Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz Quotes on Knowledge
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) was a leading figure of the Lwów-Warsaw School and the founder of the doctrine he called "radical conventionalism." On the early position, the meaning of every expression depends on the meaning-rules (axiomatic, deductive, and empirical) of a chosen conceptual apparatus, and disputes between rival frameworks cannot be settled by appeal to a neutral observation language alone. The later work, especially Pragmatic Logic, retreated from the strongest formulation toward a more standard semantic position while preserving the analysis of meaning through assertibility conditions that anticipated later epistemic logic.
Quotes
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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:
“Worldviews are products of conceptual schemes; conceptual schemes can be chosen.”
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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.”
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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.