Kotarbiński’s Theory of Genuine Names

Abstract

While the work of the contemporary Polish logicians is fairly well known by their colleagues in western Europe and America, little is known in these countries about recent Polish philosophy. This is perhaps due to the fact that the logicians generally published in universal languages while the philosophers published their works mostly in Polish. This is unfortunate because western philosophers, especially logical empiricists, might have profited from a knowledge of the work of such men as Tadeusz Kotarbiński and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, who are probably to be considered as Poland’s outstanding contemporary philosophers. Both have formulated philosophical views influenced by modern logic: Ajdukiewicz has created radical conventionalism, and Kotarbiński has developed reism.