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Language and Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Adam Schaff
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Extract

Speech—both audible and inaudible—is always speech about something. The subject matter may be natural reality, social reality, or psychic reality (the manifestations of a person's spiritual life exist for us objectively, i. е., outside us and independently of us, and thus form part of reality which we investigate). The epistemological controversy up to this day has been over which element is primitive : language, which creates our image of reality, or reality, which is mirrored, reflected, mapped by language. Two solutions are possible: either the linguistic process is an act of creating an image of reality, or it is an act of mirroring, reflecting, etc.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 13 , Issue 51 , September 1965 , pp. 147 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 A still more radical criticism of this standpoint is made by Joergen Joergenson, who refuses mathematical and other symbolism the right to be called a "language," and reserves that term for the natural languages only. This is the more interesting as he himself at one time belonged to the thinkers that came close to logical positivism, and his critical opinions mentioned are presented in a paper included in a collection dedicated to Carnap (cf. J. Joergenson, Some Critical Remarks Concerning Languages, Calculuses and Logic, in Logic and Language, Dordrecht, 1962, p. 28ff.).

2 L. Kolakowski, "Karol Marks i klasyczna definicja prawdy" (Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth), in Studia Filozoficzne, 1959, No. 2, pp. 51-2.

3 H. Eilstein, "Szkic o sensach pojecia odbicia" (An Essay on the Meanings of the Concept of Copy of Reality), in Myśl Filozoficzna, 1957, No. 1.

4 Ibid., p. 103.

5 Z. Cackowski, Treść poznawcza wrazeń zmys⋖owych (The Cognitive Con tent of Sense Data), Warsaw, 1962.

6 A. Schaff, Z zagadnień marksistowskiej teorii prawdy (Selected Problems of the Marxist Theory of Truth), Warsaw, 1959, pp. 47-65.

7 K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in Karl Marx, Selected Writings in So ciology and Social Philosophy (ed T. B. Bottemore and M. Rubel), 1961, pp. 82-4.

8 Ibid.

9 V. I. Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, quoted from a Polish version, Warsaw, 1956, p. 315.

10 Theses on Feuerbach cit.