Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz Quotes
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz was a Polish philosopher and logician of the Lwow-Warsaw school and one of the leading philosophers of language and theory of knowledge of the interwar period. A pupil of Twardowski and a colleague of Lesniewski and Tarski, he held chairs at Warsaw, Lwow, and Poznan and developed the position he called radical conventionalism, according to which the meaning of expressions depends on the rules of an entire conceptual scheme that we have a limited but real freedom to choose. The quotes below are attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, organized by topic.
Browse Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz by topic
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz on God
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“What then is the content of the concept of God common to all monotheistic religions? What remains, it seems, is only the emotional content: the highest enthusiasm and respect, humility and submissiveness”
p. 152, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016. -
“All through these attempts to give the traditional concept of God a more explicit content philosophers did not mind if, in making the content more explicit, they departed from the original, highly emotionally charged, concept of deity.”
p. 154, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz on Knowledge
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Attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz:
“Worldviews are products of conceptual schemes; conceptual schemes can be chosen.”
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Attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz:
“Philosophy is best done in the company of logic.”
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“According to Husserl , that 'act of meaning ', or the use of a given phrase as an expression of a certain language, consists in the fact that a sensory content appears in consciousness , by means of which one might think visually about that phrase, should that content be joined by an appropriate intention directed to that phrase. But when a given phrase is used as an expression belonging to a cert”
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, On the Meaning of Expressions, Lwow 1931. (original title: O znaczeniii wyrazen. ) p. 19-20; as cited in: Schaff (1962;299) -
“However, the voice of the rationalist is a sound social reaction, it is an act of self-defense by society against the dangers of being dominated by uncontrollable forces such as a saint proclaiming a revelation or a madman affirming the products of his sick imagination, and finally a fraud who wants to convert others to his views for the sake of his egoistic and unworthy purposes. It is better to ”
p. 49, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016. -
“If he [the metaphysician] takes an empiricist position in regard to the source of knowledge and a realist one in regard to the limits of knowledge, he will see no need or even possibility of seeking a world-view other than that provided by science as based on experience. If he inclines towards an aprioristic position, or even more, if he is convinced by the arguments of irrationalists, he will seek his world-view in an aprioristic way, or he will appeal to intuition or mystical experience”
p. 166–167, as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz on Nature
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“By spreading logical culture, we prepare the foundation for a scientific world-view and by doing this we enable development.”
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, (1985b, 142), as cited in Łukasiewicz, 2016.
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz on Truth
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Attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz:
“The meaning of a term depends on the rules of the language to which it belongs.”
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Attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz:
“Logical analysis is the work of patient categorial grammar.”
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Attributed to Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz:
“Rationality requires the harmony of axioms, definitions, and rules of inference.”