In the Introduction to the Polish-language version of the present book I expressed the hope that Polish studies in semiotics would before long be numerous enough to make possible another anthology on semiotics in Poland containing material published since 1970. That hope has in fact come true. The fact that semiotic research has been gaining momentum in this country is reflected in the growing interest in the discipline, in expanding international contacts, and in the steady increase in the number of publications. Thus, 1972 saw the setting up of the Department of Logical Semiotics, headed by the present writer, at Warsaw University Institute of Phi­ losophy. The seminar on semiotics, which I started in 1961, had met more than two hundred times by the end of 1976; since 1968, meetings have been held jointly with the Polish Semiotic Society. Another semi­ nar, confined to university staff and concerned with logical semiotics, which was inithted in 1970, had met more than fifty times by the end of 1976. The former seminar often plays host to foreign visiting pro­ fessors; so far scholars from Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, the German Democratic Republic, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, and the United States have attended.

Inhalt

On Clear and Obscure Styles of Philosophical Writing.- Symbolomania and Pragmatophobia.- On the Content and Object of Representations.- Actions and Products. Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar, and Logic.- Issues in the Logic of Adjectives.- A Survey of Logical and Semantic Problems.- The Reistic or Concretistic Approach.- Comments on the Meaning of Words.- The Controversy Over Designata.- Token-reflexive Words Versus Proper Names.- Connotation and Denotation.- Proposition as the Connotation of Sentence.- Intensional Expressions.- Concerning the So-called Empty Names.- Issues in the Philosophy of Proper Names.- Truth and the Concept of Language.- Ambiguity and the Language of Science.- Significano 'per se' and 'per aliud' in Anselm.- An Analysis of the Concept of Sign.- The Controversy over the Limits of the Applicability of Logical Methods.- Puzzles of Existence.- Vague Words.- Names and Predicates translated by P. T. Geach.- On the Antinomy of the Liar and the Semantics of Natural Language.- Normal and Non-normal Classes in Current Language.- Normal and Non-Normal Classes Versus the Set-Theoretical and the Mereological Concept of Class.- The Semantics of Open Concepts.- Languages and Theories Adequate to the Ontology of the Language of Science.- A Functional Approach to the Logical Semiotics of Natural Language.- The Principle of Transparency and Semantic Antinomies.- The Semantic Functions of Oblique Speech.- The Semantic Conception of Truth in the Methodology of Empirical Sciences translated by Z. Wójcicka.- The Attribute and the Class translated by B. Stanosz.- Analyticity and Apriority.- Sources of the Texts.- Biographical and Bibliographical Notes.