This paper discusses the intellectual relationship between Meinong and Twardowski, focusing on their ideas about representations and judgements, which are in part extraneous to Franz Brentano’s philosophy. The two philosophers addressed similar topics and their respective positions can be seen to overlap in some regards. This is shown by looking at their views on judgements about relations, intuitive and non‑intuitive representations, and Twardowski’s represented judgements, which display some strong analogies with Meinong’s assumptions.

At the end of the 19th century, two monographs on empirical psychology were published: W. Wundt’s Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie and F. Brentano’s Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt. They set different research standards, indicating a differently defined subject as well as the methodology of the new science. The psychology of the 20th and 21st centuries focused mainly on Wundt’s program, while Brentano’s program was included in philosophical analyses. However, this led to significant changes in psychology, which today can be seen as (...) deep reductionism, narrowing the subject matter, and difficulties in constructing theories. In the article, I suggest that it might be helpful to recall the basic assumptions of Brentano’s psychology and the schools derived from it, such as e.g. the Lvov‑Warsaw School. Therefore, the article aims to indicate the theoretical space that has been emerging for some time, in which the school of Kazimierz Twardowski could present original philosophical and psychological achievements. (shrink)

Ajdukiewicz called his article Problemat idealizmu transcendentalnego w sformułowaniu semantycznym [The Semantic Version of Transcendental Idealism], published in “Przegląd Filozoficzny” in 1937, a “turning point” of his philosophical development. The aim of the paper is to present various aspects of this turn. Firstly, the historical and philosophical background of the 1937 paper is sketched. It includes the metaphilosophical position of the Lvov‑Warsaw School, and the development of methods applied in this group. Secondly, Ajdukiewicz’s ideas up to 1937 are outlined in (...) order to present what the semantic turn consisted in. Next, the program of the semantic theory of knowledge is sketched, and the steps of Ajdukiewicz’s argumentation against transcendental idealism, with an emphasis on the use of metalogical and semantic results, are presented. Finally, Ajdukiewicz’s proposal is discussed from the methodological point of view. (shrink)

Maria Kokoszyńska‑Lutman, the outstanding female member of the Lvov‑Warsaw School, played an important role in the rise of the modern version of semantics. She very early noticed the importance of Alfred Tarski’s results for the established tradition of Lvov‑Warsaw investigations on truth, including Twardowski’s refutation of relativism. She contributed to the common recognition of these results, among others in Vienna and during the Congress for the Unity of Science in Paris in 1935. In the paper, I examine some Kokoszyńska’s semantical (...) views. They are supplemented by the translation of Kokoszyńska’s letters to Kazimierz Twardowski written from Vienna and Paris. (shrink)

Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981) was a prominent member of the Lvov‑Warsaw School. He is most famous as the founder of praxiology, but his contribution to ontology and semantics was significant as well. Kotarbiński introduced the doctrine of reism (in Elementy [Elements], in 1929). Ontological reism is a radical form of nominalism; it claims that there are no other objects than things or concrete individuals. Semantic reism claims that meaningful statements have to contain only concrete terms (names of things). Other terms are (...) apparent or “onomatoids”, and they should be eliminable from meaningful statements. In his doctrine, Kotarbiński appealed to Leśniewski’s Ontology (calculus of names). He also advocated a version of the classical correspondence theory of truth (without assuming the existence of facts, states of affairs, and sets). He combined this view with his reism, which accepts physicalism (all psychic beings are physical objects). This position differed from the Vienna Circle, where the correspondence theorists (Moritz Schlick) were phenomenalists and the physicalists (Otto Neurath) supported the coherence theory. (shrink)