Riceism

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In Tadeusz Kotarbiński , a philosopher of the neo-positive Lviv school, riceism (from the Latin res "thing") denotes the theory that only things exist that humans know. Since there can be no general things, but only an unlimited number of concrete bodies, that is, "embodiments", Kotarbiński also used the expression concretism .

Theory of names

Riceism is based on Stanisław Leśniewski's ontological name calculus , a radical nominalist theory. He considers names to be expressions that can be the subject or predicate of a sentence that describes things or people. One set have been doing the form "A is B", which is an absolute, fundamental His 'll understand. This understanding is based not only on the mathematical structure of the statement, but also essentially on the Polish origin of Kotarbiński - like Latin , most Slavic languages do not use an article . Kotarbiński is different

  • singular names that are used as grammatical subjects and denote individuals or things ( Plato , Tisch )
  • general names that can only be the subject or predicate of general statements such as "every A is B" ( human , city )
  • empty names like unicorn , which do not represent a denotation and therefore cannot be the subject of a true statement.

All of these names are real names , that is, names in the strict sense of the word. Kotarbiński sees as unreal ones that describe properties, relationships or states; he calls them pseudonyms or onomatoids (from Greek ονομα "name").

All real names are concrete grammatical nouns , while abstract terms are onomatoids. This assumption is based on the realization that abstract concepts do not have .

This means that the name departure in "The departure of the train was delayed" does not have a designation - the departure is not, since (more correctly speaking) the train is departing late; "late" is a property. Relationships such as "friendship" or conditions such as "equality" are also not in this view.

Ontological and Semantic Reism

The theory of ontological reism states that only people and things exist. That means that every object has to be either a person or a thing. In response to criticism from Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz , in particular , that Kotarbiński had created a tautological system with it, he specified the ontological approach in such a way that every thing must be either body or mind and that every being that contains mind is at the same time body, that is to say, concrete "embodiment" . The basic statement that every thing is an embodiment outlines the term somatism for the ontological direction of riceism.

The semantic reism refers to the language that describes the world. He explains the possibility of converting any statement that contains pseudonyms into a statement of only real names. According to this, every name that the everyday language contains is also an onomatoid. This is a drastic reduction of the Aristotelian categories to a single and essential one, the substance which excludes substances as distinct. In its systematics, Reism as Concretism is related to the analytical philosophy of Willard Van Orman Quines , in its philosophical form Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath's physicalism .

See also : Logical empiricism , Vienna Circle

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