic presentation of the dominant view on the nature and causes of linguistic underdeterminacy. In the third section, following Manuel García-Carpintero, John Perry and Kepa Korta, the author develops his own version of the reflexive truth conditions theory and points out that the resulting conception offers an original account of linguistic underdeterminacy. The paper ends with general conclusions regarding the nature of linguistic underdetermination and the structure of the literalism/contextualism debate.

6

Tacit Mechanisms and Heuristic Theorizing: Comments on Ryszard Wójcicki’s “Is There Only One Truth? An Introduction to the Pragmatic Theory of Knowledge Acquisition”

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Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2012

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vol. 20

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issue 1

33-44

PL

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims at developing a preliminary typology of subconscious, tacit mechanisms that underlie the conscious exercise of practical skills as well as the formation and functioning of conscious mental representations such as perceptual experiences, mental images, explicitly held beliefs and explanatory hypotheses. Second, it employs the typology to consider whether these tacit mechanisms can be examined and explicated by what Ryszard Wójcicki calls heuristic theorizing or heuristic reasoning, i.e., by a cognitive procedure whose job is to study one's tacit or personal knowledge. The paper consists of two sections. Section 1 outlines the general structure of what Michael Polanyi calls personal knowledge or tacit knowing. It also discusses a few examples of tacit knowing - in action, perception and cognition - and argue that they all have to be explained in terms of implicit mechanisms rather than in that of implicitly held beliefs or theories. Section 2 start with an observation that despite having the same structure, the implicit mechanisms consideration in section 1 fail to form a homogeneous class: there are mechanisms that operate on propositional representations such as tacitly held beliefs and theories, mechanisms that involve nonpropositional representations such as perceptual experiences and topographic or classificatory cognitive schemas, and mechanism whose characteristic feature is their using specific processing rules reflecting the structural properties of a given stimuli domain. In other words, it is argued that what Polanyi calls personal or tacit knowlAbstracts 161 edge may take either the form of representational states - propositional or nonpropositional - or the form of processing rules. Finally, it is demonstrated that these and similar differences are significant for understanding the role of heuristic theorizing in the acquisition and justification of objective knowledge.

7

The Argument about the Nature of Truth from the Point of View of Speech Act Theory

100%

Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2006

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vol. 14

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issue 2

131-146

PL

There are at least three distinct arguments about the nature of truth. The first two are, respectively, between correspondence theories and epistemic theories and between inflationism and deflationism. The aim of the paper is to characterise the third dispute whose starting question is whether truth and truth conditions are semantic or pragmatic concepts. In other words, the question is whether it is semantics or pragmatics that provides an adequate account of truth conditions of utterances. There are two competing answers: the conception of literal truth conditions, which takes its origins in H.P. Grice's theory of language, and the conception of context-sensitive truth conditions, which appeals to the phenomena called semantic underdeterminancy. The author claims that the argument between these two conceptions in question cannot be identified with the dispute between literalism and contextualism. Whereas the former focus on the specific problem of truth conditions of utterances, the latter deals with a more general issue called Semantics/Pragmatics Interface. According to the author, these two dilemmas seem to cut across each other. More precisely, the idea of context-sensitive truth conditions can be interpreted either along the literalist's or contextualist's lines. According to the author it contextualism, not literalism, that provides a better, pragmatic account of truth conditions.

8

Deflationism and Normative Element

100%

Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2001

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vol. 9

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issue 2

101-121

PL

The author offers a critical analysis of so called deflationary conception of truth. According to the conception in question an adequate theory of truth contains nothing more than instances of a schema: „p” is true iff p. In short, truth is a disquotation. After giving a brief presentation of main deflationary ideas, the author argues that deflationism conflicts with normative epistemology. In other words, being a form of naturalism it leads to elimination of so called normative element from the philosophy of science. For example deflationary conception of truth is not able to account for constitutive connections between normative ideas of truth and reliability.

9

Introduction to the Debate "Concept of Truth and Chellange of Relativism"

88%

Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2003

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vol. 11

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issue 3-4

49-50

PL

10

The many faces of speech act theory - editorial to special issue on speech actions

63%

Witczak-Plisiecka I., Witek M.

Lodz Papers in Pragmatics

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2009

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vol. 5

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issue 1

1-8

11

Echo i udawanie w ironii komunikacyjnej

63%

Mękarska J., Witek M.

Studia Semiotyczne

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2019

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vol. 33

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issue 2

EN

The paper develops a speech-act based account of communicative irony. A central idea behind the proposed model is that verbal acts of ironizing fall under what John L. Austin called the doctrine of the etiolation of language. After discussing the notion of communicative irony construed along the lines of Mitchell S. Green’s model of expressive communication, we elaborate on the Austinian idea of linguistic etiolation by contrasting the serious and etiolated uses of language, where the latter are parasitical on the mechanisms of the former. We argue that echoing and overt pretending are two complementary techniques of linguistic etiolation that enable one to perform acts of expressing one’s negative attitudes towards contextually available mental or linguistic representations. We also show that the proposed model of linguistic etiolation allows us to account for a number of verbal cases of communicative irony.

PL

W artykule przedstawiamy model ironii komunikacyjnej sformułowany w ramach teorii aktów mowy. Twierdzimy, że akty ironii werbalnej stanowią szczególne przypadki zjawisk, które John L. Austin określał mianem etiolacji językowej. Po omó- wieniu pojęcia ironii komunikacyjnej rozumianego w duchu Mitchella S. Greena modelu komunikacji ekspresywnej, proponujemy rozwinięcie Austinowskiej idei etiolacji i pokazujemy, jak przypadki etiolacyjnego zastosowania języka pasożytują na mechanizmach jego poważnych lub zwykłych zastosowań. W szczególności argumentujemy, że przywołanie echem oraz jawne udawanie są dwoma technikami etiolacji, które umożliwiają nadawcy ekspresję negatywnego nastawiania do kontekstowo dostępnych reprezentacji mentalnych lub językowych. Pokazujemy też, że proponowany model pozawala na wyjaśnienie werbalnych form ironii komunikacyjnej.

12

Introduction to the Debate "Truth - Science - Religion"

63%

Witek M.

Filozofia Nauki

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2006

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vol. 14

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issue 2

23-26

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Scepticism about reflexive intentions refuted

What is the Theory of Truth that Relativists Need?

The Theory of a Theory Meaning

Correspondence with Reality: Remarks on Jacek J. Jadacki's Theory of Truth

Linguistic Underdeterminacy from the Viewpoint of the Reflexive Truth Conditions Theory

Tacit Mechanisms and Heuristic Theorizing: Comments on Ryszard Wójcicki’s “Is There Only One Truth? An Introduction to the Pragmatic Theory of Knowledge Acquisition”

The Argument about the Nature of Truth from the Point of View of Speech Act Theory

Deflationism and Normative Element

Introduction to the Debate "Concept of Truth and Chellange of Relativism"

The many faces of speech act theory - editorial to special issue on speech actions

Echo i udawanie w ironii komunikacyjnej

Introduction to the Debate "Truth - Science - Religion"